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Today I was in the next town over, and I went in to its ‘WH Smith’ store. As usual, I went to have a quick look at their pens, and was slightly surprised to see that, in February 2020, their display included the ‘Petrol’ Safari from 2017, and more-surprised to see that they also had the ‘Dark Lilac’ one from 2016. Before anyone gets their hopes up, I must stress that these were only the pens - no cartridges, and certainly not any bottles, of the relevant LE inks. So, is this availability just an anomaly that is attributable to my living out in the sticks, where nothing as recherché as a fountain pen sells-out fast? Or are the rest of you still seeing these pens for sale in stores near you? Cheers, M.

Disclaimer: I enjoy doing mini ink reviews for my personal reference, and I'd like to share them with others if they might be of help to gain an insight into the ink's appearance and performance. I generally don't have time to put together super comprehensive reviews, like some of our fantastic reviewers here do (thank you so much for your hard work!), but hopefully these mini reviews will still be useful as another point of reference. Lamy Petrol Lamy releases limited edition color inks and accompanying Safari or Al-Star pens annually. Petrol was a 2017 special edition color for textured Lamy Safari with black hardware and nib, and this ink. Because Lamy only made a fairly small amount of this ink, it quickly sold out and became somewhat of an unobtanium (in truth it is still available, but be prepared to pay 3-6 times the original $12-per-bottle price of this ink on eBay or classifieds boards). I hope Lamy will eventually bring this ink back. I have 3 bottles stocked up and sadly had to pay extra for each one, but I believe this is a great ink that should be made freely available to anyone who is interested--not only because of its color, but also because of its performance. This ink is a saturated green-teal-black with a matte finish on paper. It has some shading in broad or dry nibs, but mostly it is fairly uniform in fine nibs. There is a red-black color-shift where sheen develops, and the metallic component of the sheen is a kind of light pink in color. In practice, it is very difficult to see the metallic sheen from this ink, unless you are writing with a wet pen on Tomoe River, and even then you will not see it much. The red-black color shift is more readily apparent in larger concentrations. The degree to which this ink will look more or less green is highly dependent on illumination and paper used. This ink has moderate flow, one can produce fairly fine hairlines with this ink. It is well lubricated. In my experience it has tamed some difficult nibs and poor performing pens (generally they have something wrong with their nib grinds or alignment) that skip much less or not at all with this ink. One of the properties of this ink that I like is that it removes staining from converters and cleans ink windows, if you let it sit in a pen for a couple of weeks. Water resistance is moderate: a legible black-gray line remains, but there's some smeary wash of dyes that are lifted, so be careful to dab wet paper quickly. No feathering on good paper. I think this ink also makes a good candidate for water brush art. As you can see on the water test rectangle, there is some range of hues that the ink can produce in [more] capable [than mine] hands. Papers used in this review are: Fabriano Bioprima 4mm dot grid - a kind of ivory color, lightly textured, uncoated Rhodia Dot Pad 5mm dot grid #16 - bright white (perhaps with a slight lavender tinge) Nakabayashi Logical Prime notebook - coated and super smooth ivory-toned Japanese paper, shows things like sheen and hue variation pretty well Tomoe River 52g "white" - off-white slightly ivory Japanese paper which shows sheen and shading very well Col-o-Ring sample paper - bright white and thick Photographs: Scans: Fabriano Bioprima: Rhodia Dot Pad: Color comparison on Nakabayashi Logical Prime notebook paper:

