True maybe not the worst red ever, but there's a red ND up the street from me and it just looks... unexciting. This is a Miata! The ultimate car of fun! It needs to look the part and maybe I place too high of a value on that. But I won the $2000 Challenge, not with the quickest or nimblest car, but rather with a high concours score, so we all know my priorities.
Other than 1990 white peeling and clearcoat failure on 1994-97 Montego, I've not seen any problems with the durability of Mazda OE paint. It may not be color-sanded coming out of the booth but it lasts.
Have you seen that red ND in the sun? Soul Red is like a Lotus color, it lives for sunlight. Crystal even more so - I think the Miata got it around 2018 or 19.
I had high hopes for the 2018 blue but it was less interesting than expected. Note that there have been at least three blues and some of them are pretty low volume so you may not have seen one. But none of them are Jeep Wrangler level.
I agree it definitely looks better on a sunny day, but it looks like a color that should be on a sporty Cadillac or Buick, not a Miata. Funny you mention that Jeep blue. I was looking up the color code earlier!
Keith Tanner said:I had high hopes for the 2018 blue but it was less interesting than expected.
Agreed. Would love for them to bring back Mariner Blue for the ND.
Unless you plan on keeping the car forever I wouldn't repaint. As others have said doing the job properly (door jambs, truck lid, engine compartment, etc) gets real expensive fast and probably will never be as good as the factory paint. A different color then factory no matter how well done sets off all kinds of alarms with a new buyer should you decide you want to sell. A wrap is probably the only reasonable answer.
Do a Google image search for "ND Miata wrap." There are a lot of good examples. Mariner Blue and British Racing Green look great on the ND.
I think the ND needs a metallic to show off the shape. Mariner is a bright flat primary that suits the NA (and it's my favorite NA color) but I don't think it's right for the ND. Lexus Ultrasonic Blue would be my choice.
Have a look at the Elise palette. It's very similar in surfacing to the ND. They tend to metallics with surprising highlights.
Wrap it. I spent an entire weekend around an E90 M3 similar to Mariner Blue... I thought It was factory, was in and out of the car multiple times. It wasn't until a month later saw the guy at a club meeting and he was talking to someone else about wraps and found out his was wrapped. I assumed his was some factory special edition color or something up until then.
No idea where you're at, but if you want it done well, see VinylTy in San Antonio, TX or This Guys Decals in the Hampton Roads area. Both do incredible work.
No way in hell.
Wrap job all the way.
Sigh...y'all are probably right. Which color would look best for the door seams and under hood on a wrapped car?
Black jambs match everything.
Mazda is such a confusing brand. They're capable of building the most lighthearted, joyful driving cars but their head is shoved so far up their tailpipe on this "premium" push that they only offer their cars in "serious" colors.
If they offered an expanded color palette you could custom order for another $2000 on top I imagine it would be wildly popular and might even push some people looking at a lightly used Miata to purchase new.
In reply to MrFancypants :
If I could get the 21st century version of Mariner Blue from the factory, I would check that box. Definitely for $1000. Maybe even $2000.
MrFancypants said:Mazda is such a confusing brand. They're capable of building the most lighthearted, joyful driving cars but their head is shoved so far up their tailpipe on this "premium" push that they only offer their cars in "serious" colors.
If they offered an expanded color palette you could custom order for another $2000 on top I imagine it would be wildly popular and might even push some people looking at a lightly used Miata to purchase new.
VWAG has/had a deal where, for an extra $4k or $5k, you could order a new car in any color that was ever in their corporate history.
When a certain automotive writer (not John Vanlandingham) ordered a new Audi S5 in lurid green (the one used on the '73 Carrera something-other), the Internet (well, VWVortex) was all up in arms over how he ruined the car's resale value because it was so unusual.
My take is, are you buying the car for yourself, or the next person? And that car also looked absolutely stunning, and well worth the added expense.
In hindsight, it's also amusing to worry about resale value on a German luxobox that is almost guaranteed to lose 90% of its value in a handful of years.
MrFancypants said:Mazda is such a confusing brand. They're capable of building the most lighthearted, joyful driving cars but their head is shoved so far up their tailpipe on this "premium" push that they only offer their cars in "serious" colors.
Have you looked at the colors that Toyota offers on the GT86? There's white, gray, another gray, black, red, and two blues. OK, so they've got one more blue than Mazda does, but it's the same kind of limit.
Manufacturers make cars in colors that get ordered, but dealers place the vast majority of the orders for cars to put on the lot, and it's much easier to sell neutral colors. Someone who likes vibrant colors can usually be talked (grumbilng) into buying a neutral one, but someone who wants a neutral color will never buy a vibrant one. Vibrantly colored cars have a tendency to sit on the lot, which costs dealers money (they're financing the inventory, so they pay interest for every day it's unsold). So dealers only order neutral colors, which means manufacturers generally only bother to make neutral ones.
Pete. (l33t FS) said:When a certain automotive writer ordered a new Audi S5 in lurid green (the one used on the '73 Carrera something-other), the Internet (well, VWVortex) was all up in arms over how he ruined the car's resale value because it was so unusual.
