Originally posted by Macca
McLaren orange? Surely you mean 'papaya'?
The only way I could get that (for hand-painting - sorry Barry!) was by mixing orange, yellow and white.
My recollection of BRM green is that they used several different shades throughout their history. I went around the Bourne works as a teenager in the late 60s, and the paint they were using then was a metallic green from the Aston Martin road car range, I read the name off a can. I digress, but that Bourne works was a fascinating place, redbrick with a hard earth floor believe it or not, far from uncommon in factories in those days. It seemed to be staffed by large men with walrus moustaches in oily dark blue boiler suits, smoking Woodbines, and drinking strong tea from tin mugs. Bit different from the Paragon centre today, bit different from other racing shops even back in those days in fact, and I visited a few.
I know more about McLaren orange, and the original colour was a polyester pigment from the Rylands range called Traffic Yellow, they still produce the very same shade today, though I don't think it has a BS number. It was one of the standard colour range at bodywork moulders Specialised Mouldings in Huntingdon, and many other cars, Chevrons, Lolas, Brabhams etc used exactly the same shade. Bruce liked a customer's car so much, that they chose it as their standard colour. They never called it papaya though, that name was only used by journalists like Doug Nye. They referred to it as McLaren orange, and later in deference to a major sponsor, Gulf orange, but it was still the same old Rylands Traffic Yellow.
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