This car looks nice enough...

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Fiat-Coup...t=Automobiles_UK&hash=item27bd7da5e4

Interior and engine bay look very clean, as does the bodywork, but it looks 3 different colours in the pictures. I know red has a tendancy to fade but do you think this has had paint as from the side each panel looks a different shade?

Could this be mopped to bring it to a closer match or will it need a respray?


Dan

Red is a bitch for looking crap under diffent light and light angles. My body work was very good for its age but I couldn't stand seeing at least 3 diffent shades at the same time, so I got it resprayed. From my experiance mopping red wont make any diffence to the shades.

Looks like it's had paint, but as Carlt used to say, so have 90% of coupés. Red is awful for showing up colour variations! A mop won't do squat either. For that money I'd walk away.

Could be a straight car but just seen too much sun in places? However at that price I'd want it all sorted and in reality I'd prob walk and find another as stated above.

It does look like it's had a bit of paint, but i completely agree with you Kenny, at that price it should sorted. I guess it would explain why it's been up for sale for months now.

As said above , various panels have been resprayed most likely as a result of fade.

most cars on the road have had some bodywork some severe which will never appear on hpi as not a write off. Some cars are touched up before they even get to the showroom as result of transportation damage.

I thought red was notorious for damage to the pigment due to it being so far down the U/V spectrum? So sun light will tend to fade badly, then there is oxidisation
This is exacerbated by it being put over a white primer, which is why it tends to go pink.

I found this which seems plausible:

"To understand why red paint fades faster than other colours, it's important to understand the physics and chemistry of what's happening. Firstly the simple (and correct) answer - "red paint works harder, and fades faster".

Firstly understand how colour works. White paint reflects all colours relatively equally, and probably lasts the longest. Non-white cars absorb some colours and reflect others. A rainbow is made when white light is split up into its individual colours. We know violet is the shortest wavelength and red is the longest wavelength.

Secondly, shorter wavelengths have more energy and violet light is more energetic than red. As red paint absorbs all the more energetic wavelength of light, and other colours less so, then clearly red paint will fade fastest.

All things being equal, black paint should fade the most because it's absorbing all the colours that red is, AND it's absorbing red too. However, here's where the chemistry comes in, I'm going to speculate that black paint has a lot of black pigment derived from carbon-black, which is a relatively stable product (carbon, graphite, diamond, all the same thing, and all pretty stable!). Red pigment is almost certainly less stable than black pigments and this is also a contributory factor to red fade syndrome."