Producing an automobile mostly comes down to physics and engineering, but, like chrome, paint mostly comes down to chemistry.
During the rapid development of the motorcar in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the complex chemical compounds and sophisticated techniques employed by today’s carmakers simply didn’t exist. Some early cars were hand-painted. Like, with a brush. Even as automotive production grew, paint with a varnish-like composition was the most common finish, applied in multiple layers with sanding in between, then polished for shine. Applying it was a very lengthy process, and it was slow to dry. For Ford’s assembly-line–built Model T, paint was the slowest part of the production process and therefore a significant...
