Years ago we used to be able to go to Pep Boys or one of the auto parts stores and match up something at the Duplicolor display but none of the local stores have that any more. Now there's a dozen or so choices in black, gray and white and 10 different primers. I haven't seen Testor's paint in a long time, I think the last time I bought Testor's was at Two Guy's Department store in the 80's. There's a Michaels here but I think they only have the little tiny bottles for like $5 each.
The car paint that comes to mind was for a Ford, Garnet red metallic is what I seem to remember it being called, it was an early 80's color but the auto parts store don't carry older paint colors if they carry anything at all. The paint shop wants $160 for a quart of red. So that's not an option. If I was going to go through all that I'd just strip the thing down and do a full repaint with an aluminum basecoat and just get the semi clear red mixed to match. I'm just not putting all that into a run of the mill 65 Racer. If it were a middleweight or balloon tire, maybe but the repaint would far surpass just finding a super clean original bike in the first place. There's been a minty clean one for sale for months online for $100 with no takers, that would be far cheaper than repainting this one.
My limit would be $20 to fix the paint, if I could find a can or two of something close to touch up and fade to match I'd do it but any more and its best left alone.
Most bikes I've run across that have had spray paint on them turned out to be far better after I stripped off the spray paint, but this isn't likely one of them. I removed the spray paint around the headbadge, the forks, chainguard, and seat post but can see lots of missing paint, my take on it was that they painted the top and down tubes for preservation due to lack of paint.
What's on there now is okay, just not ideal, but it does shine and from distance look okay. If I were to stumble on the decals cheap, and if I had a few bikes the same color that needed repainting, maybe I'd go get the paint, but for one bike its not worth all the work to do a proper repaint.
The few I did years ago were when you could still go to the dealer and buy all the decals and paint for the bike for less than a $20 bill. I've got two tall cans of Campus Green here from the dealer back in the day with $4.99 price tags on them. Plus a receipt taped to the can with the cost of a set of Typhoon decals for $8, and a new headbadge for $3. I had intended to change the color on a Typhoon way back when but didn't, I had painted it the original red and never used the green. I also never used the decals on the bike, I had a buddy who used to do silk screening where he worked, and he copied the decals to make silk screens for the bike. I wish I knew what happened to those screens, if they'd even still be any good all these years later.
He said what they did was to scan the oem decals, then they cut black vinyl copies, which were used to develop the silk screens.
The screen blocking agent was something that didn't last long, it would break down over time so chances are it would have to be remade even if I did still have them but it was by far the right way to do the 'decals' on the bike. After screening on the white lettering I shot the whole thing in 2k clear. It was likely better than when new. It had brand new factory fenders, a new saddle, two new Westwind tires, and two new red grips.
I'd likely still have that bike but an ex sold it at a yard sale while I was at work many years ago. One of the many reasons why she became an ex. I got home one day and found she had a yard sale and had sold off half the stuff in the garage to make room for her exercise equipment she had bought. I lost a rototiller, two bikes, a vintage minibike, some model trains, four fishing rods, and anything else she could sell fast. A month later I sold off the exercise equipment and bought a motorcycle and bass boat. I then traded her in soon after for a newer model that didn't need 'exercise equipment'.