grin Thought it was that vintage.
Too bad you weren’t able to speak with the owner of the trailered 'bee to find out if it was the same car. Neat, though, you at least saw it or its modified twin.
Have to agree,some of the two tone paint jobs were great,one of my favorite cars was a purple 57 Chevy,with SS mags.
I liked the Orange Bees,they had decent performance with about any big block and had sort of(for the day)organic look.
Thanks jtsanders but I was in love at the time and those memories are forever.
My friends used to call that color “statutory grape”. You won’t see many of those on Mount Oread @JayHawkRoy.
A friend from college that was a few years older returned to campus with a Plum Crazy Challenger, purchased with his earnings from his first job. As I recall, it had the 318 engine. Not a hot car, but pretty nice for a 22 year old, and he was crazy about it.
jtsanders Two tone cars have to be sprayed twice. That costs twice as much as spraying the body one, or dipping it once. Actually, it probably costs more than twice as much since the first coat has to dry before it can be taped and the second coat applied.
Kawasaki didn’t seem to have any problems manufacturing my two tone motorcycle. Maybe two tone cars simply went out of style. Not enough people voted for two tone cars with their wallets.
I think modern cars aren’t sprayed or dipped, they are dusted with a dry powder paint and the powder covered body is run through an oven to fuse the paint. This eliminates the evaporation of paint solvents and makes the EPA happy.
Yes, it’s a Ninja 300, because after owning all kinds of motorcycles, I finally figured out that getting 70+ mpg does me a whole lot more good than being able to double the speed limit.
Nostalgia is nice, but I can tell you that my brother had the misfortune to own a 1970 Barracuda (chosen by his wife, not by him) that was a complete dog. As delivered from the factory, it sported a paint job that looked like it had been applied with a broom, and both the interior panels and many body panels were poorly-aligned.
Many of the optional accessories were–literally–hanging on by just a few threads of the attachment bolts, due to failure to do a proper installation at the factory. Obviously, the pre-delivery inspection at the dealership also sucked. (The dealership closed about 2 years later…)
I know that it had an optional V-8, rather than the 318, but it was not really powerful and the gas mileage was abysmal. The rear seat was useable only by small children, and the front seats were uncomfortable for anyone.
When the car was ~13 months old, the A/C compressor clutch grenaded.
All-in-all, that car–which was mechanically identical to the Challenger and which came from the same factory as the Challenger–had the worst assembly quality that I ever saw on a car.
Had an ancestor that hated purple because that was the color used for Lincolns funeral, ancestor was probably an abolitionist quaker.
I think the 318 was much like the 305 that GM used about the same time. We had a 305 Chevelle Malibu and acceleration was acceptable, bit nothing special. Nothing like my Mom’s 1964 Series 62 Cadillac. That was a monster.
@B.L.E. If I’m not mistaken, a lot of the black on that good looking Ninja is frame work, separate pieces of tupperware, or decals. Most of the green plastic is painted prior to assembly and hung on as the bike is built. It’s also just a bit smaller than the average two-toned car.
Believe me, masking and shooting the second color on a car is very labor intensive. The cost of many modern paints is prohibitive too. Enough to do the three stage door refinishing on my Buick Lucerne project is right at $400 wholesale, and that’s not including the clear coat which the supplier assumes (correctly) I already have in stock.
I read something about someone buying 6 quarts of Chrysler B5 Blue and the paint cost was 750 bucks. That’s before you even get into things that also go through the gun such as reducer, hardener, Fish Eye Eliminator, and so on.
Imagine facing the tab on the quart of orange paint that Jesse James used on a motorcycle of his some years ago at 4 grand a quart.
Apparently the tint was due to the use of some oddball insect only found in the Eastern hemisphere or something like that.
They did not state how many bugs per quart were needed.
Speaking of finding our old cars, I noticed in Hemmings there was a 61 Morris in pale yellow with a black interior for sale in California. I thought I had the only yellow one with a black interior that I did myself. Mine was a 60 though and I don’t see how it ever would have made it to California. Maybe someone copied me-wouldn’t be the first time. Still I’d like to see a pic of it. Definately not a factory color or interior that I know of.
Mary Kay cosmetics cars always looked rather bilious painted Pepto Bismal pink. Decidedly a very visual marketing ploy but still an ugly shade. (And I say that despite pure pink being my favorite color.)
There was a lady here who lived on the outskirts of town and was a Mary Kay rep in a big way for many years. She drove those Pepto pink cars all the time and even worse, her mailbox and the doors and window trim on her home was in the same shade.
Beautiful brick home on an acreage but the pink just ruined it.
I also had a couple of Morris Minors; one light green '59 and the other a black '60. The black one had a huge, roof size yellow daisy painted on top of it. It wasn’t put there by me but I wasn’t about to take it off. They ran fairly well for an engine about the size of something that would look at home on a lawn tractor. I gave 75 bucks for both of them and got a hulk parts car to boot.
Yellow daisy car roof topper…that must have cost some raucus comments from the friendly peanut gallery! Puts me in mind of a brief ditty I know…“Pink elephants on the ceiling, Pink elephants on the wall, There’s a lavendar alligator running around the hall.” Seems to fit with the theme of cars in vibrant colors.
The Morris did get a few good natured comments from some friends of mine. Like me to some extent, some of them are hairy and comparatively crude biker types so tact is often not high on the list of social graces… 
Just think of it as flower power!
Well, due to my looks in the past (and to some extent now) I’ve been called everything in the book from hippie to druggie to a twin of George Carlin and even Jesus Christ at times.
The yellow daisy on the roof of the Morris just kind of cements the erroneous opinion that I was a hippie even though I never, ever participated in the drug lifestyle even in spite of some of it being pushed on me.
Anyone tries to goad me into anything I always go the other direction; even on plain cigarettes.
I’ve always thought of myself as the salmon who gets halfway up the river and decides all the others are fools heading upstream to their certain doom in a shallow pool or a bear’s mouth so I turn around and take my chances downstream…
No salmon colored paint for you then. 