Jensen Healey Colours

By Richard Calver

There are certainly lots of colours on the different model Jensens. The picture is complicated somewhat by the fact that Jensens also used different suppliers for some of the paints. Some of those suppliers no longer make the paints any more, so you may have to mix and match.

There are not so many colours on the Healeys, most of which were painted according to the stock options. The brochures with the samples in them are a cheap and a fairly good guide. If you're going back to the original paint colour, you're better off stripping your car carefully and having an unbleached sample of the old paint matched by a professional shop, unless of course you know the paint code number and can still get it from the source.

I do not actually have all the codes with me, but I have a few which are relevant to Healeys. These are:

Mustard -
Red -	GIP LSC 24213,
	ICI M078 9039,
	ICI M030 9039
Malaga Blue -
	GIP LSC 30132
Yellow -
	GIP LSC 30162, Belco 9593
Oakland Green -
	ICI M030 3133
Tangerine -
	ICI M078 8483
Black -
	ACR 5030
Pine Green -
	GIP 31099/M
Silver Grey -
	GIP 26771/M
Sebring Silver -
	GIP 26771/M
(same number - funny about that!)

Some Healeys were painted in cellulose and some in baked enamel. For purists, the job cards sometimes indicate which cars got what treatment, but they are not always specific. The variance in paint codes for some colours may be a result of that difference.

Mustard is a common colour on Healeys and less common on Interceptors. It's hard to describe, a kind of greyish greenish yellow, definitely not the eye-grabbing shade most people would go for these days. The English association of mustard with "Keens" and "keen as" or "hot as" gets lost in the trans-Atlantic crossing, I think.