Is chrome supposed to be painted?

[demichae]

So on the far right and left of my dash the prior owner painted the bottom portion of the chrome white, to match his repaint of the blue exterior from blue to white.  I was at Monterey car week and all of the pagodas I saw were from 67 or later and the chrome was not painted. But I’ve also found photos of original 1964 pagodas where the chrome is painted.  Mine clearly was painted blue to match the exterior. Can anyone answer whether a 64 pagoda should have the chrome section painted or not?

[BobH]

Hello, Have a look at this post, it seems to depend on the chassis number when the change from painted to chrome took place in 1964

https://www.sl113.org/forums/index.php?topic=2133.25

Have a look through Pagoda Notes, these also document the changes through the years

https://www.sl113.org/forums/index.php?topic=16123.msg111487#msg111487

[lreppond]

Here’s a copy of a dash photograph from a sales brochure from 1963.  Clearly the piece is painted with the louvers and small window vent in chrome as well as the top section.  Fascinating little discovery.  I never realized this. 

[lagolag]

The very early cars had two separate vents  the small one was fitted directly into the painted dash and the big one includes the mesh that goes across the dash, later the two parts became one but when it happend I don’t know.

[rwmastel]

I've not seen this before.  That looks great!  They should have kept it that way.   

[Mike Hughes]

I've not seen this before.  That looks great!  They should have kept it that way.   

I could surmise that the original intent was to paint the flat area of the vent to match painted area of the dash, which might have been somewhat labor intensive.  Eventually, the bean counters may have stepped in to eliminate that operation as a production efficiency and cost saving measure.

[Jonny B]

Also a word of caution about gauging originality from the sales brochures. A number of times the photos are from prototypes and may not be indicative of what actually made it to production.

[ctaylor738]

On "early" cars, the area around the vent was painted body color.  My car. 000133 is that way.  There does not seem to be anything in the "change logs" as to when this happened.

Cheers,

CT

[ctaylor738]

The latest picture that I have of early cars is of 002038, and that car has painted panels around the vents.

CT

[BobH]

The earliest VIN i've seen where the vents are chrome is 2058, so the change from painted to chrome seems to have happened in January 64