Wheel color mystery

[700rpm]

I bought my ‘29 Tudor on July 1, 1961. I call myself the second owner because the man who sold it to me bought it from the orig. owner but only owned it for two weeks before I talked him out of it.

As I cleaned it up I noticed the wheel color was not black, but actually a deep blue-green. At the time I thought that was beautiful, but during restoration in 1980 I painted them black (the blue-green by that time was no longer evident);
in the ensuing 60 years I have never seen another set of wheels that color. I note that the 1931 A-400s offered wheels in something called Hessian Blue, but I’ve never seen that either.

I suppose the orig. owner might have painted them, but the likelihood of a small Oregon farmer doing that to his new car or during the Depression and WW II seems very minimal.

Can anyone offer any insight on this? I think after 60 years of ownership I should finally settle the question.

Thanks.

 

[rotorwrench]

As far as I know, Ford did not paint match the wheels. The pin striping was applied by Ford but the wheel to striping paint matching was mostly done at the dealerships on customer request. A person can figure that owners could have done this themselves or hired a paint & body shop to do it for them. At this point in time it would be hard to find out who painted them.

 

[JBill]

Marco's roadster has bright blue wheels, but I'm not sure what the color is called. Your blue-green sounds like gun-metal blue, which is the color of the reveals on my '29 roadster.

 

[Bob C]

The wheels are Hessian Blue.

 

[Bob Johnson]

All 1929 Model A wheels were painted black at the factory. However the dealers could paint them any color you wanted. Hessian Blue was not available until 1930 on any Model A.



The likelihood of a small Oregon farmer of having the dealer paint the wheels seems very minimal.


Bob

 

[CHuDWah]

AFAIK, all Model A wheels, with the exception of a few DeLuxe models, were black from the factory. No doubt dealers, and maybe factory on special order, would paint them different color at extra cost. The car was 32 years old when you got it. The original owner may not have painted the wheels when it was new, but he may have after they had some age on them. I suppose another possibility is they were originally black but faded to the color you found due to some peculiar atmospheric condition.

 

[700rpm]

The wheels are Hessian Blue.

Yikes! Def. not my wheel color. Looks like it will remain a mystery.