Why aren't there more "paint to match" cars out there?

I went with a standard color because I liked it. I guess I'm not that picky.

I briefly considered paying extra to have my car painted Swaters Blue instead of TdF, but after spending quite a bit of time scrutinizing the paint samples, I couldn't tell the difference.

 

Service has been offered to customers since the 50's. Many colors on factory roster have a customer's name attached to them.
They did custom color for me, it slows down build by a lot. My first color had a pigment called Xirallic in it, and they couldn't match it after 3 tries. I was annoyed, but had a backup plan. You need to include a "whatever price" for some of us morons in your poll. I didn't care what it cost. 10k doesn't get you much with the boys.
People seem to be ordering it more, more customization, especially on 599. Far more than the stuff in the 612 program is available, you just need to be VERY specific, have a reasonable knowledge of Italian, and not ask price until they tell you. You may not like it that way, but that's how it is. They were actually cheaper than I expected, I neglected to make them aware of that fact
Custom color for resale? Probably helps as long as it isn't weird combo. Here's a pic of my car in final prep area at factory they sent me for approval with a ton of other pics. Nice thing about Extracampionario is you get lots more in build pics than with the little book.
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Porsche used to do this way back in the old 911 T-E-S days.

There were two options, actually - there was a book of "special colors" which cost about $300 extra. These came with a touch-up can of about a pint of the actual paint match...Porsche was afraid that they might not be able to provide an exact match later on such low volume paint. My 911T 1972 (silver metallic) was one of these.

The second option was really a "paint to match". You supplied a sample and they would go to the ends of the earth to match it. This was astronomically expensive - maybe about $1500 back in the seventies - a time when a pretty well-optioned 911 was less than $10,000. Also, the factory sent out a Germanically bossy notice that this paint "was not under any sort of warranty, implied or otherwise."

I think that with both Porsche and Ferrari, the wide range of standard colors, the time for delivery, plus the high cost, pretty much limits this nowadays.

 

Few people buy a Ferrari and 'keep it forever'....they're eventually resold, and cars of factory-standard colors are much easier to move. They don't call it 'Resale-Red' for nothing, ya know....although the factory goes to great pains to provide colors that best-reflect the lines of the car. If you go the custom-route, there's no telling if your custom color will 'work' with the lines of the car until you see it in person. If you ever decide to sell the car, you'll have to find another stooge out there who likes their Ferrari in the hue of 'Burnt Fuschia' or 'Whispy Willow'....

 

Porsche still does it..........it takes an extra 3 months however. Rough cost is $6K for most colors to sample and $15K for Pearl White.

They will often refuse up front to do some metallic paint to sample colors due to the large amount of plastic on their current product, the compaint from them being that the paint does not match well (the paint looking different on a plastic panel next to the same paint on a metal one) however, if you push hard enough, and tell them to send the car to Exclusiv.......along with the phrase "cost be damned", they will still do whatever you want.....and it takes 6 months.

 

I guess colors like bianco fuji and rosso scuderia are 10+k premium colors, so, don't they mean non-standard too?

 

Interesting story:

I ordered an e46M3 in a special color, "silverstone grey" I think, and after about three weeks they notified me that they couldn't do it because we were too close the infamous "Europe shuts down for August" date.

So I cancelled the order, I already had an e46 M3 anyway.



Jay