When you think of Toyota performance, the color palette that pops into your head may largely depend on the cars you love. Yellow, orange and red for 80s IMSA racing, red and green Castrol for WRC, white and red for TRD’s various exploits and so on. If you’re into TE27s, though, you’re probably a fan of dark green and orange. As you may already know, the names Levin and Trueno mean “thunder” and “lightning” in old English and Spanish, respectively. But a quick Google search seems to reveal that this iconic palette has never been translated to English, so today, on this day of 2/7 2017, we shall.
The official color names for the Corolla Levin were Indianapolis Olive and Monte Rosa Orange. For the Sprinter Trueno, they were Daytona Olive, Haight-Ashbury Orange. The greens were clearly named after famed American raceways but the oranges, as far as we can tell, were named after a mountain in the Alps and the famed San Francisco intersection that was ground zero for 1960s counterculture. We don’t know why they got these names, but we offer you this completely useless bit of trivia anyway. Happy TE27 Day!
For mango madness, revisit our coverage of the TE27 Club Meeting.
Indianapolis olive? I always thought it was moss green
Yeah, seems difficult to find any other references to Indianapolis Olive, unless that name was Japan-only. Images of Moss Green TE27s on Google are plentiful, though.
Regardless – lovely-looking cars. Amazing that they’ve always been a volume product, as they almost look upmarket.
Levin – a race track in NZ, north of Wellington, 1956-76.
Using the dark green as what I was looking for, all I saw was “Green Jade,” at Auto Color Library. These color names probably only apply to the U.S. market; maybe Canadian, too?
While it’s not the ONLY color source, I like their page the best. Just my opinion; yours may differ.
It runs 1924-2014. I’m sure that for the REALLY old stuff, the lists won’t be compete, but overall, it’s good.
Here’s the link to 1971 Toyota colors:
http://www.autocolorlibrary.com/aclchip.aspx?image=1971-Toyota-pg01.jpg
The color sheets in the left column open as .jpgs, and have the “magnifying glass” to expand them.
If you want to jump to another year/manufacturer, click on the “Auto Color Library,” full-width, multicolor banner. There’ll be drop down menus. VERY useful.
1972’s Brilliant Persimmon (a.k.a. “Monte Rosa Orange”) would have gotten my attention…
I went over my original Levin and Trueno brochures with the google translate app (what did we do before it) and got the same names.
The paint codes by the way are 614 for the levin green and 308 for the levin orange. Both have the suffix ER21, the meaning of which I don’t know.
I would assume the paint codes are the same for the trueno colours, with some marketing going on with the varied names.
308 keeps showing as “Brilliant Persimmon” or “Monte Rosa Orange.
http://images.tcpglobal.com/chips/1972-Toyota-pg06.jpg
http://images.tcpglobal.com/chips/1972-Toyota-pg03.jpg
For ’73, 614 just says “Green.” First column; second from bottom.
http://images.tcpglobal.com/chips/1973-Toyota-pg03.jpg
For ’74, first column, second from bottom.
http://images.tcpglobal.com/chips/1974-Toyota-pg04.jpg
(I expect it’s a typo, but I like “Pruplish Red.”
http://images.tcpglobal.com/chips/1974-Toyota-pg06.jpg)
Didn’t see “ER21” on any of the codes.
My Japanese Levin’s build plate just has 614 on it. The ER21 appears immediately after each paint code in the brochure only.
Maybe it’s a Japan-only code…