The Official 356Talk Forum

What years did Porsche use red primer on their cars, when did they discontinue ?

Here's some pictures of my 59 Cab. Being hand stripped . It was painted only once with the original paint never being removed. As can be seen in the pics. The entire car shows red primer. I thought this was very interesting as one original paint car I also stripped by hand was a 60 Drauz roadster which had grey primer.

Reutter definitely used red oxide primer during the pre-A years. They also used a beige/grey primer. Depending on color (and probably paint brand).

But that's not a pre-A nose in the photo. That's late T1 or T2.

Hi Max, When I bought parts from Thorkil Simonsen years and years ago, they were in Red Primer. Other than that, I have only ever bought Factory panels, NOS, usually for an A model, and they were in the kind of Khaki colour. Cheers, jim

On my 56 Coupe I'm finding in a lot of areas inside and underneath where I can find red primer near bare metal and what I'm finding may be the original color coat Aquamarine Blue Met. over that. Battery area and under sound deadening material. Underside of the top part of the left front fender red primer is still present. Which that whole wheel well is a wealth of mystery.

For instance, up in that area, I see a lot of what appears to be red primer but the lack of undercoating and body color. As you go down the wheel well at the panel near the door I see undercoating with a lot of body color that's faded off to look more like overspray now. As you get to where the torsion tube tower connects to the body and especially the bump stop arms there is a whole lot of body color over undercoating. The red primer I'm sure is here too it just hasn't revealed itself as easy yet.

Now I'm assuming the lack of undercoating and body color in that the upper inside of the fender was not an area hit but either of those materials in the production line But were hit by red primer as that would have been sprayed everywhere to cover bare metal.

Thoughts?

Recently found pics of my 59 cab. With red primer under the original paint . This car was made 1/22/59