Got a Millennium Puma, and I've been trying to find out what colour Ford decided to do the standard wheels.

Ford service desk and their repairs centres have no record of the colour, but they did mention that the colour is almost certainly a standard colour from within the Ford range at the time.

Standard alloys were Moondust silver (dead easy to touch up scuffs!), but the Millennium ones are darker:



Standard on the left, Millennium on the right. They look a little darker in the picture than they do in real life, but they are a deeper, darker glossier silver than the standard ones.

A local wheel refurb place reckons that he has a shade almost the same, which is like a silver mixed with anthacite, but with a hint of gold in there too.

Any ideas what shades of silver were around in 1999/2000 when these were made? (Or slightly before then if Ford were doing their usual trick of using up old stock - in this case, paint.)

 

Could it be a dark lacquer on them?