1997 Citroen Touch Up Paint (1 OEM Colors)

The 1997 Citroen Vibe

1997 was the sweet spot of French eccentricity. You had the Xantia floating over speed bumps like they didn't exist, the XM looking like a spaceship from a low-budget sci-fi, and the Saxo giving every teenager in Europe ideas they shouldn't have had. In our database, we've boiled the era down to the one true survivor: Blanc (Blanc Banquise). While other manufacturers were busy experimenting with teals and magentas that aged about as well as room-temperature brie, Citroen's white was the professional's choice-clean, sharp, and designed to hide the fact that your hydropneumatic suspension might be sweating a little LHM fluid.

Paint Health Check

Welcome to the heart of The Peeling Era. By 1997, the factory was leaning hard into clear coat technology, but let's just say the "adhesion" part of the equation hadn't quite been perfected. If your Citroen has been sitting out in the sun, you're likely seeing the dreaded "dandruff"-that white, flaky delamination where the clear coat decides it's no longer on speaking terms with the base color. Once that clear starts to lift, moisture creeps underneath like a spy, and before you know it, you've got "sunburn" patches on the roof and hood that no amount of wax can fix.

Restoration Tip

The golden rule for 1997 paint: Seal the edges or lose the panel. If you spot a stone chip on that Blanc finish, don't wait until the weekend to fix it. These late-90s clear coats are brittle; once air and water get a foothold under the clear, the delamination will spread like a crack in a windshield. Use a solvent-based touch-up to seal the chip immediately. This "bridges" the gap between the base and the clear, locking the layers together and stopping the "peel" before it turns into a full-blown respray project.