BASF Automotive Refinish announced that it’s celebrating the 90th anniversary of one of its automotive refinish paint brands, R-M, founded in the summer of 1919. Today, the R-M product line includes like DIAMONT, ONYX HD and CARIZZMA.
BASF says it all started with a duck decoy made and painted by the Mason Decoy Factory in Detroit, Mich., starting in 1896. By 1919, the company’s founder, Herbert Mason, had developed another use for his paints and joined his friend, Fred Rinshed, to form the Rinshed-Mason (R-M) Company, which soon became the largest paint supplier to the growing automotive industry.
R-M was the first paint company to supply high performance lacquers to Cadillac. R-M also pioneered Florida testing to assess the weathering abilities of paints, which became the industry standard. R-M launched the first tinting base system in 1948, signaling the birth of the mixing machine, which continues today to be the industry standard, BASF says.
Today, R-M is a division of BASF Coatings. For more information about BASF and the R-M line of automotive refinish paints, visit www.basfrefinish.com.
