The inspiration for this feature came from Paul’s story a few days back about the AI-generated images in a certain repro parts company’s website. From the comments, I’m sure we all had a good laugh at that. Aside from mostly looking inexcusably fake, what I noticed straight away was the glorious colour they were all illustrated in. Purple.
It’s not my favourite colour, but I rather like purple. Even if it was all washed-out looking, liked the AI’s purple.
That got me thinking. How many purple cars have I built?
Too many for one story, as it turns out. I’m going to have to set up some fences here around just what constitutes ‘purple’. While I could wax technical about the wavelength range of purple light, that’s largely irrelevant, except to scientists. What counts is what our brain identifies as ‘purple’. Your brain is not the same as mine. Although not colourblind, I often seem to get colours wrong, calling something purple which my wife and daughter declare is blue.
So I’ll err on the side of keeping this feature short – if in doubt, it’s left out. Hmm, is 46 too many? Ah well, I’ll just have to get picky then.
They’re not all cars that were meant to be purple, of course. Sometimes I’ll have two models of the same car, but in two different purples. That sort of thing happens a bit around here. One car is even two tone purple and purple. It’s an Edsel, of course. Or is one of those ‘purples’ blue?
Anyway, here we go.
My oldest purple is this 1934 Ford pickup I built around 1976. A sixties AMT tool, it reflects its roots in the choice of motivation, a full-on Ford FE. Paint was Gloss-Masta enamel from the hardware store, dried in front of the gas fire. Dad said that made it baked enamel. It used to be shiny once;
Much more up to date but still twenty-odd years old, this Deuce coupe runs Ford Windsor power. The flames are a decal, not paint.
Another sixties tool, but this shoebox Ford custom has a Caddy for power. Hot setup once upon a time, I guess;
I never really went for the monochrome look. Although it does allow the underlying shape to shine, that assumes the shape can stand alone without accent. The eye (well, mine anyway) needs a break. While I did choose not to chrome the side trim on this Ford, I deliberately left the bumpers and window frames chrome, and went with the oh-so-nineties billet wheels, Funny how some styles are timeless, while others don’t last;
A ’60 Ford in a nice rich purple;
Why yes, I do like the 1962 Dodge;
I know we’ve seen it recently but I have to include this beauty;
This might be blue, but my brain calls it purple. It’s nice, either way. Yes, those are Mustang wheels;
Purple became popular in the muscle car era;
Purple Camaro. Not a factory colour;
Period Ford Australia Wild Violet, on a Torino;
And on a Charger;
Ford Australia Mulberry on a Javelin AMX;
Moving on, how about a purple Subaru?
A purple Civic?
Maybe an Evo?
I’ll let this guy have the final say;
These are all amazing. There have been only a handful of purple shades that I have thought looked terrific on production cars, and I’m thinking of that color Ford had in the ’90s. The Dodge Polara was the perfect lead car. I, personally, like their style as seen from 2025. I don’t know what they looked like in the ’60s.
That ’71 Charger also looks particularly fetching in that deep grape bubble gum color. I will also never turn any Javelin away. Too many favorites here for me to list. Great work.
Thanks Joseph. About the Dodge, the ’62s were quite popular down under. I remember them being a common sight in 1960s Melbourne, to the point where I was surprised to find they weren’t so successful in the US. Being Australia, some of this may be down to the handier size compared to the Chevys and Pontiacs, and Ford Australia’s leftover ’59s. Now I can look back on the styling and see how out of step they were, but then they seemed refreshingly different.
That Charger’s one of my favourites too.
Colour perception is I think very much a subjective experience. My wife has always been wild about purple, to the point where I think she must see something more than me in it. On the other hand a colleague of mine is entirely colourblind, for him purple is just a word. For me turquoises and teals really pop. Great models as ever.
Indeed it is subjective, Ed. It’s funny how a colour can bring emotions to the fore. I often muse about what that says about today’s society: all nature around us is in glorious colour while all the works of humankind seem like an old black and white TV. Hmm. Out on the highway near me there’s this new display home that’s all black: walls and roof. Not to mention being ridiculously wasteful of energy in a hot climate, I have to wonder at the mental state of the person who thought black was a good colour to show off their wares. Nobody ever seems to go and look at it! Ah well, building companies do seem to go bankrupt around here…
Turquoises and teals – yes, I can quite see the appeal there.
Very nice work Peter! You again demonstrate your expert application of colour, by having the confidence to present so many nuanced, and different variations, of a challenging colour like purple. That is not easy to do, at all! Some are bold and assertive, others rich, and more elegant. And each purple variation, works differently for each car.
I definitely have great respect for your ability to assess best specific colours, for such a wide variety of cars. And a challenging colour like purple is a great colour and method, to demonstrate this great skill!
