Chassis colors

I've noticed that in many Tamiya and Fujimi instructions, they recommend painting the chassis undersides the same color as the body.

However, every car I've crawled under either has a rusty undersurface, or one covered in black-grey antirust.

Do factory stock cars really come with a painted underchassis?

ive wondered the samething, now i have seen a few cars that are painted on the underside... Porsche and Lotus for example. but models seem to have more often then ive seen in real life.

Most of the modern cars do indeed come with the undersides painted the body colour. It just gets real dirt real fast, and also is sometimes covered with corrosion protection.

That depends on the car. Most exclusive cars like Porsche, BMW, Merc, etc have the underside painted the same colour as the body. The cheaper ones don't :D

Yes. All cars, modern cars, paint the undersurface. Why? Because the undercarriage is part of the unibody, and when they paint it, it all is painted together, which is cheaper and faster than painting the undercarriage some other color, which would require some sort of masking, and would leave a joint in the paint that would facilitate corrosion. Sometimes cars get a thick protectant coating, too, but not always. Most cars, all that I have seen, put a thick black protective coating around the inside of the wheel well, but that usually ends with the well. If your really curious, go outside and look under your car. It's black, right? That's all dirt. Bang around under thair and knock the dirt off, underneath is your body color. As always, consult a 1:1 before making a decision if it is really important to do it right.

most unit body cars are the same color on the bottom. The only part that isnt are normally the fenders, as they have anti rsut stuff. I was looking over my Revell 02 Camaro SS kit, and it says paint the chassis satin black, but i checked the underneath of my car, and it was silver (see sig for more pics) But, sometimes its primer (for example, if its a uni-body [body and "frame" are 1 big piece as compared to trucks which have ladder bar frames"] when they paint the bottom of the car, some over spray gets on the bottom too, so it depends, try searching for referance pics.

From the newer cars i have worked on, (not bimmers) the have the anti rust coating, or w/e it is, and just the edges have overspray on them, where the body is painted, so thats what i usually do, i paint the unibody gray, then fade the color in, not reasching all the surfaces, since the cant be reached at the factory, just how i do it.

Most cars i like to paint in the body colour as it gives IMO the model abit more class to it instead of just plain old black on everything :bloated: