2010 Citroen Touch Up Paint (1 OEM Colors)

The 2010 Citroen Vibe

2010 was a strange time-we were all wearing shutter shades, pretending to understand the plot of Inception, and Citroen was busy reinventing itself with the funky DS3 and the sleek C4. While the decade kicked off with a global obsession with grayscale, there was really only one color that truly defined the "modern" Citroen professional: Gris Aluminum Metallic. It was the undisputed king of the fleet, designed to look expensive in a supermarket parking lot while masking the road grime of a three-hour commute. It's a sophisticated, technical silver that says, "I have a panoramic sunroof and I'm not afraid to use it."

Paint Health Check

Welcome to the peak of the Thin Paint Era. By 2010, the bean-counters at the factory had perfected "Robot Efficiency," which is just a fancy way of saying they sprayed your Citroen with layers so thin they're measured in hopes and dreams rather than microns. If you're looking at your hood and see a constellation of tiny white dots, that's "peppering"-stone chips that have punched right through the clear coat because there wasn't enough "meat" to absorb the impact. Worse yet, if your car has spent its life under the relentless sun, you might see the clear coat starting to flake off like a bad sunburn. Once that factory seal is breached, the edges lift faster than a DS3 on a mountain pass.

Restoration Tip

Because we're dealing with factory-thin applications, the "blob and pray" method will not work here. If you try to fill a chip in one heavy pass, you'll end up with a mountain of paint that stands out worse than the damage. Instead, build your layers slowly. Apply a whisper-thin coat of Gris Aluminum, let it flash off, and repeat until the depth matches the surrounding surface. You're trying to mimic a high-precision robot, not frosting a cupcake. Keep your coats light and your patience high; that's how you keep a 2010 survivor looking like it just rolled off the showroom floor in Paris.