(G) Uno red paint colour

Hello, I'm new here, great forum, looks fun :-)

Does anyone know if there's REALLY a difference between Rosso Corsa 140, and Rosso 854/F?

Yes, I have a red Uno 60, 1987, Rosso 854/F.
A friend has an Uno 45 5-dr, 1989 (Mk1), Rosso Corsa 140.
I want to get the back doors off and put them on mine.

Same friend also has an Uno 45 3-dr parts car, 1986, Rosso Corsa 140.
And also an Uno 70SL 5-dr, 1988, Rosso Corsa 140 that I resprayed!

The new Rosso Corsa 140 paint was very RED compared with the old paint, though the old paint polished up quite red. In other words, it didn't really match very well even when it should have!

As for the other two cars, they're an orangey-brown colour just like mine. I've polished mine up and it seems to look the same as how the 70SL looked. Next I need to try and polish up those 45 doors to see if they look the same.

But does anyone know if I'm wasting my time?
(Apart from the obvious answers!)

Thanks!
-Alex


'88 Uno Turbo i.e.
'87 Uno 60
'88 Bertone X1/9
'81 X1/9 1500
'92 Alfa Romeo 164 3.0V6
'03 Suzuki SJ50QT (!)

I'll look this up and get back to you.

Steve...

2001 Brava 1.6 HSX 100, 1994 Uno 1.1 ieS.

Hmmm, I have a 1986 Uno 3 door in bright red, and going by a factory sticker on the hatch it just said 'Rosso'. I didn't know there were more than one type of 'Rosso' red! I think I need to check my chassis plate and find out the exact colour on my car.

The problem with your old doors not matching up very well with the new paint is probably down to the older paint oxidising. Red is one of the worst colours for this, and even fairly new red coloured cars can oxidise badly. I've seen Mk3 Golfs, Audi's and even BMW's with very badly oxidised red paintwork.

As my Uno's paintwork is 18 years old it had also suffered oxidising. In fact, it was almost a matt orangey red rather than a nice shiny red! T-Cut helped a bit, but wasn't really strong enough to get rid of the oxidised top layer of paint.

I did manage to get some good results by using rubbing compound first, then using T-cut followed by a good coat of polish. That brought the paintwork up to a very nice glossy red again, whereas before it was like yours in being more orangey in colour. I've only done the bonnet so far, so I ought to get round to finishing off the rest of the car.

So I'd suggest trying rubbing compound first and then T-Cutting and polishing the paintwork on the old doors. If it still doesn't come up with a good match to the new paintwork it might simply be that the paint has faded due to exposure to sunlight. Not much you can do other than respray them or simply live with it!

Yeah... really my question is not "what to do with the oxidised paint to make it match new paint", my question is more a case of "were these two different reds ever the same colour?"

The matching-with-old-paint problems will come if I have to respray the two red doors, if they were a different red to start with. :-)

-Alex


'88 Uno Turbo i.e.
'87 Uno 60
'88 Bertone X1/9
'81 X1/9 1500
'92 Alfa Romeo 164 3.0V6
'03 Suzuki SJ50QT (!)