Its seems as though the WRC cars are darker than the standard WRX blue.

Are they different, or is it just the decals etc making the Rally car look darker?

 

It's partly the decals doing that, as the dayglo effect probably fools your eye into thinking that the rest of the car is darker. It's also the fact that the blue is a metallic colour, and thus its appearance varies a lot with ambient light conditions.

If you've ever seen a road and WRC car parked next to each other, there always does seem to be a slight difference in colour. However, if you park two rallycars next to each other, you often see colour differences between them as well!

All this just goes to show that paint colours aren't a totally exact science, especially when you're talking about small volume setups like the WR Cars. It's fair to say that the Subaru "WR Blue" paint is a reasonably close match to that used on the rallycars. Is it identical? Almost certainly not, but it's in the ballpark.

 

Greasemonkey, I applaud you for your depth of knowledge and advice. Are you in the Subaru / Prodrive trade by any chance? Its a pity that knowledgeable Scoobynetters are not "knighted" in some way on this site so that us mortals can differentiate between those in the know and bulldungers. ARISE SIR GREASEMONKEY, lol