I’m looking for some information on this colour. It seems Lotus used it for a number of wheel choices over the years, or at least - their wheel suppliers did.
Ideally I want to know what I would ask a paint shop for if I wanted some wheels painted in this colour, it doesn’t seem to be a paint code as such - more a ‘process’ of painting on a certain base colour and lacquering over with another. The closest match I can find to it with a more generic terminology is “shadow chrome” that BMW tend to use a lot, amongst other manufacturers.
The nature of it makes it very difficult to photograph properly, looks very different depending on angle/lighting etc.
So question is, if walked into a generic paint shop with a set of wheels and asked for “Hi-Power Silver”, am I going to get looked at like I’m mental? Or is it an ‘industry standard’ process?
I’ve found a few specialists who advertise in being able to do ‘Shadow Chrome’ but I’m not sure it’s exactly the same, yet. I’m not trying to match up against an old paint job or anything so it probably doesn’t matter if it’s not the actual colour used by Lotus - but I at least want to know what I’m asking for, if anyone knows.
Yes I could, but it’s not shadow chrome I’m looking for - it’s the “Hi Power Silver” that Lotus used.
I only mentioned Shadow Chrome because to my eye it looks similar, it may well be the same process just with subtle differences to the base and lacquer that get used.
I cannot find a make up of Hi Power Silver anywhere. There are colour charts that can be compared against but all my reference files dont mention the colour by name so stuff like ixell colour might not have it as reference?
Having looked around it appears lots of refurbishes know the colour ( used on Fords as well I believe ) and Team Dynamics sell their alloys in the colour from factory …
Yes that would make sense, you can’t imagine Lotus going to the expense of having a custom colour done. I’ll have an ask around, there’s a refurbishment place fairly close who advertise the fact they do shadow chrome, so I’ll ask if they know of hi-power silver too as it sounds like they’re both achieved in similar ways.
Cheers Lee, from clicking around on there it seems like “Hi Power Silver” falls into a category of techniques/approaches under similar names like “Hyper Silver”.
It looks like Hyper-Silver is the one similar to those 240R wheels pictured above, and in this link here it does describe them as if it is indeed the same thing as Shadow Chrome used by BMW:
