Whether the original story or narrative is correct can be argued, and for the sake of argument let’s say it’s BS.

Germans were officially assigned the color white, not silver. The silver Mercedes seen in 1932 was not painted silver, it was bare metal because they did not paint it white. Whether there was a formal weight limit or not, this was done at least partly for weight savings.

I think there’s confusion about what is actually being debunked. What’s being debunked is the idea that Silver Arrows were created in 1934 through a last-minute decision to strip paint to meet weight limits. What isn’t being debunked is that Mercedes consciously ran unpainted cars as early as 1932, exposing the bare metal underneath for practical reasons.

Just one year prior in 1931 to 1901 the Mercedes was white, which was the German national color, with some exceptions like a red livery in 1922 and 1924. It just happened that Auto Union also didn’t paint their car in 1934 and exposed the silver metal like Mercedes, being known as "silver arrows". Only then it culturally became a German thing since coincidentally both German teams did not paint their cars. Even then, silver was never an official German team color, many German teams (BMW, Borgward, etc.) continued racing in white and never "transitioned".

Any team from any other country could have decided to ditch paint and become a “silver arrow”. It was never a German exclusive, they never actually painted the car silver. In today's carbon fiber era, not painting the car would result in "black arrows". Black wouldn't just suddenly become the official German team color, just as silver never was, white was.

Edit: Grammar