New Member from WA State, USA

[David Welsford]

New owner of a rolling 1960 Hillman Minx IIIa (or IIIb?) 4-door saloon. Body in excellent condition, interior good and original, needs clutch hydraulics and various brake hydraulics refreshed, but otherwise a starting and smooth idling 1500cc stock engine awaits to be shifted and off and running.

First time Rootes owner but this Minx is the latest in a long line of automotive restorations and interests. Couldn’t avoid the charm that these Minxes have and glad there are several spares available for parts worldwide.

Visited the link on Chassis code interpretation listed elsewhere in the Forum. Fantastic. My chassis number B1019220 puts me as the #19220 chassis for the 1960s series, 1960 year and yes, a Minx. The suffix codes of H and LSX, give me a high-compression engine, LHD export model, Saloon and "non-standard", whatever that means…

Curious if anyone knows where the paint code may have been on the Hillmans; there is another screwed/painted strip tag on the bonnet lock panel, but the code looks pretty long. If anyone can guide me, that’d be great.

Thank you – will advise of the (long) process as I get it road worthy.

David

[Mark and Nancy Petri]

Welcome aboard… and good luck with your project.
Hopefully someone more knowledgeable will chime in with the info that you seek.

[impbarn]

Welcome, David.

It will be great to see another Minx going. I’m always thrilled to hear of the more rare Rootes. The Minx does have a great look doesn’t it!

The Rootes color codes are documented here: https://www.teae.org/cars/paint-color-codes/
The Berger codes are a more modern equivalent. It is a starting point for cross-reference. Berger doesn’t have automotive paints on their website any longer, but at one time they were somewhat of a standard for cross reference. I wish I had the whole list in Munsel numbers…

Here’s a scanned picture of some paint chips for reference.
http://vintagebritishcables.com/Hillman-Humber-Singer-Sunbeam-Paint-Chips.php

Best Regards,

[David Welsford]

Eric, thank you for the list and your reply.

Using this list and cross-referencing with a 1960 sales brochure for mine (which is a Series IIIb by birthdate but has some trivial IIIc items on it such as the plastic access covers for oiling the door latches….) I can estimate that I have "Regency Beige" over "Caramel" with an optional Scarlet Red interior.

However my question still is where on the car did Rootes place the single/double digit codes for the paint? If it was on a paper decal (like some of the Aussie Rootes sites show), then it may be missing due to age. I figured it might have been stamped somewhere but haven’t come across it.

Thanks everyone.

David

[impbarn]

I haven’t seen this kind of label on any of my cars… see image link

This is what we have on Sunbeams…. but I don’t know if all the production lines did it the same:

The specific Hillman experts are the Brotherhood of the 3 Spires.

The Hillman plates look more like this and don’t have a place for color.

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