xtr3ma

Love the 18", I wish they make them in 19".

xtr3ma

Now I need someone with Black/Silver to chime in.

I still got a feely silver goes better with the chrome trim.

MalSer

I am really pleased with the carbon trim so you might consider it too. I love the look and have received mutiple compliments. I have Ibis white with black leather but saw the black ext with magma interior and really liked it. I just didn't want the hassles of black ext; last 2 cars were black and midnight blue so time for a change.

legbend

Phantom hid the orange peel much better.

L0U

Think of a real pearl crushed up into a fine paste added to the paint, vs. adding silver under the paint in a separeate coat. metalic shine through the paint with silver,or another metalic colour, where pearl is mixed in the paint to create a pearly sheen within the black. Then again,,,audi can call their stuff whatever they like, and use their own paint processes. Black is audis shade of black, the other is a slightly different shade of black with pearl added. phantom would be my choice, but ibis was the winner for 60% of S4s sold. guesstimate

trigoe

I got Brilliant because I got to see them next to each other and from 5 feet away it was very clear that we're simply talking about black. And if you saw "Spinal Tap" it begs the question; How much blacker can it get? None, really.

Seriously, it was very clear that unless both are freshly waxed and under the halogens of the dealer, this is not worthy of 5 hundred bucks more, IMHO. It's just not something I could appreciate once I got away from the car a bit. And a bit, I mean about 5 feet. They were both black. And both were beautiful. I like the name "phantom" and I think it has that "batman" thing going for it which helps for sales I'm sure.

So I got the sunshades instead.

Nutdotnet

I disagree. While metallic paints may hide minor swirls and imperfections, correcting major imperfections (ie, a scratch) is next to impossible.

BlackjackMulligan

You just agreed with what I said....with everything else being equal, metallic paint will make slight imperfections and swirls a bit harder to see than non metallic. There's no doubt about that.

Now, with blending and corrections, I suppose it could be tougher to blend a metallic to make sure it looks uniform, but again, the metallic quality probably would hide some of the blending process as well.