nothing like it

just sprayed paint in the sunlight, that is. this car has soaked up a gallon of paint just jamming it. but we took the hood back off to get the underside and we are now complete.these pictures were taken just minuets after spraying. the solvents are not out yet so the metallic has not laid down.
we put it in to cure, out of the sun you see the color change.

Paint change is if you will pardon the pun Eye Opening!

The metallic looks nice, but correct me if I'm wrong - I believe GM cars of this era always had a semi-gloss black finish on the underside of the hood, not body color.

You are correct, however, since the nose and the rest of the vehicle was painted by the body builder, whether it was painted body color, or left satin black, can only be determined by looking at an original car. Even GM changed this policy of leaving the underside in black primer vs. body color, depending on the manufacturing plant, and year of manufacture. Sometimes originality is difficult to determine unless you have many vehicles to sample inspect.

That will be a beautiful 58, no doubt!

the semi gloss was in fact the factory protector coat. it's not paint. I don't have that knowledge on the 58 cars I do know in 1973 they stopped painting under the hood.I was working at a Chevy garage when they came out. my 59 Chevy was painted the body color under the hood and deck lid. as was the 55 but thats the extent of my knowledge on them. this body was painted body color on the fire wall at one time. this hood was originally bronze but was black on both sides when I got it. as was the one I took off so I wold guess you are most likely correct 58 was another cheap year for GM. that would ex plane the amount of rust under both of them. as the protector coat was not designed as a finish coat. once I get the decal for the air cleaner and get it painted up we are done under here. I could re-glue the card board anti rattle filler back over the open places. we cut it out so that we could kill the rust under there. but for now i think I'll concentrate on getting the out side the same color. here is what it looked like this morning and here is what it looks like now.