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A medium blue metallic is always a good color. I personally don't care for Black, but some guys do. That year yellow is nice. Taxi yellow is kind of obnoxious (later years). Personal choice. Do a google Image search for your year corvette and look through the different color cars.
It's actually quite a bit more work to change a car's color and you really need to remove door gaskets, headlight trim and do all the jambs and out the the way areas. People expect a corvette to be done up 'right' not short-cutted. But I'm sure you've already given this thought.
I always liked the atomic orange vettes so when I bought my badly beat up 74 with british racing green paint bubling up all over and blistering off I figured since it was already repainted multiple times I would paint it a color I like vs the one year corvette grey on the tag... I'm glad I did, there I times I wish I had more of a low key color but those times are few and far between. I think it came out pretty good for a $700 paint job done at home in the garage especially with all the body work I had to learn how to do.
Last edited by augiedoggy; May 10, 2020 at 07:50 PM.
i think silver is the best colour.
base/clear. done right nothing looks better!
Especially if it matches the trim tag, sorta. I'd prefer an improved version of the "correct" color to an incorrect original color. I'd love a chrome-bumper car in a more modern silver, like mid-2000 Pontiac Graystone Metallic.
My 79 has a Black 19 tag and a more modern black with very fine metallic flake that you can only see in sunlight. Looks amazing when clean.
Good luck - this is the actual fun stuff. 100% personal preference at the end of the day - the C3's you oggled over since youth before now being CEO of your own is probably unique; hence your own tastes.
i have a 75. med saddle metallic. prev owner butchered the very rare neutral interior by replacing seats and door panels with med saddle. med saddle is a nice interior color. but as paint it looks just like root beer barrel candy. no way it is staying this color. what color is your interior? or is it intended to be changed to?
Just imagine the hours spent by the GM corvette design team in selecting the colors that best suited the 73 and complemented the new urethane front bumper in hopes of its acceptance by the corvette faithful. I would be hesitant to stray away from the colors offered when it was new. I like my 73 coupe in blue.
Check out the Steel Cities Gray !
In certain light it almost has a green tint to it !
Other times it looks like black metallic!
Its really gonna depend on what you like ultimately!
Steel Cities Gray is such a classy color
Last edited by Douglas Mariani; May 12, 2020 at 10:13 AM.
When I was getting ready to paint my 1981 C3 I came to the same point as you ...and hadn't settled on a color. All along I had been planning on Yellow, but red also seemed sort of "ok". Blue was my 3rd choice, or maybe a custom color. Having restored a lot of different vehicles over the years, I've personally painted cars/trucks/street rods all manner of colors, most of them not the original color. I was kind of stuck for about a month trying to decide what color to go with on the 81. My car was also factory painted silver. Silver wasn't tops on my list. A non-original color wasn't going to affect value in my case.
After scouring internet pictures, driving through car lots, and attending a Bloomington Gold event, here's how my decision went: I came to realize that, while I liked Yellow (and my wife was REALLY gunning for yellow), it seemed to me I liked it better on other people's cars and thought I'd get bored with it in a couple years, and maybe even grow to dislike it. Black ..I've owned several black cars, it wasn't high up on my list -- hard to keep clean too. Red is cliché but I could live with it if I went that direction. White looked good, but lower on the list. At the end of the day I decided Silver. It was original, showed off the C3 lines well, and would be a color I could live with and enjoy. Bill Mitchell always thought silver was the ideal color for Corvettes as it showed off the lines well. If you look, a lot of prototypes are silver. Maybe he was on to something?? [I'm not advocating any particular color for you]
At the end of the day, keep looking at different examples and thinking about the various factors guys have listed in previous posts. Listen to your gut, not what others think. Once you settle on a color, don't second-guess yourself.
Especially if it matches the trim tag, sorta. I'd prefer an improved version of the "correct" color to an incorrect original color. I'd love a chrome-bumper car in a more modern silver, like mid-2000 Pontiac Graystone Metallic.
