I took off work a few hours early to go buy paint.

As far as I can tell, there are two places to buy automotive paint in Colorado Springs: Sherwin Williams or English Color. I went to English Color even though they spelled their name wrong.

Brian used Valspar TB550 Urethane, and I have all the magic numbers needed to recreate the appropriate colors, but no one in town sells Valspar TB550. The English Color in Denver sells it, but I’d have to drive up there. They’re not open on weekends and I’ve got work to do during the week. So I figured I’d just grab the tail cover of my car and head to the English Color in the Springs which sells PPG, and PPG Concept is a favorite single stage of the Internet.

The ladies at English Color put their magic scanner on my tail cover and mixed up a small amount of both the blue and the yellow. It’s hard to tell from wet paint, but it looked mostly right. The yellow seemed maybe a little dark and the blue seemed maybe a little light. “Do you want to take it outside and compare under the sunlight?” they asked. “Nope.”

“What kind of paint do you want?”

“Whatever single stage urethane you have.”

“Well, what do you want?”

“Concept.”

“We don’t have that.”

“Right. So what do you have?”

“Omni.”

“That’s what I want, then.”

They remarked that my Blue matched with a color called “Volvo White” on their computer. Maybe “white” means blue in Swedish. But when I got home, I was shocked to notice the name of my yellow:

Alberta Government Telephone?!? A little Googling turned up the answer:

Apparently, the yellow on my Vee is a match for the repair fleet trucks that Alberta Government Telephone used some long time ago. When Brian asked what shade of yellow I wanted, I said, “Just use whatever the color of Jared’s car is.” “That’s midlife crisis yellow.” “Perfect.” Only, the shade he used is way lighter than midlife crisis yellow. Now I know that it’s Alberta Government Telephone Yellow.

I have no explanation for Volvo White.