Ah! And I had so much fun bragging to my pals in their Porsches that Aston Martins were all hand-painted by Englishmen toiling away in spary booths for hours on end to laboriously achieve perfection...

http://www.abb.com/cawp/seitp202/e45...3004e8c6a.aspx

 

Well, at least mine was painted by hand, by real honest-to-goodness Englishmen...

 

I would have to say they did a good job, if they were responsible for the ceramic grey paint on the new DB9 at my local dealership. I haven't ever seen paint that looked so deep. I am sure much of it has to do with the metal flake in that paint, but man is it amazing to behold!

 

So this is a recent change so our cars prior to model year 2013 were done the old fashion way... My DB9 pwas painted by hand, by a team of English blokes. They did a good job the color is deep and spieshecker is a good quality product.

 

The ceramic grey at the dealer was unlike any other paint I have ever seen in my life. That color has officialy become my dream color.

 

^^^ Take a pic and post it lets have a look....my fav gray is the one that comes on lambos, a very deep gray.

 

I've still not seen a photo that does the ceramic grey justice but as soon as I saw it in the flesh on a DBS at Works Dealership in May, when I visited NP for the Bonhams Sale, it instantly became my favourite too

It varies between very dark grey/graphite and a more silvery hue, depending upon the light, a little like Quantum Silver (previously my favourite Aston grey) but slightly darker. However the fleck, which is colourless, only really shows when you get very close - it almost gives the look of crushed glass (I know that might not sound good but trust me, it looks good !)

In fact I liked it so much I've ordered my V12VR in it. By complete co-incidence, they appear to have done the pre-prod LHD model that did the European delaership tour in ceramic grey too, unless they were just copying me ! These pics aren't bad, but as I say, appears impossible to do it justice in a photo

https://www.dropbox.com/s/g6um6up43vgqhze/DSC04118.JPG
https://www.dropbox.com/s/a6vwtem55t2udmw/DSC04119.JPG
https://www.dropbox.com/s/wd6kavhzpe1bwwx/DSC04113.JPG

Incidentally, it was initially only available on one of the DBS special editions but my request for V12VR in mid July along with another customer's for new Vanquish at the same time were the first time it was made available on anything else - bearing in mind the factory's initial response to my request, it actually isn't that ridiculous a notion that they 'copied me' for the LHD demo model. I understand one or two more cars (DB9 & Vanquish) have since been requested in CG.

 

^^^ That's a nice color but IMO the lambo gray is far and away the best gray...I dunno the name of the color but it's like almost a deep gray don't think it has metal flake, looks like a nice deep clay kinda gray.

 

I thought just about everyone painted by robot these days.
Except for RR and Bugatti, who else paints by hand?

 

RR = BMW = big process $$$ and machines = paint by robot

Bugatti = VW = bigger process $$$$ and more machines = paint by robot

Am I missing something here? tend to want to implement more automation in the assembly process to make things more procise, repeatable, and efficient.

Aston = ford, then privately owned = keeping to tradtion so less oversight and automation = hand painted by blokes who were out having pints the night before

 

Morgan paints by hand.

About Aston, my understanding was that there was some automated painting introduced around 2009-ish -- does anyone know if that's true and if so, what it was?

 

Gaydon use 2 robots. One is for the welding of the chassis. The other was for the paint priming process, which it would appear is what is now being updated to full robotic painting

 

I think you mean 'JamesBonder', which is not for welding, but for precise application of the bonding bead on various chassis panels/parts.

 

Quite right of course ! Not literally welding, as of course it's not a welded chassis ...it's a bonded one !

I'm going to blame it on being upset that now Sunir's pointed out what is 'the best gray', I've obviously made a mistake with my order :-)