[Hoodshaker]

Curious which way AMX guy decided to go. I was selling new Pontiacs back in 1998 when Sport Gold Metallic was available for one year only on the new LS1 powered F-bodies. I loved the color enough that I had my '79 repainted in it (cheaply-1 day Paint and Body) I don't think you can go wrong with it unless you're going hard on originality, which doesn't seem to be the case/

My current Solar Gold car was repainted back in 2010 or so by a mouse-house of a "resto" shop I had it at in OC Ca. Long story, but I had no place to work on it at home and it had some rust issues beyond my skills and tools at the time. 2 years of lies later i had to rescue the car and most of it's parts before the shop closed and the owner skipped town.

Fast forward to present day and I've been back on the project for a couple years now and I'm getting to where I want to finish/touchup the paint. My research has led me to believe the following, some of which has been noted in this thread, but I have one additional point i don't think has been detailed out.

1. For 78-81 There were two different Solar Gold paint formulas and two different color order codes-first 50, for 78 and 79, then 57 for 80 and 81
2. As Aus78Formula has noted, code 55 was an accent, not a full body color
3 Now here's the kicker in 1979-color code 50 appears to have have been used for both formulations, the old and the new, with a VIN breakpoint of 9N120872 and under (first formulation)- and 9L125958 and over (new formulation) There's a 5k or so gap there, so perhaps the color was paused for a few weeks for the changeover? That's fairly early in the MY I believe. One source-https://paintref.com/cgi-bin/colorco...r=1979&rows=50

I think we can all see where this added gasoline to the fire...one color code with two different formulations and shades, within the same model year...

My current '79 was built before that, and therefore would have had the original 1978 formulation, I ordered up both formulations and did some spray outs and surprise!-neither one matched, which I chalk up the the mouse-house I referenced above. I've gone back and forth on doing a full repaint in the original proper shade or maybe even doing Sport Gold Metallic from '98 again, but at this time I've decided to what Steve mentioned-bring in a flare to have the (in my case non original) Gold color-matched and do my touchups and blending with that. I'll save a full paint job for another day.