[Piwoslaw]

Originally Posted by Christ

Not alot of people believe this, but paint color codes don't really mean much to a paint shop. They're there for the use of the factory and the dealer when determining what type of pre-mixed paint to use to touch up "issues" with the original paint, but on average, paint shops and the like don't have access to those paint codes or the exact mixtures they denote, so while the paint code can help them with the name of the color, or perhaps a close approximation of the shade, it's not likely to do much else.

The place I got paint for my mods had something like 4-5 fat catalogs with paint codes. In fact, for many codes, including mine, there where a few different samples. This is because paint jobs from different factories were never the same. Once we knew the code we could narrow the choice down to a few samples, so we went out to the car and compared. If you have access to some kind of optical sampling device then that would be even better.

Originally Posted by Christ

In some cases, you can buy OE paint from a dealer. However, with older vehicles where that color has been discontinued, it's not likely that they'll still stock it, and even more unlikely that they'll release the formulation for the mix.

And even less likely that your paint hasn't faded since then...