Central Valley Classic Cars

What color is this car? Emerald, Sherwood, British Racing Green, Aquamarine, Sapphire? Is it a metallic paint job or a pearl? Is that color change just a trick of the mind?

Wishful Thinking?

I’m still hoping to have the car painted sooner rather than later. The original plan was to have it painted last, as the final step in restoration. This still might make the most sense, but it’s just so frustrating to work on the car and look at it and think… man, this car looks so bad but could look sooo good.

The ideal is to go with the factory original color. It’s a deep green (not unlike the lower-mid-range variants of British Racing Green but…) with a metallic sparkle and a soft blue undertone that tricks the eye as the viewer changes vantage angle. The color change is not a chameleon trick where different surroundings bring out different shades, as I first thought – it will do it under gray skies or blue, next to evergreens or concrete. And it’s not something you can see happening – you can’t turn your head or slide around the car and see the transition. But from some angles, the car looks green, while from others you’d swear it was blue.

Pearl vs. Metallic

Everyone who knows car paint takes one look at the car and says “it’s a pearl.” One Jaguar expert I queried over the phone said he knew the color, that it was a pearl, not a metallic, and that I could confirm by checking the manufacture’s tag inside the driver side door sill.

So, what color did this car roll out of the factory with? The factory tag says the car emerged from Coventry in May of 1997 in HGG. So, according to the Jaguar exterior paint charts, HGG is Emerald Green Metallic. But also according to said chart, HGG wasn’t an XK8 color until 1998. The chart also lists a Sherwood Green Pearl in my year, but the color code (HFR) doesn’t match. And there’s Jaguar Racing Green Pearl, which sounds promising, but neither color code (HGZ) nor year (2002-) line up.

Had the car been repainted to a pearl? And how do I explain the impossible year/color combination?

Answers Begin to Crystalize

I asked Mike at Hills Motors about this HGG on a 1997 when not available until 1998 problem. He said “clerical limitation” – they probably started using HGG a couple months before the 97/98 cut-over, but, when the chart got populated, 1998 got picked. He said he’s seen this with parts before.

It also seems others have identified HGG as a metallic green with a blue “flop” or “flip.”

The accumulating clues point to the car being in its factory color of HGG: Emerald Metallic, which is, indeed, a dark green color with a subtle blue undertone. Now, I just have to figure out how to have the work I’d like to have done come in within the budget.