osullivan

Having owned a dark grey Cosworth and (sorry) a drak grey Si Fiesta I vowed never to have another dark blue/black car again as they are really difficult to keep clean especially after washing.
What are your experiences of owing the Impreza in the above 2 colours.
I think silver looks classy and with beige leather very smart. But I think Mica Blue with biege leather will look even better. The problem is I hate the wash-leather.
Do the dark ones go really smearey.
Imput please.

Nick

I had a close choice between silver & dbm for my 99my. I went for dbm & am happy with it. However, it is very hard to keep clean - IMHO the dbm when clean looks much better than silver, which seems to accent the plain rear end.

I decided to go with my heart for the dbm - going with your head - you'd have a silver one. FYI The undercoat is light grey, so stone chips will show up more on a dbm. Also the paint seems so thin in places that it almost washes off & you get white marks.

Your best option would be to go to the next meet & check out both colours.

Rob

When my DBM 5dr is clean, it looks absolutely stunning and worlds apart from the silver saloon up the road.

But... within 4 femto-seconds the car looks filthy again. It's not so much "smearey" as "drippy". Wherever rainwater goes, the dust seems to gather, and you end up with a car that looks like it's been driven through the sahara.

But for those 4 femto-seconds, you've got a car that really snaps necks (of pimply schoolboys, unfortunately) as you go by.

Rob.

Paul L

I've got a DBM on order, but had a close look at a MY99 in Silver on Saturday - must say, it looked pretty good - thinking of changing my order now - might even get one sooner!!

Paul

AnthonyJ

Get two! Get a nice DBM one for the summer when it's easier to clean and the sun makes it look totally gorgeous. Then get a silver one for the winter! For the record, mine's a DBM and I think the colour is absolutely gorgeous. Having had a previous car that was silver though, I think they both show the dirt quite a lot! At the end of the day, I don't think you can go wrong - they're both stonking colours.

osullivan

thanks very much for your replies.
I have decided to do what the new BAR team did in the first GP of the year.
Half DBM and half silver.
Its the only answer.
I prefer the DBM and keep telling myself that I will have such pride in ownership of the thing that I will not mind cleaning it all the time.
A little bit worrying what Nick said about the quality of the paint?????

Thanks again.

Dave S

Buy a gravel express and you can have both - silver bottom half and red or green top half.

Actually no. Don't buy a gravel express, sorry don't know what made me say that. I must see Anders for a consultancy

Imran

I have had 3 cars in the past which were similar to the Scooby DBM. I vowed never to buy that sort of colour again!

Several reasons really. You can never really clean the DBM that well, because you only clean what you see to be dirty, and after a while, the road film and stubborn dirt doesn't come off without a strong hand, and when you can't really see it against the dark background, you don't tend to scrub hard. The result, the car quickly gets to the stage where it needs polishing, and not just washing. I know this to be true, because after washing when I used to apply polish, the cloth would go black in places where dirt was heavy but I didn't really notice it.

Also, I was sick of stone chips, it's great to have a beautiful dark car, but if you actually drive it, you suffer stone chips, and the grey/white undercoat shows through. Result: front of car looks like a stary night.

I got a MY98 in metallic silver (different to the currently available Royal silver). In my opinion it's THE best colour. It's fully colour coded and looks great. The black door handles and window trim offset the colour very nicely and I love it. Also, it never gets that dirty. Often I don't wash it for weeks, then when I think it's filthy and I can't bear to look at it, I wash it. I start by washing all the wheels, and when they're done, the rest of the car doesn't even look like it needs cleaning!

I wouldn't have any other colour. In fact that's one of the things I don't like about the MY99, no normal metallic silver available!

Also, birds don't seem to adorne it so often either, in fact in the 8 months I've had it, it's never been shat upon!

Any car aquires scratches, if you're lucky they're just scratches in the lacquer and not in the paint. On a dark car though, scratches in the lacquer still show up quite a lot, on a silver car, you can't see them!

All in all, I think it's a much better wearing colour than the DBM. Yes the DBM looks better in the show room, but we all use our cars, and it will never look that good when you use it!

(pretty sad eh?)

DavieR

Go for the Dark Blue, I've had a DBM since August '97 (yes, they were available for a limited time back then) and after 17000 miles there is not even a single stone chip on the whole car and the paintwork is still as good as the day I collected it.
Only clean it on duller days as it easily streaks, but when it is clean its beautiful.
In the time I've owned it I've knocked back 3 offers to swap it for other colours (one red, and two reddish blues) and never mind what people try to tell you its still the closest colour to the 555 rally cars.
Silver is also almost impossible to match if you are unlucky enough to ever need a repair done, they stand out like a sore thumb.

[This message has been edited by DavieR (edited 30-03-99).]

Nick

As a dbm owner, I agree with Imran. Dbm is hell to keep clean & after 3 months, the front spoiler looks grubby - even after a wash. If you use a car every day - it will get stone chips & the chips show up very well on the dbm. Even after a good wash, the dbm doesn't look that clean as the bodywork seems to get lots of tiny surface scratches. Also the places where the paint has come off show up too. The dbm also looks like it could be a nightmare to paint match. It has loads of different colour pigments deep in the paintwork.
The point in favour of dbm is - if you park a silver & a dbm (with gold wheels) next to each other - the dbm will look fantastic.

theosas

Hello, I'm from Holland and I had the same problem as you, I could't make a choise between colours (new 555 blue mica and silver.)
When I say to my girlfriend we take silver, someone In my head said, take the blue , and when I said a day later we take the blue, someone in my head said, take the silver.

So I ordered the BLUE !!!, and changed again, and again, I thought I'm getting crazy (maybe I am)

In februari I went to a great carshow in Amsterdam called RAI, en there was at Subaru's a special edition from the Impreza Turbo,the "stars25", 40 in black mica,and 120 in Blue Steel.(same as STI colour: dark grey)
With a lot of special features, gold alloys, black /blue alcantra seats etc.

So my problem is solved, I orderd the same day at my dealers place, a "stars25" LE in BLUE STEEL.

I think the car wich is coming in June in the UK is called RB5, and has the same colour and interior.


Solution for you: By the RB5 as you can !!

picture and info "stars25"is at: http://www.carros.nl/persb/files/990125164445.html and at http://www.subaru.nl


greatings, Theo