New Performance — Paint and Livery

The reference sheet for the paint. Both machines in this project wear the Ford New Performance scheme of 1963–64 — blue bodywork against a light grey on the wings, wheels and grille — so the colours are recorded once, here, and everything else refers back to this page.

There are two sets of values below, and they are not interchangeable. One is the period reference derived from RAL chips; the other is what a well-known restored machine actually looks like today. Both are useful, for different jobs.

Period reference — RAL-derived

The conservative pair, for ordering paint against a chip.

Fordson Empire Blue — HEX #004F7C, RGB 0, 79, 124. Based on RAL 5010 (Gentian Blue), the most widely accepted modern match for the deep, rich blue used on the New Performance Super Major and Super Dexta.

Fordson New Performance Grey — HEX #C6C6C6, RGB 198, 198, 198. Matches RAL 7035 (Light Grey) — the stark, contrasting grey used on the wings, wheels and grille of the 1963–64 machines.

As restored — 565 GFU

Taken from reference photographs of the restored 565 GFU machine. Fresh paint in daylight reads considerably brighter and warmer than the RAL pair above.

Fordson New Performance Blue — HEX #1E75BE, RGB 30, 117, 190. The bright, rich sky blue seen on 565 GFU as restored.

Fordson Fog Grey — HEX #D7D8D3, RGB 215, 216, 211, given as a match to RAL 7115. A warm, slightly beige off-white rather than a true neutral grey, used on the wheel centres and fenders.

Which pair to use

• Ordering paint: start from the RAL pair. A chip is a physical, repeatable standard; a photograph is not.
• Judging a finished machine, or matching to surviving original paint: the 565 GFU values are the better guide to how the scheme actually reads in daylight.
• Whichever you pick, stay in one pair per machine. The bright blue against the colder RAL 7035 grey, or the deep blue against the warm Fog Grey, will both look slightly wrong in a way that is hard to name and impossible to unsee.

Where each colour goes

• Blue: main body, bonnet sides on the Super Major-based machines, transmission and axle castings, fuel tank.
• Grey: wings, wheel centres and rims, grille and grille surround — the contrast that identifies a New Performance machine at fifty yards.

Notes and caveats

• All four values are modern equivalents, not original Ford paint codes. Original 1960s paint has no exact modern chip, and any surviving original finish will have faded and yellowed away from it.
• A screen swatch is a guide only, and a photographed colour carries whatever the light, the camera and the screen did to it. Confirm against a physical chip, then spray a test panel, before committing to a full machine.
• The Super Dexta bonnet and grille is where the scheme is most visible and most often got wrong — the paint split line matters as much as the colours themselves.
• The County is built on a Super Major skid unit of the same period, so the same range colours apply to it. County’s own additions — front axle housings, side propshaft guards — get matched against whatever original finish survives on the machine rather than assumed.