Smart Paint Codes

Mod Description

Is your smart wearing its original panels? Want to find out smart's code for your particular panel colour? acknowledgement to The Almost Invisible Man

Mod Details

PremiumNo Difficulty Mod ID635 CreditVarious For Linkhttps://www.evilution.co.uk/mod/smart-paint-codes.htm Copy to Clipboard

For tables of panel colours by year click here!

Did you buy your smart secondhand and think the panels have been changed?
Want to know what colour the original panels were?
Or did the dealer tell you your smart was being especially made for you in Hambach, all fresh and shiny, and you don’t believe him? Like me, you may think that in actual fact your smart was sitting in a field for a while and they just swapped the panels over.

There is a way to find out what colour the original panels were! Oh good, I hear you cry!

How?

Somewhere on the car is a sticker. It’s usually either under the carpet in the boot or on the door shut.

On the left hand side, you should see a sticker with your engine’s VIN, a bar code and a picture of a headlight on it. You should be able to see a six-digit code beneath where it says ‘Made in France’.

For example:

This code tells you the original Tridion colour and panel colour (in that order).

The first three digits of the code tell you the tridion colour. smart’s codes are as follows:

Yes, some of the codes are duplicated – probably just smart being unimaginative.As you can see from the pictures of our smart car codes above, one of us has a black tridion, and one has a silver tridion.The second three digits of the code tell you the panel colour.
the table below shows all known colours:

As you can see from the above pictures, both our cars originally had jack black panels, meaning that the numeric blue panels now on one of the cars are not the originals. Which in a way could be good as the panels therefore haven’t been sitting in a field for months. Damn dealer making people feel special thinking they are getting a brand new car and all they’re getting is a brand new set of panels, (grumble grumble….)So, there you go.

• Anyone know what happened to EAG, EAM??
• It would also be good if you’d let me know the codes for any of those
  colours listed above (particularly the forfour ones) that I haven’t got
  codes for. Would be much appreciated.
• If you have any of the new special edition colours like pink or British
  racing green I would be interested to see if you have specific codes for
  them or if they are just re-shelled old smarts, re-panelled to sell.

Below are tables for the colours of the various smart cars going by year Some of these may not be correct, but there isn’t a lot of definitive information on this.

Smart Car Colours by Year/Car Type

*Smart used C21L on very early Roadsters and then switched to C55L.

*unconfirmed

What If My Code/Colour Isn’t Listed?

It’s not unusual for people to change panels so the colour no longer matches the sticker on the car. On these occasions, you’ll have to work out what standard colour they changed it to.

However, some smart HQs in different countries have a trick for selling cars that they can’t shift. They take a load of smarts, usually in boring colours that just don’t sell that well and they send the cars off to a spray shop to have the panels resprayed in an unusual (non standard) colour.

They then sell them as a special edition.

The problem is that, because the car didn’t leave the factory, smart GmbH don’t know what colours are used. The people who decide on the colours for these country-specific special edition colours don’t bother noting the colour codes used and, by the time you need to know the colour, this person has probably left the company.

So, the probability of finding out the colour code is absolute zero. So, what can you do?

You Have 2 Options

Spectophotometer

Take the car to a car paint specialist. Good paint specialists will have a spectrophotometry camera. This camera is held against the body of the car and camera determines the exact colour. The software spits out the colour mix required to recreate the paint precisely.

This is also handy if you have faded paint. Paint changes colour slight over the years due to UV damage. You could get a paint that should match but it could be way off when applied.

Closest Paint Colour

Instead of custom made paints, you can get a colour sensor that will give you a list of available paint codes that are as close as it can get to the colour you have. Personally, I have the NIX Mini 2 color sensor and it does a fairly good job. However, they do a range depending on how accurate you want to be (or how filthy rich you are).

*EAI used for the Urbanstyle 451 is the same code as Glance Grey Metallic on the Roadster.
Online comparisons are inconclusive as to if these are actually the same colour. 

*EAA used for Active Blue Metallic on the 451 is the same code as Numeric Blue on the 450. (Thanks Clive M).

Thanks to the following sources:
Rob of S2smarts, Kat H, Blackdog, Shadow, Steve S, Bert L, SmartCarOfAmerica.com, Matthew D, Christian P, Benoit, Clive M.

I take no responsibility for the accuracy of this info as it is cobbled together from various sources.