How did Lancia paint their cars ??

[neil]

I am puzzled !!
My car was repainted in 1993 - from red to blue. I want to restore it to its' original colour. I have stripped 90 % of the paint off now - back to bare metal and then cleaned to sparkling steel (and aluminium). Under the blue coat (not very well done) there is filler and undercoat then into the red, then the very last layer of anything is silver (incidentally when we stripped my brothers S3 bodyshell the very last layer was also silver) - no problem so far. The insides of the doors and door pillars are red (no blue) - but the engine bay is black, and under the black it is silver then metal - no red ?
All pictures I have seen show the engine bay to be the same colour as the body. All pictures I have seen of the factory production process show the bodies being dipped (presumably primer). I imagine the primed body was then spray painted to the customers wishes and then fitted out.

So the questions for me is:
Was my car originally silver or red?
If it was red why was the engine bay silver or black (never red)?
What colour was this primer, silver?

I have no record of the original colour (other than the last owner saying he had it repainted from red to blue) - the registration docs do not detail the colour either, and the little label in the glove box that details the colour has long since gone.

Does anyone have any knowledge of the process that might shed some light on this ? Sorry if this seems a bit pedantic but such is the curse of enthusiasm !

[alan]

i would look under the carpets or rubber mats for instance in the area of the sills or remove some trim like the
small bins in the footwell and see what's behind them unlikely that a repaint would be that extensive. all fulvias seem to have been repainted red at some time (well most!) so there's every chance that it wasn't red originally also doors might not be original to the car

[alan]

incidentally some cars had the paint label on the underside of the bootlid rather than in the glovebox

[neil]

I have now come to the conclusion that it was definately metallic silver. I have unearthed some good evidence on the B-pillers.One consolation is that with the removal of three re-spreys worth of filler and paint the car should be significantly lighter !