Black B Pillar Tangent.

"Berang" (berang) 01/20/2016 at 22:01 • Filed to: None

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While there are lots of reasons for painting B pillars black, does anybody know about when it started to happen?

I had always thought of this as a mid 1980s thing, when chrome went out of style and windows started being mounted without visible rubber moldings. However, long before this happened, some cars were already coming out of the factory with a black painted B pillar. Two that I were aware of were Saab and Porsche, they had already been doing this on some of their cars in the late 1970s.

While I had been aware of this happening on these cars, I never really thought about what company started the trend. Randomly looking around, Fiat seems to have also joined in during the late 1970s, but they don’t appear to have been first. Was Porsche first?

Wobbles the Mind > Berang 01/20/2016 at 22:11

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Don’t go by sport designed vehicles. They have been doing the zero brightwork, no paint for weight savings thing for ever. Go by the luxury touring and heavy vehicles. Huge sedans, wagons, trucks, and uber glitzy ritzy variants. That way you can find a start and end point.

Berang > Wobbles the Mind 01/20/2016 at 22:29

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But painting the B pillar black means going out of the way to paint the B pillar black, so it has to be a conscious styling choice.

Wobbles the Mind > Berang 01/20/2016 at 22:33

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Oh I had no idea. I always assumed black was just a base coat or something and the body color was applied over it. Learn something new everyday.

Hoccy > Berang 01/21/2016 at 02:08

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Seems like a late 70's thing with sporty cars, as the Opel Kadett GT/E and Ford Escort also had them

BATC42 > Berang 01/21/2016 at 05:58

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Looks like the 930 had them in 1975.

Before that, they were apparently on 1969's B17 concept.

The BMW E24 had them too starting in 1976. And the E23 7-series in 1977.

The Opel Manta B seemed to have had them to (launched in 1975).