As an automotive hobbyist, choosing a color for your custom build is no easy task. Do you go with a historically accurate original color for a numbers-matching resto? Maybe for a wild one-off hue to accentuate your custom fabrication skills? Or simply the deepest, darkest black you can find to showcase the countless hours of flawless craftsmanship you’ve invested?
Inspiration can come in many forms, from history to fashion to the color of your lovers eyes. Of course, sometimes there’s no substitute for simply browsing through color chips until the right shade hits you. But what if you want to make a more informed decision? What if there was a way to browse existing colors and immediately see the actual color on a vehicle?
That was the thinking when some senior leaders at the Porsche Club of America (PCA) came up with Rennbow project back in 2019. As Rob Sass, Editor in Chief of PCA’s award-winning Panorama magazine explained, “a bunch of us were talking about all the great colors and wondered if there was a way to catalog those as a resource for club members.”
Once Porsche granted formal approval, the project proceeded under the name Rennbow, a mashup of the words “Renn” (German for race) and “rainbow.” With help from the carmaker’s in-house archives, PCA volunteers got to work cataloging nearly 600 factory colors reaching back to 1948.
Launched in 2020 as a free website, Rennbow.org allows anyone to search for original Porsche paint options by several criteria. You can browse major color families – reds, blues, greens, etc – or enter a specific name. Entering a year and model gets you a list of standard production colors. And if you seem to remember a color called “Etna” but you can remember the rest, you can always start searching by name. If rarity is your priority, there’s even a ranking factor for that.
Once you land on a color and click in, you’ll discover additional information. Some colors have alternate names, for instance. Colors that possess numerous paint codes under a single name are also not uncommon. Other details include the years and models on which the factory officially offered the listed color.
Of course seeing a color swatch on a screen is one thing. But how does it look on an actual car. Sourcing pictures from the club’s members including classified ads, most results include images of vehicles painted in the exact shade. These are valuable at showing how light and shadows play with different hues. And of course there’s a tab for vehicles currently listed for sale through the club in your chosen color. An added resource is the Instagram feed that pulls colors from hashtags on the club feed.
“Porsche has always used color as a powerful design tool,” Sass tells us, “and the Rennbow tool really shows it. It’s a great way to explore a lot of the former Paint To Sample colors too.”
As companies like Eastwood make it easier to unlock the magic of matching OE paint colors, resources like Rennbow are invaluable. Even if you’re not a Porsche purist, the site can be a great way to get inspired.
