125th Anniversary for TAUBMANS®

Even back in 1897, George Henry Taubman understood the need to have paint products that suited local needs. As a professional sign writer, he was not happy with the paints available at the time and that drove him to focus on creating the perfect recipe for making the best quality paint that could cope with Australia’s harsh and diverse climatic conditions. To his wife’s horror, George is said to have begun his experimentation with paint making techniques and recipes in the family kitchen. After a close call and under protests from his wife, he moved to the shed of his house.

In 1901, the growing demand for locally produced paint products prompted George and his brother, Nathaniel, to set up Taubmans’ first paint and varnish works in the Sydney suburb of St Peters. By 1910, the success of the venture saw company stores set up in every Australian state, along with a factory in Wellington, New Zealand. In 1938, George died at the age of 76 years old but Taubmans remained family run until 1952. During the mid-twentieth century, the company underwent rapid expansion with both industrial and retail premises established in all of the Australian states, as well as New Zealand. By 1964, Taubmans was one of Australia’s biggest companies. Along the way, it has been responsible for revolutionising the way consumers select colours. Market leading solutions, such as the ‘Taubmans House of Ideas’ and the Spectrocolor range, have continued to evolve right through to the very cool, very high tech and very easy to use, Coloursmith app and website which was launched in 2020.

Although the way Taubmans researches and develops paint products has moved on in leaps and bounds over the years, George’s passion and focus on being a leader in quality and innovation lives on. As part of PPG’s global network, the Taubmans research and development team has access to technologies from all over the world.

Just as George did all those years ago, it’s about using the latest technologies to create products which are specifically tuned to this region’s unique environment, particularly in terms of high UV readings. Today, when you trust a locally manufactured Taubmans product to get your painting project done with panache, there is a good chance you are following in the footsteps of your parents, grandparents, great grandparents, etc. Even 125 years on, every can continues to carry a piece of George’s ingenuity and spirit! R

Slick presentation and customer friendly features were high on the list of priorities when PPG distributor, Platinum Auto Paints, expanded from its original Sydney outlet, to open a new branch in the Perth suburb of Osborne Park, in April 2018. There is even an onsite spray booth providing a perfect venue for conducting training or demonstrations. However, the recent arrival of PPG’s ground-breaking MoonWalk automated dispensing machine opened up a new opportunity to become a showcase for the latest technology, says Platinum Auto Paints Director, Nick Fardoulis.

“I heard about MoonWalk from overseas and I had seen photos and videos but when I stood in front of it at PPG Welshpool, I was just so impressed with its accuracy, the time it saves and how easy it is to use. Our Perth branch is a very nice looking place and the decision to install a MoonWalk really adds to that vibe. When customers walk in, the first thing they see is a high-tech MoonWalk machine.”

It was Nick’s father, Aki, who originally bought the Platinum Auto Paints business back in 2003. These days, with Aki semi-retired, the family business is run by Nick, whose main role is looking after Western Australian operations, and his brother, Stelio, who takes care of the Sydney branch. With a team comprising two sales representatives, three delivery drivers, a general manager and an office manager, as well as Nick, the Perth branch services PPG customers across the vast distances of WA. This means from as far north as Karratha and Broome, down to Esperance and Albany in the south. Note: At the time of writing, a second WA Platinum Auto Paints branch was set to be opened in Bunbury to better service the southern regions of the state. Having a MoonWalk onsite is another way that Platinum Auto Paints flies the PPG flag while adding another string to the company bow, says Nick.

“As well as showcasing the technology to customers, the MoonWalk gives us capabilities that are difficult to replicate without it. For example, the accuracy is incredible. I didn’t think it would be possible to add such tiny amounts of tinter but MoonWalk does it down to 0.01 gram accuracy and it does it consistently day-in, day-out. This is beginning to be especially handy for our existing ENVIROBASE® High Performance customers. With MoonWalk we can accurately mix a very small volume of product which a painter would struggle to do in a refinish paint shop. Another handy option we offer is where they have a formulation with tiny tinter amounts or where it includes an unusual tinter that the repairer doesn’t want to buy. We can quickly and accurately dispense their chosen colour without any hassles or stress at their end. We are already getting a fair few people asking for Envirobase mixes but I see a time coming when more and more customers will want to take advantage of MoonWalk technology, now that we can offer it.”

