The surprising story of car paint
edconway.substack.com
The story of car paint is the story of human achievement in microcosm, says Ed Conway. The tale begins, inevitably, with Henry Ford. One of the most famous things “the godfather of mass production” said about his Model T was that the customer could have “any colour he wants, so long as it’s black”. There was a reason for that.
Before the Model T, cars came in “all sorts of fantabulous colours” – the same bright coatings as horse-drawn carriages. But the paints would fade rapidly and getting the paint job redone would take weeks – considerably more time, in fact, than it took to actually make the car. This was one of the “critical nuts for Ford to crack” if he was going to master mass production. To this day, the paint job remains the most energy- and carbon-intensive process in car production.
To solve his problem, Ford commissioned chemists to work on paint formulas. The result was a harder-wearing paint, but as this contained asphalt, it was next to impossible to turn it into any other colour than black. So, black it was.
Despite reducing the painting and drying time from weeks to days, the paint problem remained the biggest hindrance to mass production well into the 1920s. Later advances in paint chemistry, fuelled by competition between rival car giants, meant that cars would roll off the production line a few hours after being painted, and in a range of colours.
One key point here is the influence of the chemicals industry on modern society. We’re used to hearing much about the mechanical engineering that went into steam locomotives and internal combustion engines, but much less about the chemical engineering that makes modern production lines possible. Car paint is, indeed, an essential component in preventing corrosion and disintegration.
Many tiny leaps for man
The story of incremental but ever-increasing improvements and efficiency is also a key theme. Whether we look at the drying time of paint, computing power or the cost of batteries, we see that over time humans get better and better at making things, which tends to bring down the time it takes us to make things and the cost of doing so. The biggest gains happen at the start of the process, but they keep coming, and the result is not just gains in efficiency, but a process that is ever cleaner and less polluting too. This might explain why we have become disappointed by lack of progress in recent years. “Humankind is still making extraordinary technological leaps, but many of them are happening below the radar.”