If it matters to you, you can get it repainted at a place that paints cars or bikes. I have no idea how much it would cost, but come on - what wouldn’t you pay for this baby? 
I second this. Hobart owns the field in professional kitchens, I’ve never worked with any others, although I’ve seen them. Expensive, but they last forever.
If I won the lottery, and designed my own kitchen, I’d either have Kitchen Aid or Hobart. Nothing else.
I love the Hobarts, but they are very heavy and except for the smallest need to be permanently mounted. So Kitchen Aids are probably the best choice for most kitchens.
I wish I could afford either one at home! 
Thank you everyone for your input. I am leaning to the KitchenAid 600 right now. http://www.everythingkitchens.com/kitchenaid-color-selection.html. If I have more questions I will be back.
I have a refirbished one, as does my brother (matching gifts from our parents). We love them. My parents have a 25 year old one that’s still working fine, although they do need a new spade, as the enamel as started to wear from the dish washer. I have used other mixers and there is nothing like it. And they come in great colors. Mine is cobalt. My brother’s is some sort of god awful yellow (he picked it out).
Reads all the posts talking about how great KitchenAid mixers are.
Looks at kitchen counter conspicuously missing a standalone mixer.
Expires of jealousy.
Hey, that’s what I have! I love mine!
Ok, some important points have been brought up here. Just in case you may have missed them, let me Share.
If Alton Brown says it’s good (and has one with flames on it) then you darn skippy bet it is.
If the first real alternate brand that is mentioned is Hobart, you know you are talking about a serious machine. The day I have a Hobart dishwasher will be the happiest day of my life.
Several people have KitchenAids that are multiple decades old. It is one of the few appliances that are made like they have to survive a nuclear war.
Your wife has a KitchenAid now that she likes. In other words, she doesn’t know any better or any worse. For all she knows they are all as good as the one she has now. Please see above to see the fallacy in this thought.
You may pry my 500lb KitchenAid from my cold, dead hands. Of all the kitchen appliances, it is the only one I’ve not had to replace, always works flawlessly and still looks great.
Although I am fond of my under-counter black and decker coffee maker, the old style one, the new ones suck. But yes, I had to replace every part, except they didn’t sell replacement parts and finally, years later was able to find a refurbished one. I’ve had the mixer longer and never had a problem at all.
I bought this one at Sam’s Club just after Christmas, and I love it (it helps that red is my favorite color). In retrospect, if I could have gotten the 600 in your link for less than a hundred dollars more, that might have been an even better choice. I don’t know about your wife, but I have a tendency to push the limits of appliances, and there have been a couple of occasions on which I could have used just a little more power and a little larger capacity.
But I still lurve my mixer.
This is the KitchenAid I have. In beautiful tangerine 
I have used it for everything from eggs to whipped cream to cookies to bread and it has done everything beautifully. It gives me a reason to go on living 
Their customer service is excellent. When I opened the box one of the little rubber feet was missing. I called them and in a few days I received a box of 5 in the mail.
Yes. Besides the possibility of a scammer, these are heavy, so the shipping cost would probably eat up any savings on the price.
Checking locally on Craigslist, however, might get you a real bargain.
Used ones are frequently available, often at cheap prices. (‘Grandma moved to a nursing home, so we’re selling the new mixer she got for Christmas.’) And locally, you can check it out before buying it. (Easy to do: plug it in, turn it on – do the blades go around, does it run at 5 different speeds --OK.)
If you get anything other than a KitchenAid and it craps out on you, you’ll never hear the end of it. Stick with KitchenAid, but make sure you get a good one. Hafta disagree with Alton Brown, as much as I like him: the bowl lift ones are better. Frankly, I think most KitchenAid users would disagree with AB as well; usually, the tilt-back models get mentioned in discussions involving a lot of embarassed throat-clearing (the tilt back ones, AFAIK, have wimpier motors). The bowl-lift models, especially the larger ones, really know how to grunt. The 6 quart one is the one you want. Notice the KitchenAid site shows a smaller but more expensive commercial mixer. This has NSF certification, important for restaurants. You don’t need to pay for this, so pass.
