Seal Gray Rattle Can Paint Doesn't Match
 

I took on restoring my hood and deck lid due to advancing clear coat sun damage. I got the custom color from paintscratch.com. The result was a close match in color but the new paint had much larger metal flakes than the old, which has more of a pearl metallic appearance. See original on the left and respray on the right below.

Has anyone gotten a good match for seal gray?

When I worked for my brother-in-law's auto body and paint shop when I was in high school and college, we bought our paint from Industrial Finishes (industrialfinishes.com), which is based in Eugene, Oregon but has branches across the country. If you provide the manufacturer's paint code, they guarantee their paint will be a precise match. Next time I'm down in Eugene I'm going to drop by there and pick up some Artic Silver for touchups.

Today I learned a lot about auto paint as went to a autobody paint supplier and also to a recommended professional auto painter..

The painter saw right away the effect that the sun has on the paint, this car spent 8 years basking on the SoCal weather and was very easy to notice which side of the car had the sun shinning longer during the days (the car was a 2004 Mazdaspeed (Miata) with 46k miles that I got as a gift from a family member) with a pearl red color that was available only during '04 and '05 for their Mazdaspeed limited production run..

To make a long story short, it will cost a lot of money to (properly) paint that car back to it's original glory

I’d have said it’s always going to be very hard to match up a complex metallic like seal grey (my 986 S is seal grey) with a rattle can. To put it into context one of Nissans main global plants is near us so whenever they make a new investment it’s in the local news. The recent Duke paint line cost £100m or in dollars $120m. That’s putting the paint on “factory”. A rattle can is never going to compete with that. Solid colours one can get closer but even then I paid £600 for a local spray shop to match the Mazda Soul Red on my mx5 on two wings.