I don’t see a date on those but GM was an exclusive DuPont customer. They owned quite quite a bit of DuPont stock. With the right cross reference, you should be able to cross GM’s numbers directly to Dupont’s.

The PaintRef site has been a good source for matching up the automobile manufacturers' codes along the Martin-Senour catalog and the DuPont cross-reference that came with it, Eric. It's still somewhat of a big number-shuffle puzzle but once you have all the pieces, it all should come together like it's supposed to.

The fan deck will help me better match the different paint companies' chips between their respective catalogs since in most cases you can't put the chips on top of each other. The cards in the fan deck are borderless so they can be placed over any color to be checked like those Bowles color drift control cards the railroads used.

Speaking of which, I ran across this Pennsy Pool Green drift card on eBay. It looks like it matches up pretty well with Chevy Ocean Green to me. Overall, I'd have to say the PRR was fairly cavalier with their paint but eventually they ended up succumbing to the standardized fleet color systems just like everyone else... LOL

I'm having trouble matching up the Borden Yellow with its appropriate Martin-Senour chip since there's two of them that are just about identical to each other. I'm hoping my fan deck will help with that once it gets here shortly.

What I can say so far is that Lackawanna Yellow is definitely not Kraft Yellow. Good older pics of Lackawanna Yellow are hard to find but the Alco in this montage wasn't too bad. I then found a pic of the 1969 Mustang Special Yellow which appears as though it's from around 1980. The color is much more of a bright yellow in person like the photo of the '68 Shelby on Page 29...

EDIT: The fan deck arrived today for a better matchup so I had to trash everything I had here before. LOL 93-24934 Borden Yellow is WE5922...

http://paintref.com/cgi-bin/paintdetail ... ode=WE5922

Here's my scan of the Martin-Senour chip along with the DuPont chip from Paintref...

I can't say Borden Gray is DL&W or EL gray but it is within the range being slightly darker than Suede Gray but lighter than the Lehigh Valley's 93-57704 Gray which appears to be lighter than the UP's Harbor Mist Gray. LOL Lackawanna Gray is apparently the same as CB&Q's gray so perhaps I can dig something up there eventually.

Sorting out all the fleet grays would definitely be an ongoing project just by itself but at least I have the Ford Newcastle/Borden Gray identified on my Martin-Senour chart now. That one would be WE5726 which also generates another DuPont number besides the one previously listed...

http://paintref.com/cgi-bin/paintdetail ... ode=WE5726

I have two problems this morning. LOL

First, Page 5 of the Martin-Senour catalog with the darker reds and lighter grays wreaks havoc with my scanner and second, the Erie's yellow looks like it should be lighter than the Lackawanna's even to the point where it could be labeled as a cream...

This is cool because I hadn't seen one yet but here is a chip sheet of typical base tinting colors. This one's from Ditzler/PPG...

On Eric's list, the two greens are from EMD but you'll just have to excuse me if I'm having an issue with the yellow being 93-6808... LOL

A quick return to Reading colors with a hint of DL&W and EL red, here's another shot of the interior of the mystery vehicle...

I recently ran across this Raritan Central green and find it worthy of further study. I caught hell once for using a roller on my Power Wagon... LOL

Harbormist Gray is a one-year-only 1936 Pontiac color...

http://paintref.com/cgi-bin/paintdetail ... nt=93-2160

https://encycolorpedia.com/54564b

Looks a little too green, however.

Harbor Mist Gray is a one-year-only 1940 Cadillac color...

http://paintref.com/cgi-bin/paintdetail ... =210-53701

https://encycolorpedia.com/727772

The problem with the Cadillac color is 210-prefix codes are supposed to be metallics.

I have yet to find a good '36 Pontiac example but here's a 1940 Caddy. This one might not be going anywhere anyway but that happens sometimes. LOL

Actually it was the other way around. DuPont owned 23 percent of GM in 1957, when the US Supreme Court found du Pont had violated the Clayton Act. The Court specifically cited du Pont's production of automotive finishes and fabrics in its decision.

Here's a followup 1961 decision by the Supremes ordering divestiture within 10 years:

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/366/316/

Phil Mulligan

Phil - you rang a bell, I had it backwards. And that is why GM used DuPont just about exclusively.

I read somewhere about Alco using Pratt & Lambert in the later years. That's another Sherwin-Williams brand now also.

There does seem to be a bit of color variation in the different paint manufacturers' chips. With the GMC Venetian Yellow as an example, so far I've collected five samples including the Tyco model and they're all slightly off from one another. That might indicate it's a tough color to get exactly right which would be an unsurprising revelation at this point considering what we've seen here with the Reading EMD's, Alcos, GE's, and even Norfolk Southern's heritage offering. LOL

For EMD products, however, I'd trust the DuPont chips the most. I'll post a pic of all the Venetian Yellows together once the snow melts and I can get them all out in the sun again.

At the moment, I'm still stuck on the Erie and Lackawanna yellows so I started looking at early Erie-Lackawanna photos for some clues. That Erie yellow definitely has some yellow oxide in it...

I did have decent sunlight through the window yesterday so here's the first fan deck photo of the darkest yellowish creams. From left to right, these would be the equivalent of DuPont 93-1290 Venetian Yellow, 93-242 Kraft Yellow, and 93-5925 Cream. Going by this, I don't think I'll throw out the possibility of 5925 being the lighter "traditional" Reading yellow just yet but now that one looks like it could be close to an Erie yellow as well... LOL