By the way, don’t be concerned about the lesser number of aesthetic choices on the high end models if you’re buying through a store that doesn’t carry all of the colors KitchenAid makes (I’ve noticed many stores sell the low-end KitchenAid mixers in many colors for the fashion conscious but the high-end ones in a small number of colors for the serious users) you may have to settle for white, black, or silver. If your wife is as serious about this sort of thing as you suggest, she won’t care. Trust me.
You don’t mention if your wife wants to get rid of the mixer she has now even though it still works. My guess is yes; 2 of those big honkin’ mixers just take up too much real estate in the average kitchen. That being the case, you can sell it on Ebay to help finance your new mixer. As for buying on Ebay? Feh. Just sell. Buy new. Exception: estate sales. This might take a lot of time and effort to get a good deal, though, and after a while you gotta consider what your time is worth. Take a deep breath, reach for you wallet, and go for that 6 quart bowl-lift mixer. BTW, don’t let her refuse to sell the old mixer, saying, “we’ll keep it as a spare.” It’ll just gather dust.
M 5 yr old daughter is a yellow freak so I will try for yellow. My wife will not care about color so much as power. The one she has now is a 300 watt and it bogs down with the bread dough.
I have asked her before “If you get a new one will you want to sell the one you have now?” She looked at me like the question was " We have a new baby now, do you want to get rid of the older ones?" Not gonna happen.
That cracked me up. Count me in as another pro-KitchenAid Doper. My dad has one and I learned to bake with it. I’m always extremely disappointed when I have to use any other mixer. Woe is the life of a college student with an ill stocked kitchen. 
You might also see whether there’s a professional restaurant supply store in your area. That’s where I got my Kitchenaid, a Professional 6 (six quart) 525-watt (discontinued and replaced by this model) for a hundred dollars less, brand new, than ordinary retail.
Oh, and re the flame designs, you can buy them here.
Yes indeedy. I got this a while back and haven’t bought ice cream since. I can make my own, exactly to my own specifications, for significantly less money per serving than Ben & Jerry’s or Haagen Dazs.
I don’t see yellow listed for either the 5 quart or 6 quart mixers.
FWIW I have bought two refurbished KA mixers at kitchen store at an outlet mall. one was a tilt head for my wife, and the other a 6 quart lift bowl for a buddy who was lusting over one. Both have been in service for about 10 years and work perfectly.
As I said before shop around, prices are all over the place on KA mixers.
for example Here is a refurbished 5 quart empire red from Amazon for $199. with free shipping.
On the other hand look at the 6 quart 575 watt mixers the refurbished is between $10 and $40 more than a brand new unit. :dubious:
On thing that has not been mentioned that might for sure tip the scales toward a KA mixer is that if your wife already has KA accessories, they will fit her new mixer.
I got mine for $166 but yeah, I had to “settle” for white.
I bought a brand new Kitchen Aid mixer on ebay for my husband a couple of years ago (not sure of the size, but I think it was 6 qts). It was an awesome purchase. I checked prices on line first, and got the mixer for $100 less than retail, even with the shipping costs. You’re limited with colors (ours is white, but I would have loved to get him a red one) but if you buy from a highly rated seller, you’ll be alright. Go with new though; I wouldn’t trust a used one.
Kitchen Aid is the best, I think. My husband loves the thing.
I know I do. I don’t know why he considers the tilt head to be better.
Just as a warning to other KitchenAid Dopers: There is a small metal plate in front that covers the hole for accessories. Over time, vibration can loosen the set screw that holds it in place, and it may fall into the bowl unless you remember to keep tightening the screw. (It seems to not be that unusual an occurrence.) The paddle will jam and a gear inside the head will strip. It just happened to me with a KitchenAid that is almost twenty years old. When I took it apart, I found the metal gear that had stripped. I ordered a replacement part from The Mending Shed and found that they are only available now in nylon. In this case, I think that it might not be a bad thing; the design seems to rely on this to be a sacrificial part in the event of a jam.
Wait…when did KitchenAid and Hobart become separate companies?
My KitchenAid stand mixer is 35 years old. I bought it ten years ago at a tag sale for $20 - the woman who sold it to me was getting rid of it because its yellow color didn’t match her newly remodeled kitchen.
I like the older models especially because the beaters are enameled cast iron. I noticed that beaters on the new models aren’t as hefty.