i have a 86 IROC that when i removed the interior ,all the metal inside is ....copper metallic?? now i bought a 86 camaro sales brochure and that particular color was not supposed to have been offered that year on van nuys built cars as mine is .the car has had a very thourough pro repaint .in black some long time ago somebody went to rediculous lengths to paint it too. AND i have read that any car built in calif. was recalled and repainted any color BUT copper metallic. can any one straighten this mystery out for me?? as a side note i have read that only 52 camaros from calif. were painted that shade in the year 86. id really like to know something more concrete if i may. any one know?

 

I doubt GM would offer free color changes when having to repaint a car due to clearcoat failure as this would be VERY costly to do right, particularly when GM was already shelling out probably $1500-3000 just for a same color repaint.

Apparently there were just 2 Copper 1986 Camaros built, according to the Camaro White Book. Chances of your car being one of the two (or even that one of the two still exists) are slim. Nonetheless, it seems that half of the older cars that I see that are now Black used to be a very undesirable color (usually a green, blue, or in this case copper/brown).

Perhaps some photos of the copper body would help stir up this thread?

 

as soon as i figure out how to post pics of my car i will.no telling who paid to have the car pro painted black however the insides are that weird copper color.and i have no way to tell how it was constructed originally .it has a lot of options that SEEM to point to it being a IROC however without the console sticker .its anybodys guess unfortunately

 

I don't think GM paid for many, but IIrc dealers sometimes did it at their cost for various incentives from GM. Esp those 86 cars that were peeling off in the first year.

 

The only person I knew that got a repaint had an '86 car, the deep blue. They had it repainted in '93. My '87 desperately needed a repaint at that time, but I was apparently not as smooth a talker. No dice for me.

 

It's possible the color is the dark red metallic that was very common. In certain lighting, the color could look brown and in other lighting, it looks copper depending on the metal flake.

 

I can only imagine how many millions GM blew on repainting people's cars. My mother's 89 RS was repainted when it was about a year old. GM had a much higher market share and sold more cars back then...I cannot imagine what it cost.

 

Not sure how much they spent, but I know they didn't pay top dollar to get the car repaired correctly. I knew the body shop authorized to work on acid rain damaged cars in NJ. Many dealers applied a pin stripe to the car and the shop repainted only above the pinstripe line creating a hard edge if the stripe was ever removed. I also know that the local dealer here didn't get reimbursed for repainting my Monte Carlo in 2005. The car had solvent popping on the hood, roof and trunk and rear 1/4s. They wanted to repaint the hood, roof, trunk and quarters and blend into the doors and front fenders. I told the body shop manager that it would be easier to repaint the entire car than it would be to blend. He agreed. The car was torn down and repainted the correct way. GM didn't reimburse him for much of the work because they only authorized blending. They also required that he tape off window trim, door handles, etc and not remove them like a professional shop would. Because he did it the correct way, GM only paid for about 1/2 the work.

I'm sure they did the same quality of repairs back in the 90s.

 

They didn't even have to spray the car the correct color, just something close. I had an '88 Celebrity that I had bought from the original owners, the car was originally a dark metallic gray (similar to, if not the same as '88 Camaro) and it was repainted at the dealer in the very early 90's. They painted it a slightly lighter color of gray, and wrote a new paint code on the SPID.

Actually, thinking about it, I had another one with the pinstripe deal. It was a '89 Celebrity (also dark gray) that had pinstripe added and repainted from the stripe up. I don't know when it was done, but after several years the defective primer was letting the paint fall off of the sides of the car.

In short, there couldn't have been any set rules on how the car was supposed to be repaired. Except I agree that complete color changes were not done for free.