hi,
I just got my wife a 65 convertible, 200ci. It's red but not suposed to be. Acording to the plate it started life as Caspian blue w/ blue and white int.
We are going to paint it and put new seats, but the question is do we take it back to the blue (we dont want) or paint it the color we do want.
I have no plans to sell this car so I'm personaly not concerned that the codes don't match as long as it looks good. My wife is nervous about resale value but if were not selling it who cares?
Are we realy screwing ourselves if we go with a new color?
any advice will help.

 

I say paint it whatever color you want. It's your car. My friend has a 66 vert and painted it candy brandy wine. Not the original color, but it looks damn nice. if your not gonna sell it, then who cares. Even if you do go to sell it I'm sure you wont have a hard time as long as it is clean. Good luck.

 

take it down to metal. A car that old will have some cancer that needs to be excised. You can't see but maybe 10% of any rust that's there until the paint is all gone. It's a little more work and a little more expensive but it's worth it.

Besides... modern acrylic paints and the older style oil based and laquer paints are different in a lot of ways (thickess, density, expansion rate, etc..). I'd be worried about bubbling from cycling temps especially in hot climates like out here in california if you don't get all the old stuff scraped off.

Resale value as an "original" was lost the minute it was painted the first time. Stripping it down and painting it the factory color would probably go under the restoration heading and wouldn't hurt the value at all.. hell it'd likely help it if the rest of the car is decently accurate and original.