Increasingly colour conscious

"COLOUR imparts a special appeal to the automobile. The right colour can make a good car look great or even make a bad car seem like an acceptable compromise. Our car's colour is a reflection of our personality, maybe even our age, one way or the other," says this interesting article in Business Line.

- Dilip.

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Source: Business Line, Jan 29, 2006

Increasingly colour conscious

S. Muralidhar

COLOUR imparts a special appeal to the automobile. The right colour can make a good car look great or even make a bad car seem like an acceptable compromise. Our car's colour is a reflection of our personality, maybe even our age, one way or the other.

For obvious reasons there are a few colours that are apt only for specific classes of cars or for specific variants. So, red, blue and yellow are young colours that are associated with sports cars, convertibles and luxury compacts. Some of these colours have, of course, also become synonymous with specific brands. Red almost immediately conjures up the image of a Ferrari and a bright yellow reminds you of the Lamborghini.

Go to a nearby computerised, automatic colour matching and paint mixing shop (quite a few of these have sprung up all around the country) of one of the paint manufacturers and you will be amazed at the kind of variety available in terms of the number of colour choices being offered for household use. They even sport fancy names — Champagne Gold, Jasmine White, Ambrosia Pink, Ocean Surf Green, Riviera Red and Midnight Black, to name a few. But despite the near endless possibilities that a shade card can offer even for the car buyer, there are a few colours that just don't seem to loose their sheen in almost every car market in the world.

In relatively smaller and less developed markets such as India, offering too many colour choices may be difficult considering the complexity of the paint shop process at the car manufacturing facility and given the fact that the majority of cars being manufactured are low margin, mass market small cars.

But in many markets in Europe and the US, there are car manufacturers who offer customised high-end luxury passenger cars with a much larger range of colour choices. Yet, only five colours — silver, black, blue, white and red — have been and continue to remain some of the most popular colour choices among car buyers.

Shades colour our preferences

Every car buyer has a favoured colour that is determined by a number of factors such as his age, his family's outlook, the car's size and other emotional factors such as cultural and local influences. And yet, despite the vast differences in regional perceptions, one colour — silver — has stood the test of time. Silver has been around for quite some time in one form or the other and is only now being challenged by some of the other emerging colours.

According to the 2005 DuPont Automotive Colour Popularity Report, colours such as grey and a bolder blue are challenging silver, which has been at the top of the heap in the auto colour choice chart for the last six years.

But the study points out that though silver as the top choice is losing its lustre, its reign at the top is far from over. Silver and its variants — stainless steel, chrome and platinum — continue to be the colour of choice for showcasing new technology, design and luxury.

Though the recent DuPont survey was a global one (which included the Indian market), the results will be extremely close to consumer colour preferences in India too. No wonder there are so many silver cars around, and it continues to be the colour that is available in almost every car manufacturer's palette. The DuPont survey shows that silver, though losing market share, continued to be the first colour of choice in the Americas, Europe and Asia.

Silver's fall from last year's overwhelming high in Asia was seven per cent, yet, it continues to adorn 30 per cent of all cars manufactured in 2005 in the region. Grey, blue, white and white pearl, black and red were the other colours most preferred by car buyers in the markets in these regions. Surprisingly, silver, which is viewed as a colour that represents and best showcases high technology, was also the top ranking colour of choice among the luxury, compact or sport and intermediate-sized passenger vehicles. It slipped to third position only in the light truck or sports utility vehicles category, buyers of which seemed to prefer white or white pearl as their colour choice.

The DuPont survey also points out that while silver has declined in popularity in favour of chromatic shades, it is also giving way to medium-dark grey. Grey is a branching out of silver and a fresh version of the latter. Many manufacturers, even in India, are also infusing grey with green, blue and even purple to derive new more personalised variants of a colour that would have otherwise found fewer takers in a relatively more conservative market such as India.

In fact, the attempts at developing newer shades to suit new cars is now reaching highs that are clearly indicative of the trend toward mass personalisation. More and more car buyers are looking at colour as one of the most important considerations while making their purchase decision.

Clearly, one of the most important indicators that the survey threw up and which will be extremely useful information for car manufacturers is the fact that globally as many as 40 per cent of all respondents interviewed felt that they are likely to switch brands if they cannot get their preferred colour in the car being considered. So, it obviously makes sense to keep a close watch over the colours that are most preferred by potential customers.

The DuPont colour survey also showed that manufacturers have discovered new colours that have since become popular among car buyers, such as the new, stronger, bolder blue and silver with tints of blue and green or warm, light brown metallic effects.

Automotive colour is now so complex and influential, that in a reverse from the past, the automotive market is inspiring other markets' colour choices, especially with its metallic and special effect finishes.