2015 Mazda Touch Up Paint (12 OEM Colors)

The 2015 Mazda Vibe

2015 was the year Mazda decided to stop making "appliances" and started making "art" with their Kodo design language. Whether you were tossing a MX-5 into a corner or hauling the kids in a CX-9 or Mazda6, these cars looked like they were moving even when parked at a red light. We've got 15 colors in the vault from this year-a decent spread for an era when most manufacturers were allergic to anything that wasn't a shade of concrete. While Soul Red Tricoat was the undisputed heavyweight champion of the showroom floor, plenty of folks were smart enough to rock Titanium Flash Pearl or the underrated Blue Reflex Pearl Metallic. It was a good year for style, provided you could keep the road from eating your hood alive.

Paint Health Check

Welcome to The Thin Paint Era. By 2015, the robots at the factory had become entirely too "efficient" for their own good. They learned how to stretch a gallon of clear coat across a whole fleet of Mazda3s, leaving you with a finish that's gorgeous but about as thick as a whisper. The reality? These modern high-solids clear coats are brittle. If a pebble so much as looks at your CX-5 the wrong way on the highway, you're looking at a chip. If you haven't touched it up yet, I'd bet my best spray gun that your front bumper looks like it's been through a meteor shower.

Restoration Tip

When you're fixing a chip on a 2015 factory finish, do not-I repeat, do not-just blob a giant drop of paint into the hole and walk away. Because the original factory paint is so thin, a "one-and-done" glob will sit higher than the surrounding clear coat and look like a zit on a prom queen. Build your layers slowly. Apply a tiny amount, let it flash off, and repeat until you're just a hair below the surface. This isn't a 1970s lacquer job where you can just dump it on; show some finesse and the repair will actually disappear.