Magic-Mirror Acrylic Lacquer Finish
All 1960 Chevrolets were painted with what General Motors called “Magic-Mirror Acrylic Lacquer”. Acrylic Lacquer was a fairly new technology, having been developed in the 1950’s to replace Nitrocellulose Lacquer. Acrylic Lacquer was made with synthetic polymer… essentially, plastic, and was less toxic to manufacture. General Motors began using Acrylic Lacquer in 1958.
Note: You can see every combination of the available colors in the InteractivePaint Code Viewer below. Simply hover your mouse over the color codes. Clicking any of these color codes will bring up a list of all the cars in the 60impala.com database that match the chosen color.
Color Combinations
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 970 – With Fawn Beige Top |
 Ermine White & Roman Red |
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 953 – With Ermine White Top |
 963 – With Ermine White Top |
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 960 – With Ermine White Top |
 984 – With Ermine White Top |
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 973 – With Ermine White Top |
 950 – With Ermine White Top |
Paint Code
The paint code is indicated on the cowl tag after the word “PAINT” (see the image above) and is typically followed by a letter. If you don’t know where to find your cowl tag, click HERE. If your paint code is followed by a single letter “A“, this designates that the vehicle did not leave the factory with two-tone paint. Two-tone paint codes had numbers higher than 941. Available combinations and their respective numeric codes are shown in the Interactive Paint Code Viewer above. The letter code for two-tone paint jobs gets a little more complicated. According to the Late Great Chevy Associations judging guide, these numbers (for two-tone only) were followed by up to three different letter codes. The first letter would indicate the primary color of the car and was sometimes doubled… for example, “V” or “VV” to indicate Roman Red. The second or last letter indicates the two-tone color. For example, “C” would indicate Ermine White two-tone. All together, a three letter color code could appear as “973-VVC“. However, inspection of most 1960 Chevrolets that were equipped with two-tone paint reveals only one letter code to indicate the two-tone color. Either way, the letter codes seem to be redundant, as the numeric code already indicates the two-tone color combination. These are typical 1960 Chevrolet color codes:
900-A = Ermine White
950-C = Tuxedo Black with Ermine White two-tone
970-R = Suntan Copper with Fawn Beige two-tone
Two-Tone Letter Codes
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