(The following is only my opinion and pure conjecture at best. I’m sure the Filling Station’s research is as good as it’s gonna get)
The 216’s production run spanned both the pre and post WW2 period. If GM cared enough to standardize the shade of gray they were painting engines before the war…I’m betting they ceased to care DURING the war. Whatever gray paint was laying around was likely good enough. And by the time the 235 production run started, how much surplus gray paint was lying around? I’m betting it was a LOT. And I’m betting GM didn’t think twice about using it as long as it was some shade of gray.
All that said, I have seen 2-3 216s still wearing some original paint. In all cases it was a very dark, almost charcoal, similar to the pics that Tiny posted.
