2013 Mazda Touch Up Paint (27 OEM Colors)

The 2013 Mazda Vibe

Ah, 2013. The year Mazda decided to stop playing it safe and launched the "KODO" design language, giving us curves that actually made a CX-5 or a Mazda3 look like they were moving while parked. It was a peak year for the zoom-zoom brand, with the rowdy Mazdaspeed3 still tearing up asphalt and the MX-5 holding it down for the purists. Our database is rocking 30 colors from this vintage, and while the world was drowning in a sea of grayscale-think Aluminum Metallic and Meteor Gray Pearl-Mazda was busy trying to perfect the art of the "look-at-me" finish. They gave us outliers like the radioactive Spirited Green Metallic and the debut of the legendary Soul Red Tricoat, a color so deep it looked like you could reach into the door panel and touch the bottom.

Paint Health Check

Welcome to the Thin Paint Era. By 2013, the robots in Hiroshima were masters of "efficiency," which is code for spraying the absolute minimum amount of clear coat required to survive the boat ride over. While 1990s clear coat would peel off in sheets like a bad sunburn, 2013 paint is a different beast: it's brittle. If you own a 2013 Mazda, your hood probably looks like it's been through a gravel storm. The clear coat is remarkably thin-often less than 2 mils-meaning it doesn't have much "give" when a pebble hits it at 70 mph. Instead of a small dent, you get a sharp, localized chip that goes straight to the primer. If you're rocking Soul Red or Crystal White Pearl, you're dealing with complex multi-stage finishes that are gorgeous but notoriously "chip-happy."

Restoration Tip

When you're repairing a 2013, you have to fight the urge to "blob and go." Because this factory paint is so thin, a big thick drop of touch-up paint will stand out like a sore thumb. Build your layers slowly. Apply a tiny amount of color, let it shrink and dry, and then repeat until the level is just below the surface. This era's metallic and pearl finishes rely on the way light hits the flakes, so if you dump a giant bead of paint in there, the flakes will "drown" and the color will look too dark. Patience is the only way to match that robot-precise factory thinness without making your Mazda6 look like it has the measles.