An unusual restoration of an old 1950s Renault Galion. The client requested that the paintwork was to match that of a vintage Ferrari racing works car transporter, despite being less than half its size & of a differing shape.

This is the vehicle that the project was to be based on. As can be seen, its twice as long & a lot taller too. This led to obstacles in getting the writing in similar places on the original vehicle so it would look like its meant to, without altering it too much & without compromising the vehicle signwriting.



This is how the truck looked when I arrived to start the signwriting. Due to the size difference & differing sizes of panels etc, I had already meaured all the panels, & produced a paper layout for all the signwriting, prior to being on site.


All the background shapes for the signs were going to need an undercoat, as yellow onto red doesn’t cover very well.
So the Shell oils signs, The Ferrari badges & other signs, were marked out & filled in with a pale yellow undercoat & left to dry before the rest of the signs were pounced onto the panels ready for signwriting

The next stage was to get the main writing in place. The Ferrari logo & original wording was signwritten using a matt finish enamel paint & using 2 different signwriter brushes.
The same wording had to be sign written 3 times. Each time being slightly different in size & layout, due to the different panels. The ladder had to be detached to get to the panels on the passenger side.



Then it was back to the sides to paint the stallion black & then once that had dried, to do all the fine outlining with a longhair sign writer lining brush.


The pale yellow areas were then given a topcoat before the end of the day, so they would be dry for the following day’s signwriting.
The Shell oil badges & the Marchal adverts were the first of the signwriting to be done, with the red Shell writing & the white Marchal done.

While those were drying the Baroclem adverts had the signwriting both sides of the truck & the Ferrari badges on the front were given their detailing.



Once completed the remaining outlines on the Shell logos, shadows on the Marchal signs & a second coat on both Baroclem signs were done, to finish off all the vehicle signwriting.





Traditional & Contemporary Hand Painted Signwriting in London
Signwriter – Traditional Signs of London
info@traditionalsignsoflondon.uk