[DonC]

I decided on "some kind of red" early on but had no idea which red. Looked at a lot of pictures, cruised a lot of dealerships and looked at a lot of cars on the road. Finally came up with what I thought would be a good red from some of the photos here on CC and queried the owners as to color and opinions about them. The clincher was when I took the wife to look at some cars at a local dealership and, without prompting other than "look at the reds" she picked the same color I had.
The color is a 2003/2004 Ford stock color called Red Fire Pearl Mettalic Clear Coat (quite a mouthful).
Once that was decided I started in on the stripe color. I had decided on gold but again, which one. There are tons of them. Did a web search for paint color codes and chips and ended up with about 8 different golds. Went to the dealerships and got bottles of touchup paint in each color, also a touchup bottle of the red.
Got out my cheapie air brush and shot a small panel with the primary red and then painted small strips of heavy paper with each of the golds and held them against the base color panel. Narrowed it down to 2 and again asked the wife. Again, her opinion matched the color I was inclined towards so that was the color selected for the stripe. GM Mettalic Gold.
The whole process took place over a 3 or 4 month period.
Since I'm not going for the pure original look it opened up a lot more choices for color which can be good or bad depending on how decisive you are by nature.
The car should be picked up from ERA the end of this week and go over to Walt Wasko Jr. for the paint. Will be there for 4 weeks once he gets started which may be a week or more after it gets there. Art in CT (RedSC400) has offered to take some photos of the car while in production so I'll be able to post some as it goes along. Am waiting with baited breath for the final outcome.
DonC