GR86 Analysis paralysis - colour choice

[Jayware33]

I was set on either red or white until I seen red in person, it wasn’t for me, I seen lots of swirls as I did on darker colours. White was what I ordered but hearing the difficulty of getting an accurate colour match in future is putting me off. Would anyone strongly advise against white for this reason? Is it a difficult colour to match against? I’m very OCD in nature too, so would worry I’d get too obsessed in scrutinising future repairs.

Silver or grey would be my next bet as I can still change my colour choice.

 

[Hachi-roku]

Silver isn’t known to be easy to match either from memory. Personally I would say the biggest factor with any paint repairs is the quality of the body shop doing the work. That will have a far bigger impact on how close a match you’ll get in most instances given how the sector as a whole seem poor to average at best with respect to the work they turn out.

I’d blame the bulk of work being insurance repairs on family runabouts for non car people. They see it as a tool rather than a hobby or an item they’re emotionally invested in so outside of blatant sanding marks or runs they likely won’t notice a list of imperfections closer scrutiny will uncover. As a result it’s not in the interest of the body shop to do anything over and above a quick/poor job and get the car out of the door and the invoice paid by the insurer.

 

[jimgreen83]

I have a Pearl White GT86 that needed a bit of paintwork a few years ago through insurance (accident on the other side of road but it was hit by debris). It took the paint shop 3 tries, this shop was part of a large group that sells Toyota and Lexus so should have been used to their Pearl White.

This put me off the colour this time round however I do feel a lot is down to the shop used as a car shouldn’t come out looking like this:

 

[GR86GRY]

I’m very OCD in nature too, so would worry I’d get too obsessed in scrutinising future repairs.

Silver or grey would be my next bet as I can still change my colour choice.

As the owner of 2 Pearl White cars ...that are different colours.... Based on your statement above I'd get silver, or if you're super worried, the grey.

All great options!

I love the white, especially as it's a Japanese sports car etc, but would have probably chosen silver if I wasn't moving out of a silver car

 

[Conscript]

Are you the guy who posted a similar question on one of the Facebook groups? If so I think I replied yesterday.

I had a pearl white GT86, and yes, being a pearlescent finish, it could be very expensive to repair. As I understand, there's about three separate layers that need to be applied over a large area to ensure a good, blended colour match. This means that spot repairs are often impossible; I remember I had some damage on the rear wheel arch, but the car had to be painted all the way along the door to get the match right. It looked great when done; but it is something to be wary of. You can't easily do spot repairs. Luckily, the few times I had bodywork repaired, it was done by good places who knew what they were doing, so I never had any issues with the colour not matching - but it did cost a fair whack when I had to pay for it myself.

That said, in the sunshine, the pearl finish looked fantastic, and much less bland than most white cars, almost a slight cream colour to it. I went for electric blue this time, primarily as I actually wanted a non-monochrome colour this time, but given the above, I am glad that the blue is a flat colour finish this time.

 

[ZN8]

Choose what you like the look of the best, not the practicality of having a matching repair, which you might not ever need. Unless the car is painted in Ronseal you can mess up any of the colours. There are too many variables in spraying to get it to match the robot from the factory. I have seen 4 swatches of BMW interlagos blue using the same paint codes, from 2 different manufacturers, sprayed at different angle and all 4 were different, I got asked which one do you think is right? Who knows.

 

[paulR]

I originally ordered my GR in metallic black, firstly because I thought it looked great in the pictures and secondly to save myself a few quid and offset the price rise! However, having seen some photos on here of silver ones I’ve now changed the colour to silver. When I phoned Toyota they said they were accepting colour changes until the beginning of July. Because of the black wheels I think the car looks better in the lighter colours, I did consider sapphire blue but that can look quite dark in certain light. Stunning in sunlight I should imagine though.

 

[jb1750]

Here’s a not very exciting pic of my Ice Silver. I think it gives a really good impression of the actual shade / tone
It also shows that the car is pretty low key in day-to-day life (which is fine by me) and probably isn’t even noticeable to non-car folk..?