Hey thanks Daniel. It’s funny how my mind seems quite different when it comes to colour. To me, purple is no problem, hardly challenging at all! Maybe it comes from growing up in the sixties and seventies when bright colours were all the rage and only grandparents bought black (and had to special-order it, like as not).
In the early seventies Ford Australia offered two purples (both shown above), Holden had some nice oranges, a lovely bright blue and a strange metallic pink, while over at Chrysler it’s the red-orange-yellow portion of the palette that sticks in my memory. And magenta…
There have been times when I have got my colour choice gloriously wrong; thus far I haven’t shown (many of) those. There are photos in my files that I just steer away from showing, repeatedly. Maybe I should show them sometime; you might say they’re not so bad after all!
Very nice – I love PURPLE although I haven’t built many that color. The scale models I own in purple off the top of my head are prebuilt Anniv Vettes, a mid-90s Trans Am promo, an experimental Vette, stuff like that. I would say my favorite colors are yellow, purple and British racing green. Had plenty of yellow and BRG 1:1 scale vehicles, one of each right now in fact, but racking my brain to think if I’ve ever had a purple one…..
Thanks. It’s funny about the disconnect between our favourite colours and what we actually buy. While my favourite colour is nominally green (I say nominally because nowadays I love all colours), my cars have been bronze, gold, and two blues. All secondhand. I only ever had the four cars.
Maybe I should do some more ‘theme colour’ stories.
A purple Trans Am? I can do that.
I’m very partial to the JoHan ’62 Dodge, the body sculpture is interesting. After that I’ve never seen a ’71 Javelin AMX. good work
Yep, the body sculpturing on that ’62 sure is interesting. Maybe it would have done better if it could have come out for ’60? The one thing I find discordant about that Dodge is the hardtop roofline; not that Johan got it wrong, but Exner did! I just can’t figure out the effect he was aiming at. You’ve got thick C-pillars, but a wraparound rear screen with almost something of a ’47 Studebaker vibe. Then there’s that strange trim below the side windows – what’s that all about? Normally I can sharpen up design miscues with colour, lowering, and some larger wheels, but the Dodge has me stumped. Yes, I have a spare kit, and every now and then I get it out and wonder how to ‘fix’ that roof (short of sawing it off completely!).
The Javelin AMX is also a vintage Johan kit.
I can’t say for sure, but my theory about the trim below the side windows is that the window can’t roll down completely so they covered the remainder with that piece.
Yes the wraparound rear window is very obvious when you build a model but not as noticeable in real life. I like everything about these Dodge’s and I have a ’62 Plymouth waiting in my stash.
Those are some great purple cars. Although, I’m straining to see the 1934 Ford pickup as purple. Or blue. It looks brown to me.
Good point though about how some people see some purples as blue, or vice a versa. That’s one thing that I love about my own car’s color – Monaco Blue (Blau). Mostly it’s a dark blue, but in just the right light, it’s nearly as purple as Barney the Dinosaur. It’s lovely how it changes.
The trouble with that Ford is that the clear coat has yellowed, or browned – but then it is fifty years old. Take it from me, it used to be purple.
And yes, some modern colours are amazing in how they seem to change with the light. Metallics, micas, pearls and who knows what else – and yet so often people buy greyscale! The paint technology is there, but rarely offered in lower-priced cars, and seemingly not often bought when it is.
A friend had a current model Miata in Mazda’s lovely Soul Red; while that always looks red, the effect in bright Australian sunshine is startling.
Back when I was young and (more) stupid I owned a purple Panel Van. My then-girlfriend called it the Purple Passion Pit. It was an XA Falcon 351C manual in Wild Violet metallic, factory original and only 3 years old. BTW the 351 was a very rare thing in XA Vans (supposedly not available) and apparently being one of a mere 5 or 7 built. Well, like an idiot I rolled it at high speed while learning how to correct power oversteer, and that spelt finis for this future collectible.
No photos alas of my 3rd-gen Falcon, but here’s a tidy 2nd-gen in that same fantastic purple-astic Wild Violet.
(ps also a big fan of ’62 Dodge)
Funny thing about Ford sales literature from that period, they often seemed contradictory about what was or wasn’t available. Maybe it was offered for a few months then discontinued in the commercials? Maybe the original owner had a contact at Ford who could bend the rules? Certainly someone was determined to have a GT van. From what I recall, most Falcon buyers who wanted a V8 seemed content with a 302, GTs excepted, of course.
Blimey, Tim, can you just imagine what someone would pay for that car today? In fact, if even a front guard and a chassis number survived mouldering in a wreckers ever since, someone’s probably resurrecting it as we speak!
Oh Peter! You’ve really done it now! The ’62 Dodge was my my first car, a hand me down from my Dad. Mine, however was a top of the line Dart 440, four door hardtop in black, 318 c.i./ pushbutton Torqueflite; which I had repainted in…you guessed it, Purple!!