Thanks to his ongoing experience with the day-to-day operation of MoonWalk, Nick is convinced that it has a wide application across the industry. “Initially, I thought MoonWalk would only really be suited to MSOs and big operations but, the more I have seen it in action, the more I see a lot of benefits for even medium sized collision repairers. It’s very fast to learn – you spectro the job, download the data, choose the best formulation match and ‘click’ to dispense. While MoonWalk is dispensing the formulation, the painter can be doing some other productive tasks to get the job ready. It’s a great labour time saving. As well as making life easier for customers who install a MoonWalk, it also helps the distributor supporting them. For example, MoonWalk has a screen that shows remaining tinter volumes so it’s simple for our sales rep to visit, quickly check which tinters are low and arrange for replacements so that there are no delays for the customer.”

As a family business that is growing and expand to service its customer base, Nick sees technology as a key point of difference with Platinum Auto Paints. “We are proud to fly the PPG flag and installing a MoonWalk gives us one more tool to help show customers and potential customers what PPG and Platinum Auto Paints can do for them.” R

To register your interest in a MoonWalk demonstration or to join the list to have a unit installed, simply contact your PPG Territory Manager or the PPG Customer Service Hotline (Aust 13 24 24 or NZ 0800 320 320).

With an epic design concept, incredible craftsmanship and signature PPG paintwork, Champagne Lady gracefully reimagines an era of automotive elegance and sophistication.

When it comes to the custom car genre, it takes something pretty remarkable to get Andy Minas truly emotional. After all, he has pretty much seen it all in almost five decades of building custom cars, hot rods and street machines – most of it at the helm of his respected Sydney business, Andy’s Restorations. However, when he first spied his team’s latest creation in the main display hall of the 2022 Hot Rod & Custom Auto Expo, Andy swears he was immediately captivated.

“For around 18 months, I had seen the car every day in the workshop but I couldn’t really appreciate it until I saw it on its own in the 5000m² show hall. It just struck me – the boys and I had pulled it off and it looked incredible. It nearly brought a tear to my eye. The fans and the judges loved it, too. It went on to receive the ‘Elegance Award’ which is for the car that has the most visual impact and creates the most fuss and from the moment it was unveiled that is what Champagne Lady did.”

Trusted partnerships

While now it’s easy to appreciate the style and charm of this epic machine, the project almost took a very different pathway. The result came down to a partnership of trust between Andy and the owner, Stuart Brancourt.

“With any new job, we start by sitting down with the owner to get an outline of the concept, the level they want to take it to and what they want to do with the car. Originally, Stuart was thinking of a wild, futuristic type car but I suggested a concept that made use of the elegant lines and was not going to date. The design of the fibreglass body he’d had made is actually a combination of three different cars – the front of a 1941 Willys, the centre of a 1939 Bugatti Type 57C and the rear of a 1939 Lincoln Zephyr. When we started researching, this combination gave us the perfect basis for a 1930s elegant, concourse sort of car and Stuart trusted us to take it to the next level.”

Body of work

When the body arrived at Andy’s Restos it was simply a shell, straight out of the mould with no supporting framework or chassis. One of the first priorities was to convert the soft, rounded shape, typical of fibreglass, into the sharper lines you would expect from a pressed steel body. After calling in the expertise of Peter Lamb from Melomotive, the team spend literally thousands of painstaking hours, measuring, re-fibreglassing, filling and contouring to eventually get the bodywork to the point where people don’t even realise it’s not steel.

Andy, himself, spend around two weeks fabricating the bespoke chassis. After welding together 100X50mm steel rails, he added crossmembers and other fixtures to accommodate a four-link rear end with nine-inch diff, a Jaguar power steering rack and air-bagged suspension. A written off, low kilometre, late model Holden Commodore donated it’s 6.2 litre V8, gearbox and computer to the build. Perhaps the trickiest job on the entire list was the mammoth task of constructing a steel supporting framework, says Andy.

