I am not a fan of black cars. for reasons other than looks.

I make an exception with the 460/600 range.

They look spectacular, which is almost enough to overrule my objections.

 

They have some very interesting tech for certain colors, those are the ones that are very difficult to get right. LSs are wet sanded from factory so it's dead easy to see any repaint done that didn't follow proper repair procedure.

Reason my LS was so much to fix is that most shops didn't want to even touch it at all so I just ended up arguing with insurance to take it to a dealer. It's still not quite as good as factory....

The LSs have some of the best factory paint aside from softness IMO, only other foreign stuff that is comparable are optional upgrade paints on German cars.


Pre-damage

Pre-damage

Note how perfectly the light \"folds" across the metal sections into the bumper and doesn't have any luster difference. Also there is exactly the same orange peak amount (very low) with exactly the same flake

Post repair. Looks fine but nothing like factory and this was a Lexus collision center that I know for a fact didn't follow the full LS procedure.

All of this depends on your standards. If you don't really care/REALLY look at a car you won't notice much if any shop does a halfway decent job and makes certain to use the correct flake and do so evenly.

Ironically my favorite color is black even though most of my cars are silver for the sake of my sanity. It's just too difficult to own because even a slight brush against it with the back of a hand leaves impurity. Also takes literal days to get perfect....






Obligatory 14 layer black paint pictures

 

I finally found the colour:

Lexus Color Code 8U0, Black Sapphire Pearl

Unfortunately, the car was withdrawn from sale.

It was my ideal exterior/interior colour combination.

 

This is AMAZING that this project is still alive - time to catch up on this epic thread!