2016 Subaru Touch Up Paint (24 OEM Colors)

The 2016 Subaru Vibe

Welcome to 2016, the year Subaru decided every suburban driveway needed to look like a basecamp for a Himalayan expedition. Whether you were carving canyons in a WRX or pretending a dirt parking lot was "off-roading" in your Crosstrek, the color palette was doing the heavy lifting. With 24 colors in our database, Subaru was really feeling themselves. We saw the rise of the "earthy" aesthetic with Desert Khaki and Wilderness Green Metallic, balanced out by the punch-in-the-mouth vibrancy of Hyper Blue and the legendary World Rally Blue 2 Tricoat. It was a good year for variety, but a tough year for the front bumpers.

Paint Health Check

Here's the cold, hard truth from the spray booth: we are deep in the Thin Paint Era. By 2016, those factory robots had perfected the art of "efficiency," which is just a polite way of saying they applied your Crystal Black Silica or Lapis Blue with the thickness of a soap bubble. This era of Subaru paint is notoriously soft. If a pebble so much as looks at your Forester the wrong way on the highway, you're going to find a fresh crater. The clear coat is beautiful when it's fresh, but it's brittle; it doesn't absorb impacts-it just shatters. If you haven't seen a "peppered" hood on a 2016 Outback by now, you aren't looking close enough.

Restoration Tip

Because this factory finish is so thin, the biggest mistake you can make is trying to fix a chip with one giant, hanging blob of paint. Build layers slowly; don't blob it. If you drop a heavy bead of paint into a chip, it's going to shrink as it dries, leaving a divot that looks like a belly button. Instead, use a fine-tip applicator to apply a thin "skin" of color. Let it dry, then add another. You want to build the repair up until it's just a hair lower than the surrounding clear coat before you seal it. Patience is the only way to beat the robots.