That’s a hard question with Indians being painted any colour you like from the 1930’s & for an extra $5 over a thousand extra colour combinations became available, being owned by DuPont one of the largest paint suppliers to Detroit this all made sense. All H-D’S were drab and horrible colours some would say the wartime WLA’s were the best painted versions, Indian only had flash styling and good paint in the end, technology wise after the war they never got a countershaft 4 speed gearbox or a OHV engine but they still had rear suspension, if you wanted your Chief to stand out a stunning paint job with the right colours would do it, sure Indian listed a core 3 or 4 colours a year and there was always a red colour to be had most years which had been around since the early teens and before. I have seen plenty of Indian’s not painted solid colours and in seventies candy or metalflake they stand out like “a rat eating a watermelon” and don”t do much for me, two-tone I like the outfit above proves a point, solid black or the traditional red are striking as well but all black contrasting against the black frame makes a Indian look to heavy I think, and the red well that varies from letter box to claret when the original late Indian Red is almost a rust brown shade which people don’t like! Early twenties Chiefs were a brighter red the later forties versions not so, awhile ago someone in the States re-produced a paint sample sign taken from original codes and a lot of people were really surprised how unoriginal their machine was painted, so why not pick your own, well that to can cause odd colours such as chocolate, purple and green or even mixture of these three or more, I can tell you one thing though never paint a Indian green (unless military) as they look like something a cat vomited up!