“The fibreglass body was just floppy and there was nothing underneath supporting it or connecting it to the chassis. Normally, you would hang panels off of a steel frame but this was the opposite – we had to build an entire network of steel framing to sit inside a body that was already complete. Although I have a lot of experience, sometimes you need people with specific skill to support you with things like this so I called in Dean Finch from Melbourne. Even then, there was a fair bit of trial and error where we would fabricate a part, decide it didn’t work so scrap it and start again. One of the biggest challenges on the build was the doors. On a conventional car, there is usually a relatively straight front edge so you have the space to swing the door off two hinges but, because of the curvy door shape, there wasn’t the room. We went for suicide doors and ended up fabricating one big single hinge for each door to swing from. That and getting the body lines sharpened up, were the biggest challenges.”

Bubbly personality

Having set the bar so high for the build, an attention-grabbing paint colour was always going to be key. As a lifelong PPG user, Andy took advantage of the partnership to develop an ENVIROBASE® High Performance colour perfectly suited to the style and character of this smooth flowing piece of automotive artwork.

“We wanted the car to look like it was a special model coach-built for a rich movie star back in the 1930s and colour was a big part of that. I tried lots of different colours on painted frogs but none of them seemed to suit. Then we decided to think a little outside the square and I came across Aston Martin colours. I told John Hristias (PPG Sales Director Australia) that I had found a colour that had potential but it lacked a bit of oomph and he said leave it to me. He must have added a little PPG magic because, when he came back with this colour, we showed it to Stuart and he as rapt. We reckon it looks a bit like the colour of champagne so when we did some brainstorming for the name of the car that colour led the way to ‘Champagne Lady’!”

“My son, James, and I did all the prep work for paint and I got John Hristias to help with application.

This is such a big car and it’s all one piece so if one person was to paint it, they would burn themselves out and you could end up with inconsistencies. Over a very long day, we ‘double gunned’ it, doing half each and bouncing off each other the whole time. We use SATA spray guns and I one hundred percent believe you could not spray that colour without them. I could not believe how well it laid down and it was off the gun with no streaks, mottle or blemishes. The way I look at it, if you use the right equipment, with the right gun setup, you get the right result.”

Style with substance

Throughout the build, thousands of small but crucial decisions were constantly being made in order to keep the design statement perfectly on track. This is where the team often let their creative juices really flow to create a variety of detail touches that help elevate it to the next level.

“It’s little things that really make a difference. Like where the exhaust exits through the back of the body, we were originally going to fit fibreglass bezels around them. However, we thought they might burn so we got a toolmaker to make a pattern so we could get them cast in metal and then chromed. Another touch is the badge on the back of the body which you push down to pop the fuel cap. Some parts are off-the-shelf, such as the grille and headlights which are off a 1940 Willys, while others are custom, such as the wheels which were specially made by Mike Curtis from Curtis Speed Equipment in the US. They look like a hubcap or dress rim but, in fact, they are machined from solid aluminium. Inside, we continued the theme of an elegant car from the ‘30s. There is plenty of beautiful leather trim and a steering wheel and instruments from the era but behind the scenes it has a modern edge. A touchscreen stays hidden until you turn on the infotainment system and it controls everything, including the headlights, horn, airbags, start, etc, via a built-in c-bus system computer.”

Andy admits to making his share of mistakes over the years but what he has learnt has given him a rare insight into getting the design just right. “The bodywork was beautiful and I left it under primer so I could study it but whichever way l looked at it, something was missing. I asked for advice from people I trust and we all agreed it needed a highlighting mould along the side. I used a lovely piece of aluminium extrusion to sweep from the side of the bonnet line, right across the door and then curve down into the quarter panel. It just adds that little statement of extra elegance.”

Top of the pops

Following its award-winning debut earlier in the year, Champagne Lady is set to visit more local car shows so that fans can take in its sensual, graceful curves. At the same time, ambitious plans are being hatched to take this epic piece of automotive art on a tour of events in the US. Despite building countless cars over the years, Champagne Lady will always hold a special place with Andy.

“When you are building a one-off car like this, it drains you because it takes constant concentration and you put yourself under pressure to deliver perfection, perfection, perfection. With its sweeping lines and a tail that drags behind like a bridal train, Champagne Lady is a great interpretation of a car from that elegant ’30s era. It would be top three on the list of cars I have built and all three are statement cars with showstopping visual impact. We are honoured that Stuart trusted us with this job. Without projects like this, myself and my team would not have an outlet to use our skills to express our automotive vision!” R