By the way, your Dart is (to my eyes) blue; the Coronet is closer, but the Charger is DEFINITELY Purple! 
Here’s another shot of my blue/purple ’62 for you. My initial reaction is to call it purple, but I can see why you and others would call it blue. Yours looks great.
The color of this kind of reminds me of the color of my car. Technically blue but definitely looks purple under different lighting conditions. Needless to say, I’m particularly fond of this shade of blue on the Dodge.
picture would help…
A pretty good coverage of near red to practically blue, light and dark and many between there, Peter. I did paint an Airfix Marina TC kit in Humbrol 68 Purple, representing a BL ‘Black Tulip’. I went quite well until I got a fingerprint on the roof. Thinking about it, the paint’s had over 50 years of hardening now so maybe I could polish it out. Do you reckon it’s worth trying?
Bernard, I always found the old Humbrol enamels dried and hardened up pretty well. After fifty years I should think even the worst enamels would have hardened!
I am colour blind so to me purple does not exist. What most people call purple looks like a blue. Turquoise and other blue/green shades are also difficult.
Eyesight is truly amazing, Mike. All the more so when you study the mechanics of it (I have a backgound in biology). Then when you add the brain’s perception into the mix – wow! The older I get, the more I realize how much variety there is in how different people perceive things, with seemingly infinite gradations between one person’s calling something ‘A’ and another person’s ‘B’. It must be so hard when people say two things aren’t the same colour, but you can’t see the difference.
Sometimes I think it’s a wonder people can agree about anything!
I’m just the opposite – I often say something is blue, but my wife and daughters insist is purple. My wife has a “purple” jacket that I can’t tell from her blue jacket. Drives me nuts.
In my opinion, not many cars look good in purple, but your Subaru XT looks better in that color than in any other color I’ve seen (though really it looks blue to me… sorry).
Back in 2018 when we bought our Kia Sedona (Carnival), I looked up Kia websites in various countries to see how the same model varied around the globe. I remember several countries offered Sedonas/Carnivals in purple… I can’t remember just where in the world purple turned up, but South Africa was definitely one of them. The sight of a conservatively-styled minivan in bright purple was a bit glaring. I often wondered just how many customers chose that color where it was available.
Hey Eric, I’m glad you like the Subaru. There are plenty in mundane colours (on the net, not on the road – well, not around here). So many seem to be white, silver or red. Just because a car has outrageous styling doesn’t mean it can’t be an interesting colour. I seem to recall a burgundy/plum colour, so I just cranked it more in the purple direction.
Some things are best left firmly in the imagination however – like purple Carnivals.
Hmm. I dunno.
You see, there were many purple cars around when I were a lad, and the thing is, they all seemed to be piloted by what we might call the the genetically recalcitrant, who themselves were purple in the face from yelling at you (if not from their knuckles grazing on the pavement as they drove past). That is, the colour seemed to attract the bogan hoon crowd (you know, not so much low-brow as low-of-brow types). And this has biased me against purple ever since. It’s also possible I may be overstating things, but I digress.
Time has softened me, possibly not in a good way, but regardless, I’ll attach this Ford Fairmont wagon currently that’s up for grabs. I’ve got to admit, it’s very sweet indeed.
I remember a different demographic, of Southern European gentlemen who drove purple Valiants, more image than reality though, truth was, Italians drove Valiants of any color.
Ah yes, just so! I’d quite forgotten the Purple North, with small drivers below the Valiant dash paying no particular attention to things such as getting their speed to as high as 40, or which side of Sydney Road was which for forward progress.
(Now, alas, the purple is only in the expensive hair, and the cars are Mercedes and Teslas, driven righteously by the types who can afford the old houses there).
I don’t suppose that XA wagon was a Ballarat car? My uncle had one like that. He was more the medium-brow type. No nonsense, ultra-friendly, modest, but with surprising depths. I remember thinking at the time it was a rather outrageous colour choice for him. Traded on a red Skyline in ’78.
Though yes, once purple cars hit the secondhand market, they did seem to be snapped up by the sort you mention.
Don’t know Pete, but it is for auction in Bayswater, so who knows? Along with more than 40 other local cars restored to remarkable standards, all belonging to one wealthy enthusiast. Look up Burns and Co auctions, it’s all pretty eye-bulging.
Late to the party here, but purple cars are pretty popular around these parts due to our NFL football team’s main color. The Baltimore Ravens https://www.baltimoreravens.com/
Needless to say, a Plum Crazy Challenger is a pretty popular car around here.
I’m surprised there isn’t one in your collection, Peter, as this color was not just on modern Challengers, but the classic ones too.
That said, we can call your Charger “close enough”.
Plenty of seventies Challengers Rick (yellow, green, orange…), and plenty of Plum Crazy Mopars, just haven’t put the two together.