'63 Fullsize - color of cowl and firewall?

Gents -

Tonight I pulled the windshield out of my Wildcat, and I'm now thoroughly confused as to paint colors. My firewall is blacK (and has wax pencil markings so I know that to be original), my body is white (respray of original color over original finish), and the cowl (underneath the cowl panel itself) is both colors.

To the unlearned (that would be me ), it looks like the black paint from the firewall should extend up over the cowl and to the dash. The primer color exposed leads me to believe the dash was painted at the same time as the firewall in one shot. However, part of my cowl is now white, with what looks like overspray from the repaint.

Can anyone tell me which it should be? I'm going to be repainting some of the black under the hood and then changing the main body color of the car, and I would like to paint this area as the factory would have done.

Thanks in advance.

James, if it's like Oldsmobile (and Buick and Pontiac were built on some of the same assembly lines as Olds) it will be an assembly plant thing. Lansing, Flint and Pontiac assembly probably did paint the cowl body color whereas some of the other plants may have sprayed it black. I've also seen many Olds of that era with the complete firewall painted body color. The California plants seem to have more discrepancies than the others.

Since you know the car has had paint work, I'd say the cowling was originally black same as firewall and the white is overspray that got thru the cowl vent grilles.

The question I'd have is "Is the black shiny (as in normal "body color" for a black car) or is it more satiny (as in the GM black primer) in nature?" Although there were Assembly Instructions of which color went where, when "the paint flew", it all depended upon WHO was doing the painting . . . such that different shifts of the same plant could produce different paint patterns on similar vehicles (in the non-outside finish color areas). Same with the spray-on undercoat materials, too. Although each car is allotted a certain volume of paint, IF the needed paint was in short supply, "online course corrections" CAN be possible to keep the line running as such (in non-critical areas of the vehicle).

Just some thoughts,

NTX5467