Since we have this conversation once in a while, I have been paying attention to it more when looking at Mavericks, especially original unpainted ones. One thing that I found interesting was that on my '70 Grabber the engine compartment is painted black, but the yellow body color is underneath the black paint. In spots where that thin black paint has worn through, the yellow shows up very clearly to match the body. That may be why some earlier models that "should" have black engine compartments are actually thought to be body color. Just a thought. Sarah
My 70 is the same way, black engine bay but with Grabber Blue underneath. Shows up when I get a chip in the black paint. The firewall is covered with some type of rough undercoating, as were the wheelwells, suspension, and the whole underside. And yes, that's the way it came from the factory.
I never really thought about it, but that makes perfect sense. The unit body was painted in 'bulk' so to speak, when the cars were built. Meaning that they got doused in paint one after the other. So it would be a very ineffective assembly line technique to paint the engine bay of the unit body a different color at that time or paint half in that dousing process. They surely did Stangs the same way... paint the unit body, then somewhere else down the line, run a spray gun with semi-flat black over the already painted engine bay. I am sure, since the Mav was supposed to be the 'rebirth' of the 65 Stang, they painted the first ones black, just like Stangs. However, being so inexpensive a car, they probably stopped to cut costs. Dave
