I have a question about paint colors. My 1970 Challenger is B5 blue, “Bright Blue Poly”. The fender tag calls it “EB5”. Now my buddy has a ’72 Dart, also B5, which the ’72 book also calls Bright Blue. His fender tag is missing, but he swears it was painted the original color, but his is noticeably different from mine. We looked it up, and his is “GB5”. How can B5 be two different colors? Or, is one of ours painted with the wrong color?
They are, in fact, quite different colors, the Ditzler (PPG) code for your car is 2019, and for the ’72, it is 2306. Here’s the straight scoop: The second character in a 3-digit paint code indicates the basic color family, in your case, B for blue. The last number is the brightness, 1 through 9. Black, for example, will always be 9—the darkest possible shade. Whites are usually 1. Thinking about whites for a moment, I’m sure you have seen many different shades of white, from snow white to Ivory, etc. So how to differentiate them? Easy! That first digit indicates the first model year the color was offered. That list is as follows:
A– 1965 B– 1966
C– 1967 D– 1968
E– 1969 F– 1970
G– 1971 H– 1973
(I and J were skipped) K– 1975
…etc.
So… EB5 was first offered in 1969. Your buddy’s was introduced in 1971. In the famous words of Paul Harvey (RIP), now you know the rest of the story!