Lamy Petrol (2017 LE ink) For quite some years now, Lamy has brought a Limited Edition Safari pen with accompanying ink colour to market. This is a trend with many other pen/ink makers these days. Often, these limited editions are quite beautiful, and worthy of your attention. This is certainly true of the Lamy 2017 Limited Edition Safari Petrol, with the accompanying Petrol ink. I got me a pack of 5 ink cartridges with the pen. To this day I regret not having bought a full bottle of Petrol, which I really like. When I purchased the pen, I tried one of the cartridges and discovered the lovely dark teal colour of this ink. The cartridges then got lost somehow in my ink drawer, and only recently resurfaced. To be honest: when doing a review of Mont Blanc Petrol Blue, it jogged my memory that I had another "Petrol" ink lying around. You probably won't be able to obtain this ink anymore, but I'm still doing this review purely for comparison purposes. This is a very saturated dark teal, that can look almost black in wet pens. The ink's colour lies right on the border between blue and green. When looking at it, I sometimes see more of a green, sometimes more of a blue. To get a better idea, I diluted the ink heavily with water and this resulted in the watery blue of the image below. Not a scientific test, but for me that makes it a slightly blue-leaning teal. When writing, Lamy Petrol leaves a very dark and saturated line. Contrast with the paper is very good, even with the finest nibs. With fine nibs or wet pens, the ink shows little shading. Use broader nibs in dry pens and some beautiful-looking shading emerges. This would be a very good ink to use at work, even for more formal writing occasions. Petrol has a rather limited dynamic colour span. To illustrate this, I did a swab on Tomoe River paper where I really saturated portions of the paper with ink. This beautifully illustrates the ink's colour range. The ink moves from a fairly saturated to a really dark teal. You'll also notice a reddish sheen in very saturated parts. On the smudge test - rubbing text with a moist Q-tip cotton swab - the ink behaved reasonably well. There is quite some smudging, but the text itself remains perfectly readable. Water resistance is a mixed bag. With the soak test - submerging the ink in still water for 15 minutes - you get some ugly smudges, but the original writing is still visible. With running tap water, the ink shows a remarkably good water resistance. A lot of the ink flushes away, but a very readable residue remains. Another plus if you want to use this ink at work. A word of warning: this ink will stain your fingers, requiring quite some scrubbing to remove it. Petrol is a fairly fast-drying ink - with typical drying times in the 5-10 second range with my Lamy Safari (M-nib). I've tested the ink on a wide variety of paper - from crappy Moleskine to high-end Tomoe River. As such, you will get a good idea of the performance of this ink. On each scrap of paper I show you: An ink swab, made with a cotton Q-tip 1-2-3 pass swab, to show increasing saturation An ink scribble made with a Lamy Safari M-nib fountain pen The name of the paper used, written with a Lamy Safari B-nib A small text sample, written with an M-nib Drying times of the ink on the paper (with the M-nib) This Lamy ink looks really nice on all my test papers. This is an ink that looks good on any type of paper, both the white and more yellow ones. The ink even looks great on the horrible Moleskine paper, without any noticeable feathering (but still with a fair amount of bleed-through). Petrol is a very well-behaving ink! Writing with different nib sizes The picture below shows the effect of nib sizes on the writing. All samples were written with a Lamy Safari, which is typically a dry pen. I also added a visiting pen - a wet-writing Lamy Dialog 3 with M-nib. The ink works great with all nib sizes I tested it with. Related inks To compare Lamy Petrol with related inks, I use my nine-grid format with the currently reviewed ink at the center. This format shows the name of related inks, a saturation sample, a 1-2-3 swab and a water resistance test - all in a very compact format. Inkxperiment – twinkle, twinkle little star As a personal experiment, I try to create interesting drawings using only the ink I'm reviewing, keeping things simple and more-or-less abstract. For me, this is a fun way to explore an ink's colour range in a more artistic context. It's challenging at times, and a great way to stretch my drawing skills. For this drawing, inspiration comes from some Bauhaus period stick-figure paintings I recently saw on Pinterest. And because Petrol is such a dark ink, a night-theme with stars seemed in order. I started off with 300 gsm rough watercolour paper, on which I painted the background with pure Petrol using Q-tips. Thanks to the rough paper, you get a nicely-textured background. I then used a B-nibbed Safari pen to draw in the stick figures, enjoying the starry night. Even with the limited colour span of this ink, the result looks quite nice, and shows off the ink's character really well. Conclusion Lamy's Petrol 2017 LE ink is a great dark teal ink, that I quite like. This ink works really well as a writing ink for use at work. I enjoyed the ink very much while doing this review. A pity that it is no longer available. Technical test results on Rhodia N° 16 notepad paper, written with Lamy Safari, M-nib Backside of writing samples on different paper types

Slightly off-topic but it is​ ink-related. Bought some armor for a new character I'm playing in Guild Wars, then spent some time trying various dye combinations until I hit on one I liked. "Wow, this one's really nice", I said to myself. No wonder I liked it - I realized later it's a dead ringer for Lamy Petrol.

Hey whats up guys, this is my first post. I just wanted to ask a stupid question about the Lamy Safari petrol colour, Is it matte or glossy? I'm about to buy my first fountain pen and I was going to buy either the matte charcoal or limited edition petrol colour and I usually prefer matte coloured things. Also let me know which colour you guys prefer as I am quite indecisive of what colour to choose. Thanks guys.

As we all know, LAMY petrol ink is available on April and I love this color very very very very much. Unfortunately, i have run out of budget on buying pen stuff, so i decide to mix this petrol ink. The following is my "product". Please leave a comment and rate my "product" if full mark is 10. If any one have wonderful Petrol ink just post your writing sample on this topic!

Hi folks, Lamy Safari Petrol is here! Fountain pens come with black Fine or Medium nib (feel free to add any Z50/Z52 nibs of course). They have matt finish, just like Dark Lilac pens. There are Roller-balls and Ball-point pens too. Ink comes in T10 cartridges and T52 bottles. Petrol colour is dark teal-green similar to Sailor Miruai. It shows a slight sheen on Tomoe River paper. BTW if you wonder about shipping cost - we use Royal Mail Airmail service for orders outside UK and you can check the cost in the shopping basket before you place the order. Enjoy! Mishka

Dear all, I believe this colour will be a bestseller! Was not really as much excited when I first got the pen, because the colour is a bit darker than on the official pictures, but the more I look at it, the more I love it. Please note the new (updated) convertor. LAMY_SAFARI_2017_PETROL My FLICKR account Kind regards, Jan