I recently purchased 99 camry and love it. The reason I got it was my father also has a 98 camry and it is the same gold color and I liked his. I bought mine when it was a little darker out and could not see that the rear bumper was a different color than the rest of the car. It not like its a completely different color but just a lighter shade.

I'm a little bumed out about it because the rest of the car is great. I wish I had looked in better lighting conditions because my father's car looks the same way. But my mom has a 99 camry and the bumper and rest of the car match perfectly. It is the grey color.

My questions are:

1. Is this a known issue with gen 4's that are gold in color?
2. Is this due to fading?
3. Can the bumper be painted to match the rest of the car? How much approx?

If you could please supply me any info that you may have about this.

Thanks, Matt:whatwhat:

 

it has come up before, sometimes the color is slightly off because the bumper is Plastic and the body panels are metal. Making it very hard to match the color

 

congrats on your car. Some shades of paint depict the bumper to have a slight offset of a different color. But your problem could be cus someone repainted the bumper (cus of scrapes/accident/just to sell the car??). I'd leave it, having it paint-matched will cost you at least $200!

 

I've often seen this, even on new cars and I don't like it. I think the flex-additive they put in at the factory (so the paint doesn't crack when the bumber flexes) could be part of it. A cure for that would be to paint the whole car with the bumper ON and not use a flex additive. A pain eh?

 

or you could repaint it and use flex additive on everything...

 

the bumper of my DWP looks off-white from certain angles. same goes for the front bumper and side molding. my guess is because those pieces are plastic and more sensitive to the effects of the sun and the elements than painted sheet metal.

 

the gen4 bumpers on gold cars are notorious for not matching. SOmething about them not fading the same as the paint on the rest of the car does or something like that. It seems to be most noticable on the white and gold Gen4's. It is very possible that it was repainted at some time and they jsut used the original paint code and came up with the color and didnt try to blend it in any at all. IF it si that annoying to you though then you can have it painted but they are going to have to blend it in or you will end up with the same problem again. painting parts of 7 year old cars and hoping it matches is a PITA.

 

Yeah, i notice most gen 4's don't match. It was also a stupid place to put the seam between the rear bumper and the fender

 

it's a mfg defect. including my car for gen 4.5

I got rear ended recently and took it to a toyota dealer.
Spray painted it by toyota.. it did not match at all

 

yea my bumper is a slight shade lighter than the rest of the car

 

it was not that bad in gen 3

my gen 4.5 looks pretty weird

 

i have the same problem =( And with a silver car, looking from the side, it sticks out like HEAPS!!

=(

My car pic is in this link and the difference stands out =( Makes the car very non photogenic from the side view.

http://www.toyotanation.com/forum/showthread.php?t=106674&page=2

 

i thought my bumper was a replacement due to an accident or somethin. im gonna get a new bumper anyways.

 

Same on my '01 silver. Bought it on a return (a few months old) real cheap and always assumed the bumper may have been replaced/repainted even though I saw no signs of damage.

 

that sucks...my car is white and my rear bumper is mismatch too. It'll probably cost like 200 something to repaint it i think. In my opinion i dont think it's worth repainting, unless for show.

 

mine matched pretty well, till of course an accident. got the bumper replaced/repainted and yeah, its a darker color than the body. Same with front bumper. Its just regular fading. Perhaps your camry was painted before.

 

Alot of times it due to the cars body being painted togather with the door etc on the car and the bumpers are painted at a differant part of the plant. That making them painted with a differant blend of paint and a differant robot at differant settings for the smaller parts. a bodyshop can get a perfect match if they take their time and do some let down panels, Thats how I got my front cover to match when I repainted it. i work for a Toyota dealership and all the Toyotas seem like the plastic parts are and off color, most people do not realize it because its a new car but when it get repainted after and accident they can sure pick it out.

 

its cause of the plastic, just repaint if it bothers you or kit ur cam lol

 

Same problem here on my 99 gold. I got rear ended. Got it fixed at an individual body shop. I asked them if they can match the color with rest of the body, they did a computer match and sure enough it matches now. But than other camry owners immidiately say have you repainted (replaced) your bumper?

 

Has the bumper been repainted? Im sorry if I missed that in the posts... If it has, then its because of whats called a paint variance. I had my wifes old 99 Camrys bumper repainted, and it was a like a shade off of the rest of the car. I thought that it was maybe because the bumper was at a different angle and it was just lighting, or that it was because the bumper is not metal. Turns out that for specific colors in specific years Toyota has 2 different shades of the same color. Wouldnt surprise me if thats the case.

If you contact a body shop and tell them the color code of your car they should be able to give you the info you need.

Good luck.