Elite US custom car painter, Darryl Hollenbeck, has chosen PPG products to give the recently-restored iconic 1953 Beast IV Streamliner its sleek blue and yellow finish. Built back in 1953 to compete at the Bonneville Speed Week and International Speed Trials, the aluminium bodied, Chrysler Hemi-powered racer had streaked across the Utah Salt Flats to hit a top speed of 246 mph and break eight long-standing performance records.
The Beast IV continued to run until 1992 in a number of configurations with a variety of engines and reached speeds up to 289 mph. After falling into disrepair, a major restoration project has now returned the low-slung vintage racer to its former glory and Beast IV is now on permanent display at the NHRA Motorsports Museum. Thanks to the vehicle’s age, replicating the exact colours was no easy task says Hollenbeck, but PPG gave his team the tools to achieve the outstanding end result.
“Colour was a challenge. There were colour photos of the original Beast and we knew the car was blue and yellow, but the colours looked different in every photograph. So, we compared the colours of other cars in photos with the Beast. We figured out the other cars’ colours and were able to come very close to equalling the Beast’s colour. Then we generated dozens of blue and yellow samples and tweaked them to match the paint. The museum made the final decision and we gave the Beast its proper design and colour scheme.”