Hi captanthony, welcome to the forum
What would help, a lot, is if you could post up a picture of your Uno
If you click 'Go Advanced', you have the option to 'Manage Attachments'. It's best to upload an image that's about 800x600 in size and JPEG format.
I don't know of any mid-'greens' off the top of my head apart from a weird 'Verde Night' which is a sort of bread-mould colour. But if I understand correctly, you've seen this colour on a VW Beetle and it's not the current colour of your car? If that's the case, you might as well go to a paint shop and pick whatever colour that you want
Some manufacturers like ICI have a little 'blue book' of colour chips; if you get the FIAT one, the colour you want might jump out at you, if it *is* a FIAT colour.
I think it's quite important to choose an appropriate colour to suit the age and type of car. I don't know if you have seen FIAT/Bertone X1/9s where you live, but that car, more than any other, illustrates the differences in colour over the years.
When the X1/9 was introduced in 1973, it came in solid colours like pale yellow, French (mid) blue, and bright green.
As the 70's progressed to a lurid height, the X1/9 came in orange, metallic lime green, and even black (with chrome bumpers).
With the dawn of the 80's, the X1/9 featured almost exclusively metallic paint. New colours like silver and light silvery-blue gave a more 'expensive' look. There was also a coppery-red colour, and two-tone dark grey/silver.
Finally towards the end of the X1/9's life in 1988/89, and with no other bodywork modifications, Bertone 'updated' the styling with a choice of just two colours: dark mica red and dark mica blue. The mica gives the paint a pearlescent quality, meaning it lightens considerably in bright light and looks quite dark at other times. This was very much a feature of 90s cars (and this paint costs at least twice as much!)
FIAT were always good at choosing colours (in hindsight), rather better than British Leyland (cow-pat green, anybody?) and some of the Japanese manufacturers are really going crazy at the moment. On cars made in the last couple of years, I've seen a dark-brown metallic (Toyota Avensis) :yuck:, concrete-grey (not metallic!) (Mitsubishi Diamante, but Toyota Corolla has a similar dungeon-grey), pale pink metallic (Nissan March), and a non-metallic darker pink colour best described as 'yoghurt' (manufacturer shall remain nameless). These colours will look ridiculous in the years to come and stand out as horribly ugly compared with some of the other modern colours like the mica orange, and the mica bright blue.
The Uno, being a mass-production car sold over a wide price range, had different colours bestowed on it according to whether you had the base model 45 or the 70SL.
Colours for the 45 or 60 included white, beige, mould-green, burgundy, and French blue.
Metallic colours for the 70SL included light silvery-blue, silver, a darker grey (all very 80s-executive-car, boring and not really appropriate since the Uno can't ever be very 'executive'), and an interesting grass-green. The solid colours were also available (of course) particularly the white and the burgundy. Black seemed to be unusual and reserved for the Turbo i.e.
...of course, RED was universally popular! Red is a bad choice in my opinion, as it can oxidise and fade badly, making it difficult to keep it looking good and difficult to touch-up. Plus, since red cars are known to go 10% faster, driving a red car makes a statement about your personality and nobody lets you out of side turnings
The only time that red looks good is on a Ferrari. Japanese reds (dark pinks) are particularly nasty.
My favourite colour of the lot appeared in the late 80s on the 70SL and the rather-rare 45S: a gorgeous bright metallic-blue (being metallic, the colour varied from sky blue to navy blue depending on the angle). I've only ever seen two Unos this colour.
Of course my Uno Turbo is a nice neutral white, which has less of a stigma here than in the UK, and I think it looks quite sharp, particularly if polished up and with the black plastic really black. Although I prefer that bright metallic-blue, I think it's worth keeping the originality as well. I repainted my first car (17 years ago) in a different colour, and the lesson I learned is that you should only undertake this if you are prepared to strip the car fully - or it will never be a very good job
We did just this with jjhepburn's Uno - and it didn't take us long to both agree on Ferrari Fly Yellow as the colour! We felt this would complement the red of the other Uno on the driveway at the time, and have the type of 'fun' character that the Uno suits. And I think we made an excellent choice
-Alex
