Shared Materials

I’m trying some things with shared materials (I have 160 objects, 4 materials, 100 color variationss)

If two objects in my main scene that have the same material (powdercoat), I can change the rgb of object 2:
setMaterialColor(getObjectMaterial(‘test2’, undefined, true), ‘RGB’, 0, 0, 0, ‘#b512f6’);

If I change the material of ‘test2’ first to ‘steel’, I can no longer change the RGB on this object, instead the original ‘steel’ changes its RGB:

assignMat(‘test2’, ‘steel’)
setMaterialColor(getObjectMaterial(‘test2’, undefined, true), ‘RGB’, 0, 0, 0, ‘#b512f6’);

Am I overlooking something? I do need the assignMat(): I’m making 160 clones….