Anyone had to have paint work on their WVB? Did it match? I'm curious because I just had some work done and it did not match - the body shop owner said the color is impossible to match. So am I stuck with a two-tone car?

 

Any color is impossible to match, even black. New paint work needs to be "blended" to older painted areas. "Blend" or "blending" is a term that means the new paint is is gradually applied lighter toward old paint as it covers older paint making it more difficult for people to see where new and old paint meet.

I'm not sure what type of work was done to your Mustang but if you body shop painted panels only and stopped where one panel meets another he likely did a half @ss job. You will always see difference in the hue or metal flake suspended in the paint.

 

They did blend onto the door, bumper cover, and hood. But the color isn't even close.

 

My quarter window louvers were a dead on match. I had a painter in the dealership paint shop do it. I went to an auto repair shop for my hood and it wasn't a dead on match and I'm somewhat disappointed. They blended into my fenders and tiger-striped them too. It's faint but I notice it every time I wash the car. I then got into a fenderbender where front and back bumpers and my chin spoiler had to be repainted by a different auto repair shop. It was a dead on match....as far as I can tell.

It's true that matching is hard and blending often necessary. No doubt some colors are harder to match than others too. But the painter should take his time preparing and testing the new paint to ensure a close match. You shouldn't be far off. From your description I'd get a few professional opinions and then go back to the place that painted it and demand it be repaired. Sometimes they paint under florescent light. Nothing is quite like daylight.

 

I just had a new rear bumper painted by a local shop and it was dead on. I brought the car to the shop on a really sunny day and they bought out about 6+ different paint samples of Windveil blue and walk around the car and finally narrowed it down to one colour.They gave me a warning about bumpers not matching the rest of the car, but it matched perfectly.

Here is a picture