Ford’s Mystichrome paint is one of the most legendary colors to ever grace a vehicle, and in addition to it being very rare (only around 500 coupes and 500 convertibles of the Terminator Mustang Cobra ever wore the color), it was actually “illegal” for anyone other than Ford to mix the paint for a while.
Now, YouTuber ThatDudeInBlue had the opportunity to visit a shop where one of these Mystichrome Cobras needed to be repainted after a coming-together with a deer, and while it was getting done, he made a video with the auto body professional working there explaining the legend surrounding the famous color.
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It used to be that only certain body shops were authorized to spray a car in the legendary color-shifting paint, and even then, a Ford representative had to be present to bring the paint, oversee the job, and return any leftover paint back to the automaker. The reason for this was supposedly because variants of the toners used to create Mystichrome were also used in the anti-counterfeiting measures on the $20 bill of the time, so in order to ensure the paint was being used for its correct purpose, there essentially had to be someone there to guard it.
Nowadays, many more body shops have the clearance from Ford to work with Mystichrome, and there no longer needs to be a representative present to use it. However, despite the larger abundance of authorized shops, many of them refuse to take on the job simply because of how valuable the paint is. In ThatDudeInBlue’s video, just 16 ounces of Mystichrome came out to an eye-watering $3,335.27. Doing the math, that comes out to about $26,000 per gallon, and that’s for just the paint itself, let alone any kind of special labor charges involved with handling such a scarce and valuable color.