During the first repaint attempt, Tom discovered that the Thunderbird came with a color used by another brand.
“So I took a paint chip to DuPont, and they identified it as Claret Red – a ’56 Buick color – which didn’t make any sense to me,” Tom said. Regardless, he still went with the restoration back to the original hue.
Then, in 2013, during a four-year, body-off-frame restoration of the car, more traces of the original color were discovered. This time, both DuPont and PPG confirmed this unique hue, originally the Claret Red color from a 1956 Buick model, but Lincoln also used it in the same year.
“And that made more sense to me,” said Tom, “that a Ford executive would order a Lincoln color.”
