This blog is called “No Silver Cars” for a reason. It’s not that silver is a bad color for cars. Lots of them look all right that way. And, of course, silver is the German racing color, and is therefore a highly appropriate paint scheme for your Porsches, your Audis, your BMWs, and so on. That’s fine. I’m not coming down hard on you for driving a silver car if that’s what you actually like, and I’ve got nothing but sympathy if you are driving a car in a color you’d never pick off a chart, because you got a good deal on it and beggars can’t be choosers. (Do you really think that I would have chosen “Sell Me Now Beige” for my own car if I’d had a plethora of choices?? No. Red one for me, or maroon, or dark green, or white … )
What the Sharkipede is against is a whole fleet of cars, of every size, body style, price class and country of origin, all painted silver. Look around– it came perilously close to happening, and we are still at risk. There was a time within the last five years when almost 50% of all new cars were painted silver, and if you include all the shades of grey, it was more than half. Add black and white, and it’s more than 3 out of 4. This is, in my opinion, not good. The Sharkipede personally likes cars that are painted a color, and prefers that the fleet display a modicum of variety.
So every year at the Auto Show I look for signs that world of automotive color is coming back to life, and this year was on the promising side. Chrysler, especially, was showing bright blues, and overall silver blues, powder blues and silver greens continued to lift their heads and look around. I was disappointed not to see more of the chocolate browns I so enjoyed last year (Honda? Nissan?), except, of course, for Mini’s splendid new “Hot Chocolate”, a warm cocoa brown available only on the new Clubman, which will be mentioned again in these reports.
I was also quite interested in some new French greys and warm dark umber greys, like Cadillac’s gorgeous “Double Espresso” or Lexus’ “Truffle Mica”.
Most of the color growth this year seemed to be in the oranges and orangey reds, which seemed to be moving away from coppers to include some orange toned dark reds that recalled the GM ”Firethorns” of the seventies. Those were some pretty colors on a car, not that the cars themselves were that great. Though I do have some fond memories of a ’75 Malibu Classic sedan, Firethorn red over matching velour …
Some of the oranges I liked were GM’s “Brazen”, a rich dark orange with only a slight metal flake (seen on a Pontiac Solstice roadster), and Mitsubishi’s “Sunset Pearlescent”.
The Firethorn type dark reds included Nissan’s “Sonoma Sunset”, and Honda’s “Habanero Red”, plus Mazda’s ”Redfire”.
The winner for Best Color, however, was Honda for its ”Blackberry Pearl”, shown on a Fit Sport. This is a dark, metallic ultramarine blue with a purple cast to it, a very rich, expressive color. It is bold, but subtle– lovely on the little car and potentially superb on a large, luxurious one. Accord cries out for this, as does a hypothetical full sized Honda or Acura.
Creative, poetic, or silly color names are always a favorite here, and this year there were a few good ones, especially treasured since it’s so hard to come up with a creative name for silver. I’ve already mentioned “Truffle Mica”, but let’s add Lincoln’s “Dune Pearl” (a nondescript pale gold, but a pretty name), Lexus’ “Noble Spinel Metallic” (a dark wine red), and Mitsubishi’s “Optimist Green”, a light grey green.
This year’s best colors all have rather mundane names: Hot Chocolate, Black Cherry, Blackberry Pearl, but they are strong, vivid car colors, and that can only be good.
Now I wonder why I’m hungry all of a sudden …
Sharkipede
