Greetings! And a few questions to start.

[pwd72s]

Gentleman...I hope this doesn't come off as braggin', because it's just fact. I probably have the most UN restored early 911S of those who post here. Never dinged, still original paint, etc. Underneath and engine surrounds are black in my '72...the factory changed these areas to body color in '73...the trunk was done in body color, in an overspray look...the pic here is of the area around my smugglers box, but this should give you a clue. Under the trunk and engine lids is body color...and my '72 shift lever is black, tho fading memory says the lever on my 1970 T may have been chrome. The trunk "overspray" look:

[roblav]

My '70S, with a later number, has body color under the trunk, black in the engine compartment, and black floor.

[bobmagyar]

Thanks for all of the replies. You have been a big help in letting me make the correct decision for my car.

Luggage compartment:

It looks as though we have some trend here however not entirely conclusive.

There are a number of 1970 cars that have black over body colour in the luggage compartments however some that are body colour only. I expected that the cars built early in the 1970 production run would have black and then a change to body colour only later in the run. Nicks car at #634 is black. Michael’s #735 car is body colour. Roblav’s later car is black too. It appears Porsche may have changed their process in that period.

I wonder how John’s, Shawn’s car’s numbers and colours match this trend?
Although it conflicts with Paul’s colours…. Hmmm.


The engine compartment:

Black over body up until sometime in the 1972 cars.


Inside of floor pan:

Black over body colour.

[roblav]

I was thinking that it also might make a difference whether the car was built by Porsche or Karmann, but my '70S has that oversprayed body color look under the front trunk - like the green picture above by PWD. My car is Burgundy, but that oversprayed look makes it look pinkish/purple under the trunk - yuk. My floors are original and black. The rear deck lid hinges on SWB cars (at least through early 1967 - the 901/05 engine) are black and body color from '68 on. I recall reading that Porsche and Karmann used two different undercoating methods.

[GreenT]

So Bob, I think what you're learning here is that it depended on who was operating the gun that day and how close it was to quitting time when your car came down the line -

Mine is #1267 and has the pebbly PVC finish uniformly in the engine area. It has a mix of body color and black there as seen below. The trunk has PVC only in the very front, under the toolkit and washer bottle, around there, and fades to a mist of it by the battery boxes. All was painted body color in the trunk, but as PWD says above, just a fog of it by the time you reach the smugglers box. Mine is also an unmolested example, and yet he and I have different finishes inside the smugglers box and on the inside the lid as well, so go figure. I guess you'd need to ask a PCA concours judge to get the final answer, which looks like "depends" - - -

[Bobboloo]

71'S Targa. Overspray body color in trunk. Black satin over body color in engine bay. Decklid and hood hinges in body color.

When we say overspray in the trunk it means you see undercoat showing because they really didn't attempt to paint the trunk body color because it was covered by carpet. Some of the 2.2 T's have lid hinges in black because that's how they did them at the Karmann factory. Since all 2.2 E and S cars were assembled at Porsche they had body color hinges. So a T could be either way depending on which plant it was built at. Porsche used to paint the hinges in black but stopped somewhere around 68' or 69' somehow I guess Karmann didn't get the "memo".