As an automotive hobbyist, selecting a colour on your customized construct is not any straightforward job. Do you go along with a traditionally correct unique colour for a numbers-matching resto? Perhaps for a wild one-off hue to intensify your customized fabrication expertise? Or just the deepest, darkest black you will discover to showcase the numerous hours of flawless craftsmanship you’ve invested?
Inspiration can are available in many varieties, from historical past to style to the colour of your lovers eyes. In fact, typically there’s no substitute for merely shopping by way of colour chips till the fitting shade hits you. However what if you wish to make a extra knowledgeable resolution? What if there was a option to browse current colours and instantly see the precise colour on a car?
That was the pondering when some senior leaders on the Porsche Membership of America (PCA) got here up with Rennbow challenge again in 2019. As Rob Sass, Editor in Chief of PCA’s award-winning Panorama journal defined, “a bunch of us had been speaking about all the nice colours and puzzled if there was a option to catalog these as a useful resource for membership members.”
As soon as Porsche granted formal approval, the challenge proceeded below the identify Rennbow, a mashup of the phrases “Renn” (German for race) and “rainbow.” With assist from the carmaker’s in-house archives, PCA volunteers set to work cataloging practically 600 manufacturing facility colours reaching again to 1948.
Launched in 2020 as a free web site, Rennbow.org permits anybody to seek for unique Porsche paint choices by a number of standards. You possibly can browse main colour households – reds, blues, greens, and so on – or enter a particular identify. Getting into a yr and mannequin will get you a listing of normal manufacturing colours. And if you happen to appear to recollect a colour known as “Etna” however you may keep in mind the remainder, you may all the time begin looking by identify. If rarity is your precedence, there’s even a rating issue for that.
When you land on a colour and click on in, you’ll uncover extra info. Some colours have alternate names, as an illustration. Colours that possess quite a few paint codes below a single identify are additionally not unusual. Different particulars embody the years and fashions on which the manufacturing facility formally provided the listed colour.
In fact seeing a colour swatch on a display screen is one factor. However how does it look on an precise automotive. Sourcing footage from the membership’s members together with categorised advertisements, most outcomes embody pictures of autos painted within the actual shade. These are helpful at exhibiting how mild and shadows play with completely different hues. And naturally there’s a tab for autos at the moment listed on the market by way of the membership in your chosen colour. An added useful resource is the Instagram feed that pulls colours from hashtags on the membership feed.
“Porsche has all the time used colour as a robust design device,” Sass tells us, “and the Rennbow device actually exhibits it. It’s a good way to discover lots of the previous Paint To Pattern colours too.”
As corporations like Eastwood make it simpler to unlock the magic of matching OE paint colours, assets like Rennbow are invaluable. Even if you happen to’re not a Porsche purist, the positioning could be a good way to get impressed.
