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MG MGA - Glacier and Ice Blue

I am starting to plan the restoration of my newly acquired 1959 MGA 1500. According to the chassis # and by scraping paint, the car was originally Glacier Blue, and from the research it would have had an Ice Blue hood and Tonneau. The BU4 paint I can get, but the Ice Blue Hood and Tonneau are not available. Does anyone know of a vinyl material which would be the same colour so I can get them made. I would love to have the car taken back to original colour scheme, or as close to as possible. It would be an awesome colour combination. I am awaiting a Heritage Certificate to confirm the colour, but in the meantime I would like to source out the tops and vinyl.

Any help would be appreciated.
C.R. Tyrell

I went through all this after I decided to paint my car iris blue. I was getting the leather seats professionally done but before I did I asked several outfits for a sample of the blue piping they would choose. The piping colour varied a lot between suppliers and in the end I looked around for a better match to the paint colour. I finally chose for the piping a pale blue vinyl called 'Baby Blue' which was practically a perfect match for the paint. It may be possible to use this material for the hood but I can't vouch for it's durability. Also it has a bit more stretch than the Everflex material used originally which is still available but not in the pale blue colours.
Some of the samples I collected are in the photo:-

Top left is light blue Everflex (NLA), middle is navy Everflex and right is black. The brighter blue in the background is Azure blue from Auto Trimmings, not Everflex but similar and with more stretch.

Bottom left is also from Auto Trimmings Bottom right is 'Spruce' from Martrim Ltd.
The three piping samples are top: Baby blue from PJM motors, middle is the one used by Moto-build for their (iris blue) seats and at bottom is the one used by Newton Commercial for theirs, which incidentally is a very poor match to iris blue paint.

Navy Everflex is an acceptable (iris blue) match for hood/tonneau and is readily available but it may not go with Glacier blue.

What I did find when visiting material suppliers was that they generally don't put on their websites everything they stock. Martrim, for example, put on their website a small fraction of what they sell.

What I would suggest is that you make up some paint swatches and send them off to material suppliers asking for their suggestions assuming you can't visit in person (always best). If you do draw a blank you can always as a last resort use boring black! ......................Mike




m.j. moore

Thank-you Mike. Much appreciated. After a lot of research I came away "befuddled" to say the least. Colour choices, and texture choices are never-ending.

Moss UK sells a "grey" hood and the colour may be a close match to the "Ice Blue" colour , I am looking for. Still looking for the grey colour to re-do the piping from the white it currently has. I have never seen a car with these colour combinations , even though they were original colours.

More research is in order, but you have pointed me in the right direction... Thanks.
C.R. Tyrell

I went through this when I restored my car 10 years ago. I contacted a company in Britain that made vinyl for car tops and they told me they could produce a run of ice blue material if I was willing to buy several bolts of it, and the cost would be almost $10,000. Another British supplier suggested I use a neutral color material and apply a mixed-to-color finish to it. Apparently this is frequently done for show cars. The problem is, the finish starts to flake off with repeated flexing. I did find a NOS aftermarket ice blue tonneau cover for my car, but I haven't installed it. I guess I'm afraid it might get stolen! :-)

As for the seats, I got Moss to make me an upholstery set with gray piping. Their gray is slightly darker than the factory gray, but not by much. They were very happy to do this, and their only stipulation as "no returns on custom orders".

More info on ice blue here:

http://tildebang.com/mg/index18.html

And a picture of the seat "skins" here:

http://tildebang.com/mg/index33.html
David Breneman

Making a production run...of ice blue vinyl.... even for two cars would be insane... but I have come close with some Marine vinyls. Maybe I can supply a top maker with the vinyl and they can make the top. I have a piece of the B&G grey and it is way too dark.

Suggested that I use the dark blue cause it would look cool... but I really want to try and get close to the original. Shame to have what I believe to be a Numbers matching, generally unmolested car, and have it different colours.
C.R. Tyrell

I think you'll find that dark blue clashes with glacier blue. There's a lot of green in glacier blue, and the dark blue tops I've seen are the color of blue denim. I ended up using black everflex, since black was the other color offered for the car, and the everflex material looks very good on the MGA. I hope to have an ice blue top at some point, but for now I'm biding my time.
David Breneman

This thread was discussed between 13/11/2012 and 20/11/2012

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