62 Beige Steering Wheel

[William G.]

I have a friend who has an original Almond Beige 62 with a fawn beige interior. Is the steering wheel supposed to be fawn beige or almond beige? He claims the color of his original wheel matches the almond beige exterior, not the fawn beige interior. Can someone advise what color the wheel should be? Thanks for your advice.

[Dennis A.]

Re: 62 Beige Steering Wheel

Most repro fawn Beige steering wheels are light in color and really do not match the 61-62 exterior or interior Fawn Beige.

[Richard T.]

Re: 62 Beige Steering Wheel

On many 61 or 62 cars with beige interior the steering wheel is almost gray in color. Rich

[Roy B.]

Re: 62 Beige Steering Wheel

I had a NOS Beige steering on my 57 with the Grain and never saw a repro that was correct in grain or color

[Bruce B.]

Re: 62 Beige Steering Wheel

This is not an offer to sell.

I have sold reproduction 61-62 beige steering wheels in the the past and they differ from the fawn beige paint and vinyl interiors as follows:

The correct wheel color is "Fawn Beige" and it comes close to the paint color ( how many different shades of Fawn Beige have you seen?) but will never match the appearance as the wheel has no metalic component in it. GM did not produce a Almond Beige wheel to my knowledge.

A far as matching the vinly interior that is a shot in the dark. The old vinyl colors change with time so I believe the baseline color is not well defined. Just look at a vinyl interior and you will see differences from the seats compared to the dash pad.

The cars were not perfect when built and good color matching systems were not very good at the time. Then you get into different pigments and colors used in paints and vinyls. This pretty much guarentees there will not be a perfect match but they can be "acceptable".

Then as we all have seen, when you look at our cars under different lighting conditions (metamerism) the appearance of the color changes.

[Mike E.]

Re: 62 Beige Steering Wheel

The 56-57 steering wheel is absolutely different in color than the 61-62 fawn wheel. There is no reason to talk about the original texture/color of the 56-57 as a parallel to the 61-62.
The 61-62 fawn wheels had a tremendous propensity for surface cracking. Not major cracks, simply cosmetic nuisances mostly (although they cracked around the spokes just like that black and red wheels of that vintage). When I began in the hobby already in 1974 those were difficult to find in anything better than driver condition.
The original 61-62 fawn wheel, as mentioned, had no metallic in it, so it really is probably closer to almond beige than fawn beige in comparison. It is neither a fawn beige wheel nor an almond beige wheel--it is the beige wheel that came with the beige interior that accompanied a fawn, almond, red, honduras maroon, white, or black exterior paint scheme in 1961-1962.

[Joe M.]

Re: 62 Beige Steering Wheel

this is an almond beige 62 with fawn interior, taken in 1967. old photo and lighting make it look white but it is almond beige.

[Roy B.]

Re: 62 Beige Steering Wheel

The 56-57 steering wheel is absolutely different in color than the 61-62 fawn wheel. There is no reason to talk about the original texture/color of the 56-57 as a parallel to the 61-62.
The 61-62 fawn wheels had a tremendous propensity for surface cracking. Not major cracks, simply cosmetic nuisances mostly (although they cracked around the spokes just like that black and red wheels of that vintage). When I began in the hobby already in 1974 those were difficult to find in anything better than driver condition.
The original 61-62 fawn wheel, as mentioned, had no metallic in it, so it really is probably closer to almond beige than fawn beige in comparison. It is neither a fawn beige wheel nor an almond beige wheel--it is the beige wheel that came with the beige interior that accompanied a fawn, almond, red, honduras maroon, white, or black exterior paint scheme in 1961-1962.

I was not Comparing a 57 to a 62 just stating the repro difference from the original for a 56-57 as it is for the 62 differences , sorry for mentioning the 57 on a 62 question!!

[Bruce B.]

Re: 62 Beige Steering Wheel

This might confuse or clarify, depending on your point of view.

I have posted 2 pictures of a mixture of new and old original wheels.
I believe the fawn beige wheel (repro) is at 10 o'clock.
The 2 red wheels are Venetian red.

A while back I had a guy who owned a 62 fuel car (owned it for 45+ years, the second owner, the first one raced it up Pikes Peak and sold it) asked about a Fawn wheel. I told him it would not match but he can inspect it. Before I sent it he sent me some pieces that had cracked off his original wheel. Some pieces looked light , some looked dark and some looked good.
To end the story he kept the wheel I sent him.
Was it exactly like the original, no but it was acceptable.

I recently had a 56-62 wheel that came out of GM, Inland in Dayton , OH. that was engraved on the face with 12/22/55.It was in the basement of a retired GM engineer in a cloth bag. The color and surface texture were perfect. It was black which is sort of an easy color. The wheel was basically untouched over the years. Interesting piece, obviously from fresh tooling.