Auto Paint

I ran across some photos of Justin Bieber's all-chrome Fisker Karma, which is pretty damn ugly & conspicuous.

Made me think about auto finishes, and how they've changed over the years.  These days production cars are always one of five colors: white, black, silver, dark blue or red.  Very little variation.  If you look at a parking lot at a mall, or a dealership, the sameness is appallingly evident.


Not so long ago you could get orange, green, sky blue, yellow, purple, metallic finishes, etc.

In the '50s you had pink, turquoise, beige, bathroom colors.  Often two colors per car (two tone), which you also never see anymore.

Of course the original Model A you could get in any color you wanted, as long as it was black.

Today if you see anything else on the road, it's custom.  Flat black, variegated (where the color gradually changes from light to dark, or from one color to another), stripes, spots, chrome, stainless steel.


Strikes me that paint colors are one big area where car manufacturers are missing the boat.  A comparatively cheap "extra" that could make a run-of-the-mill rice burner stand out.


Remember Samuel Delaney's "Dhalgren," where surfaces were covered with tiny LEDs and could be made to display any picture you wanted?  That's be cool on a car.

Don't do this though. This is just plain butt ugly.

NoCoPilot wrote:

A comparatively cheap "extra" that could make a run-of-the-mill rice burner stand out.

If you think custom paint is cheap, you obviously haven't had a car painted recently. That shit is unbelievably expensive.

Yeah, most cars are boring today, not only in color but in shape. But they give the public what they want. And what the public wants is boring: the most popular car color today is white. Makes me gag.

There's an ad on TV -- another one of those that advertises the exact opposite of what the maker wanted -- where they removed all the badges from a car and had people guess what it was.

People couldn't tell.

Cars these days all look the same. American, Japanese, German all look like the same cookie-cutter mold.

_Howard wrote:

NoCoPilot wrote:

A comparatively cheap "extra" that could make a run-of-the-mill rice burner stand out.

If you think custom paint is cheap, you obviously haven't had a car painted recently. That shit is unbelievably expensive.

Yeah, most cars are boring today, not only in color but in shape. But they give the public what they want. And what the public wants is boring: the most popular car color today is white. Makes me gag.

Not to nit pick but perhaps it is the other way around. We want affordable and the cost of color is high, often. I adore the new blues Ford is coming out with but would I buy a Ford to get them? No. Custom my Kia? Not affordable.

Considering the MS law just passed I think the rainbow theme would be perfect for my car with it's Bernie and Tesla bumper stickers.

Black cars get in twice as many accidents per capita as white cars.  Black cars are impossible to keep clean.

Yet black is the second most popular color in North America.  Whyzzat?

It sounds like you think black cars get in more accidents because they are black.

You think there's a Darth Vader effect, where bad drivers choose black cars?

You'll have to explain brown cars then.

Regular brown or turd-muckledy brown?

Yes.

The survey didn't specify.