It's called "Audi Exclusive" and it tends to add resale value (although probably not by as much as it costs). While neutral colors are all the rage when cars are new, vibrant ones are usually more popular on used cars. Look at all the silver E46s that were sold, but now everyone wants Laguna Seca Blue.
The most bizzare one I've seen though, is someone who bought an Audi Exclusive S6 in... beige. 1995 Camry beige. WTF dude??? You could have had it in Nogaro Blue instead:
(I really shoulda unfolded the mirrors before taking this shot)
In reply to codrus (Forum Supporter) :
Nitro Yellow was only made for six months of Neon production, if I do recall right. It was a halo color, meant to get people to go "ooh" and "ahh", even if they went home in a beige or blue or white-soon-to-be-bare-metal Neon.
This, for reference, was Nitro Yellow.
It's not easy being green, I guess.
Pete. (l33t FS) said:This, for reference, was Nitro Yellow.
Yeah, that's not even really vibrant. I like yellow cars that are YELLOW -- sunburst Miatas or CYM FDs, hell even Solar Yellow Ram pickups.
You've got to REALLY like yellow to have that much of it though. :) (This is an image I found off the net, it's not mine)
SVreX (Forum Supporter) said:No way I would do it.
If the color choices are a common complaint among Miata buyers, I'd wait a year or 2. They will fix it.
The ND is entering year 6!of production and Mazda has offered exactly 1 (one) fun color besides red which was the low volume orange anniversary car.
So, doubt.
RE: op- just wrap it, resale value is one very real application for wraps.
An aside. One of my friends was building an absolutely crazy Audi Fox (not a typo) and was going over his various paint options. He wanted green, I forget if it was the car's original 70s looked-like-art-deco darkish green, or something incredibly bright. What he discovered was that yellow pigment made the paint astronomically expensive. I forget the numbers but if you told me that bright green would have doubled the cost of paint, I wouldn't be surprised.
This MAY have something to do with modern understated color options.
This may also be why, say. when I was playing with the Camaro configurator, things like bumblebee stripes were an absurdly high additional extra. Thy may have figured that most people going for them would be going for yellow/black, because it's a Camaro so of course you can't have plain yellow, so they were hoping to hide the yellow costs in the stripe option.
I can tell you that the Chrome Orange used on the Elise (and my Locost) is eye-wateringly expensive. I belive Krypton Green was the same. I don't know if it's the pigments or what, but man am I glad I didn't have to paint a large car with it.
I used to have a Jazz Blue Golf - only made for about 6 months as a regular model, then it disappeared until the R32 came out. Which really messed with people, as nobody remembered the short run of the halo color. I sold it to a friend, when he went to sell it nobody believed it was real. Had to get that car trucked in from Quebec to grab one in GL trim with manual windows, but my first new car, I got what I wanted.
Mazda's done a few halo colors on the Miata, too. Evolution Orange/Gold was an intro color for the NB. There was a crazy yellow to introduce the NC. Both quite limited. By the time the ND rolled around, the idea of an intro color was "red with a tan interior and we'll deliver it before anyone else gets one". Seriously, we had to wait for our ceramic mica (which is a very interesting color but not vibrant) to be delivered even though we picked it up at the docks. Had to hand out the Launch Editions...
codrus (Forum Supporter) said:MrFancypants said:Mazda is such a confusing brand. They're capable of building the most lighthearted, joyful driving cars but their head is shoved so far up their tailpipe on this "premium" push that they only offer their cars in "serious" colors.
Have you looked at the colors that Toyota offers on the GT86? There's white, gray, another gray, black, red, and two blues. OK, so they've got one more blue than Mazda does, but it's the same kind of limit.
Manufacturers make cars in colors that get ordered, but dealers place the vast majority of the orders for cars to put on the lot, and it's much easier to sell neutral colors. Someone who likes vibrant colors can usually be talked (grumbilng) into buying a neutral one, but someone who wants a neutral color will never buy a vibrant one. Vibrantly colored cars have a tendency to sit on the lot, which costs dealers money (they're financing the inventory, so they pay interest for every day it's unsold). So dealers only order neutral colors, which means manufacturers generally only bother to make neutral ones.
I understand that, and for a Mazda6 or a Camry, I get it. But I just can't believe that there are so few people who would gravitate towards a bright yellow or bright red Miata, BRZ, or GT86 that they shouldn't even try.
The 500 Racing Orange 30th anniversary Miatas sent to the US sold out in four hours. There is definitely an appetite for sports cars in bright colors. Maybe most of them should still be sold in drab colors, but there's definitely enough demand to warrant a few more options run in limited numbers.
Audi exclusive is @$4500 now for any color in their portfolio. For $8k they will paint it any color you want. Porsche has it, BMW too. It can get crazy. I know of a 7 series Bmw that has over $90k of the "Bmw individual" options. The a/c vents are wrapped in leather.
When I ordered my Elise from factory new my options I had narrowed down to were:
-Krypton green
-chrome orange
-chilli red (orangish red with gold flakes)
all werelifestyle paint. And extra $. I went chilli. Regret it today still 12 years later. Should have gone krypton green
Jason painted his brand new CTR to yellow
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