Is there a non-driving element of a car that influences your perception of it more than a paint color? There’s something emotional about a vintage sports car in a truly great color. Whether it’s a color you’re very familiar with and it evokes nostalgia, or it’s an exceedingly rare color you’ve never seen before, it’s going to have an effect. The first time I saw an old Porsche painted in Moonstone, a pale purple color only available in 1979 and 1980, I was instantly smitten.
Moonstone doesn’t blow out the cones and rods of your eye with searing brightness; it’s a subtle and subdued shade with an almost ethereal quality to it. It’s easy to see why someone would become enamored with the color, devoting their automotive life to preserving examples, sharing information, and tracking down as many examples as possible. Justin, known as @33BossHogg on instagram and profiled in this recent video from occasional Jalopnik contributor Kevin McCauley, is a passionate advocate for the color.
According to Justin, only about a dozen people ordered this color when it was available new, spread between 924 models, 911s, 930s, and 928s. He’s owned three of the Moonstone cars, including the 924 I saw at a Radwood in Seattle back in 2021 (below). This color is something akin to a ‘slow burn’ in music or cinema. It might not be the wild or the over-the-top, but it sticks with you.
It is always fascinating to see what drives car enthusiasts, or what each automotive fan finds as their niche. Some people are wholly devoted to eking out every tenth of a second they can on the race track, some are dedicated to polishing their car to a gorgeous sheen, and some are interested in preserving automotive paint color history. It’s nice to see that he’s out driving his rare machines, giving people an opportunity to see Moonstone in person, instead of tucking them away in a warehouse somewhere. If you ever have an opportunity to see Moonstone, you won’t soon forget it.