Oxford white yellowing plastics

Is there anyway to get it out ? Or do u have to repaint it ?
My car has under 10k miles and it has a hint of yellow on the plastics and it drives me nuts.

This has been a problem with white cars and continued with the GT500. From my understanding, you either accept or paint.

Goose17 said:

This has been a problem with white cars and continued with the GT500. From my understanding, you either accept or paint.

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Pretty sure this. @cj428mach


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Unfortunately, the above is true. The really sad thing is that the cleaner the car is the more noticeable the discoloration is. If the car was in rough shape you'd probably never notice the yellowing.

That’s the problem the car is very clean and it is becoming more and more noticeable. I am at the point that I am going to paint all the pieces but I’m nervous to do that and get the opposite affect where the plastics are much whiter than the rest of the car. I hope that I can get it matched up as close as possible

I’m in the same boat with my OW coupe. It only has 10k miles and I’ve noticed the same. It’s not really noticeable unless it’s pointed out. But I know it and it bugs me. I don’t want to repaint it because it’s not to that point yet and it will ruin the originality

Same here. Side scoops are the worst.

BlksvtCobra01 said:

Pretty sure this. @cj428mach


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Yep he just had to have his parts repainted to take care of it.

Yep, it sucks.

My car has 13000 miles on it and has been kept inside all its life and I began to really notice the parts turning yellow a little over a year ago. The scoops and rocker panels were the worse and were very yellowed. The rear bumper and spoiler were just starting to get a slightly yellow tint to them, surprisingly the front bumper had no yellowing. I had everything resprayed by my buddy and let me tell you its a kick in the nuts.

I wanted my car to be original paint but thats out the window now. I had clear bra material on my car to protect the original paint because I wanted to preserve that originality but after the repaint I removed all the bra as it didn't matter anymore.

My suggestion is to have a spray out done by your painter. My friend took my parts to his work and used this color matching camera and got a match that was 99.8% match, I think he told me anything over 99.5% match is considered a perfect match. Well he resprayed the parts and they were way too bright of a white. His computer listed another White formula that was 99.7-8% match with a softer white toner in it and he made a spray out on a card which we compared to my car. With the second color the spray out would disappear when laid on my car so it was a perfect match. He resprayed everything with the second color and I'm really happy with it. He said the only way to make it 100% perfect is to blend everything but he didn't want to do that on my low mileage original car as there would be just too much painting.

Yep, paint matching is a mother F'er and it takes a skilled painter to get it right. The good news with OW is it's a "non" metallic paint. This makes panel painting a little easier. With metallic paints you always have to blend as panel painting will reveal a difference. So long as the spray out with a non metallic paint is at a percentage the naked eye could not really detect (i.e. 99.7% as listed above) you should be good with just repainting the yellowed items.

Doing it that way is also a cheaper repair, but as mentioned it is no longer original. As another member's signature block says; pick your poison.

I'd paint the parts.........

When some parts on a white car start yellowing to the point it's sticking out......that's when the originality angle goes out the window. Paint the parts. There is no way I'd want to see my car looking like that, and decide not to attempt a fix because I'm worried about originality value 20-30 years down the road. That's way too long to walk out in the garage everyday and watch those parts continuing to get worse and worse, because they will keep yellowing. It's not going to stop on its own.

Wasn’t there an upcharge for Oxford white from the factory?

You guys are right. As much as I would love to keep it original what’s the point when it’s turning yellow. I would much rather get over it and get a good color match and smile when I walk out to my garage instead of going out and just staring at the yellow and getting myself annoyed.
Even if it ends up a little more white it’s still better than yellow

jobsi said:

You guys are right. As much as I would love to keep it original what’s the point when it’s turning yellow. I would much rather get over it and get a good color match and smile when I walk out to my garage instead of going out and just staring at the yellow and getting myself annoyed.
Even if it ends up a little more white it’s still better than yellow

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Good move. I got to where i was embarrassed to take my car out, so i wasn't enjoying it.

RDJ said:

Wasn’t there an upcharge for Oxford white from the factory?

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I don’t know about when new, but it sure felt like I paid one when I bought it ha

TK1299 said:

I don’t know about when new, but it sure felt like I paid one when I bought it ha

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A friend of mine has an 03 OW Cobra and I really dig OW on these cars.


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i have this same issue with my rocker panels and rear bumper. had a 'paint expert' and another body shop and a detailer take a look at it and opine on what each thought i should do- general opinion was to try to deal with it if possible...i do not care so much about 'originality' as i do my OCD...in short, my understanding is that it is a common issue with most cars and colors where bumpers and other parts are plastic and the body of the car is metal, especially where the bumpers are painted off the car or elsewhere from the body istelf (it happens to be more noticeable on some colors tho, like white) because of painting plastic versus metal, the type of primer used, how it attaches to the material, etc. he has done paint corrections on a significant amount of white cars over his career and felt that at least with my car the factory paint is better than non-factory paint and therefore it not only will yellow again anyway but most likely will not even look as good - it will temporarily be white again and probably not match as well as original (blending helps) but then it will yellow and/or peel/flake/bubble eventually (it is important to use a high quality paint and primer to alleviate that). He also said the yellowing does not get any worse after a certain point. It is frustrating because my car is garage kept and still my rear bumper and rocker panels yellowed (front bumper has not changed at all). Several people I spoke with agreed with the assessment. Yes you can make it better but it sounds like it will only be temporary and could cause other issues.

I was talking to a auto body friend about factory paint jobs.
So I don't know if this is common knowledge or not but.

He said 1 of the main reasons why color is so hard to match from the factory is:
The cars are not shot in the same color down the line. And have a little residual paint in the lines from the last car sprayed into the next car down the line.

But have nothing as to why the white fades to yellow.

ShootyMCstabby said:

I was talking to a auto body friend about factory paint jobs.
So I don't know if this is common knowledge or not but.

He said 1 of the main reasons why color is so hard to match from the factory is:
The cars are not shot in the same color down the line. And have a little residual paint in the lines from the last car sprayed into the next car down the line.

But have nothing as to why the white fades to yellow.

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My friend that painted my car has been painting for about 35 years and does very good work. He does a ton of painting at high end shops and has been to a lot of paint schools over the years.

His explanation of why the paint doesn't always match is a lot of it has to do with coverage and often times the base coat is too thin. Sometimes the same car doesn't match in color on opposite ends of the car, its just the color changes so gradual its just a natural blend.

As for the yellowing he said its just something that happens to clear coat over time but you notice it most on white, but he said you'll notice it on red cars turning orangish over time too. He said newer clears aren't suppose to yellow as bad but time will tell years down the road. He said the way he likes to clear white if he's not color matching a single part is to dump a little white base coat into the clear, as this will help hide yellowing of the clear as it ages.

I wounder if cost has anything to do with it.

I have bought cheaper carbon fiber exterior parts that yellowed with in a year. I have also had real expensive CF that didnt yellow after years.