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> - old paint is usually faded. You can have a color spectrometer match the
> color on the car, but why?
> - A good body man can fade/sand the new paint into the old paint. This may
> or not be noticable depending on how off the two colors are.
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When I was doing body work in high school, we were working on a teacher's
white TR7, which had been somewhat crumpled in the front. We got everything
set to rights, but the white paint was weathered and such and it didn't
appear we could match it- we (the students) just assumed that we were going
to have to paint the whole car.

The instructor brought in this old (I mean old) buddy of his. The guy had a
quart of the 'matching' factory white paint that they used on the car to
begin with, and several quarts of various other colors of the same kind of
base paint.

He opens up the white, puts a dot on the car with the end of his finger and
stares at it a second. It stands out clearly; he wipes it off. He puts a
drop of yellow, a drop of black, two drops of blue, one of purple in the
white paint and mixes it up. I think he's nuts. Puts another drop on the
car. We were amazed at the difference, but he wasn't happy with it and wiped
it off. Kept doing it over again, about five, six times- we were saying
things like 'no way you get any closer than that...'- picture about twelve
teenage boys leaning over this guy watching this. After the last mix he put
several dots around the car and they just disappeared.

One of the guys shot the car and feathered it in and I would have bet my
life that Superman couldn't have told you where the old paint ended and the
new paint began.

You don't need fancy gewgaws, you need old guys with magic (also known as
experience).

Cya,
Robert