[Mister Towed]

Paul, yesterday I had the good fortune to meet a very nice chap who had completed his apprenticeship with Lotus back in the day.

In fact, he explained that he'd been recruited directly by the founder after Colin Chapman visited his school (where he wasn't doing very well), asked him some questions about a technical drawing for a scale model he was working on and offered him a place at Lotus.

His apprenticeship covered every aspect of car design, construction and finishing, including paint, and he'd gone on to work in the design department.

Fast-forward forty-five years or so and (amongst other things) he now restores classic cars, both for himself and commission work for wealthy customers. He's a real stickler for originality where possible and really knows his stuff.

We chatted about all things cars for about an hour even though he was only here to pick up an engine I'd sold on ebay. He took a look round my Spyder and asked me how I'd painted it. I explained that I'd bought a cheap compressor and gun plus five litres of silver cellulose, read some 'how to's' on the internet and just gunned it on with no previous experience. I said that I was happy with the results even though it clearly isn't a perfect finish.

His response was to say that it looks period correct and that too many people obsess about getting a perfect, glossy paint finish on their classic cars as they were never painted that well in the first place and a 'too good' finish can ruin the look of a classic car.

As an example, he cited a commission customer who was shocked when told that his very valuable 1930's racing car was going to be brush painted with coach enamel rather than sprayed, but was delighted with the result once it had been flatted back as it just looked right.

Interestingly, he also said that the Lotus apprentices were required to paint two cars during their training - one black and one silver. The black one would show up any flaws in the prep while the silver one would show up any issues with gun control (perhaps they could do with a few more silver cars in America?). Given the finish I achieved on my first attempt I must be a natural with a spray gun!

One last tip I picked up that's applicable to your project is how he goes about brush-painting cars, and I believe it's a very similar approach to your roller painted barge clip - a coat painted on horizontally, followed by a coat painted on vertically then flat the whole lot back until it has a deep shine that looks nothing like modern two-pack and everything like a decades old classic should look.

Love Andy Warhol's harlequin Beemer though, mostly because it exposes the Art world as susceptible to The Emperor's New Clothes syndrome - Warhol painted it so it's art and worth millions, if a bunch of teenagers had done that to an M1 it'd be vandalism...