Is chrome-like paint better than the stuff I used when I built model cars? That always had kind of a swirly look. I guess you could try it, and as someone mentioned strip it right off if it looked funky.

I like the 'PX10 livery' idea, though I'm not sure I'd do it on a DeRosa. I had no problem putting racing numbers on one of my vintage Minis, but I wouldn't likely do that if I'd had a Ferrari instead.

Just treating/removing the rust and having the paint matched so it was a solid blue fork seems like good option, as long as the now 'perfect looking' fork wouldn't make the frame's patina look even more obvious.

My cheapskate cousin had an old, clapped out Jag E-Type when he was a poor college student. Many of the chromed bits were badly rusted. He removed some, and on the headlight surrounds he wrapped them with aluminum foil. It was a model year in which those surrounds were really prominent. As you can guess, it looked like hell, but the girls he picked up didn't seem to notice.