There are several layers of paint. The whole car was (poorly) painted light blue. Below that in certain areas like the fenders and rear end is a dark purplish blue. The gray that is peeking through everywhere is the factory paint, which is Zenith Blue, color code L639, hex code #9eafba, RGB 158-175-186, and CMYK 15-6-0-27 (thanks to cricketseed.com – The Great Big Sortable Table of Volkswagen Beetle Colors 1949-1979).

There are various levels of surface rust around. From what I was told, this was a Texas car and has the expected sunburn on the horizontal surfaces. The first wash was an exfoliating one, with CLR and a blue Scotch-Brite non-scratch scour pad from the grocery store. I was hoping this would remove loose rust and paint.

After all, loose paint is a quitter that I don’t want on my team.

The light blue paint was much thicker in some areas, like the rear deck lid. In other areas like the roof, it came off easily with the scour pad. The CLR water in the wash bucket was a matching light blue at the end of it all.

I used the blue non-scratch scour pads because I wasn’t sure how aggressive to be with it, but now in hindsight, I wish I had gone with the regular scratchy green pads to get more of that old mess off.