Two-Tone Ready for a Comeback?

2004 Bugatti Veyron 16.4

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Henry Ford liked to tell his customers they could order the Model T in any color — as long as it was black. These days, he might substitute silver.

Once reserved for high-line luxury cars, silver has become the color of choice lately. According to DuPont’s 2003 Automotive Color Popularity Report, it was chosen by more than 20 percent of new car buyers this year — even more if you expand the palette to include close shades of gray.

The colors we choose for our cars are influenced by a wide range of factors, everything from fashion trends to the economic environment. Trying to predict what will be hot — or not — is a tough challenge for automakers and paint suppliers, like DuPont.

They’ll frequent fashion shows for clues — while also searching the past for fads ready for revival. Indeed, “there’s definitely a buzz” in the industry suggesting two-tone paint is ready for a comeback, suggests Lorene Boettcher, manager of color marketing for PPG Industries, one of the auto industry’s largest suppliers of paint.

Rainbow of choice

Step into your nearest showroom and you’ll find a rainbow of colors to choose from. On a top-line luxury car, the options are nearly endless. Have a favorite shirt or perhaps a particular shade of lipstick? Aston Martin, Rolls-Royce, and Bentley promise to custom match its hue. Yet even the must mundane sedan will typically offer as many as a dozen or more paint options.

Considering the slow pace of the manufacturing world, those colors were likely added to the option list two, even three years ahead of time. PPG recently invited automotive designers in for its annual color show, providing more than 150 hot prospects for the 2007 and 2008 model-years. Individual carmakers will ask PPG to work on at least an equal number of their own customized choices.

Most of those colors will likely look familiar. There are the traditional blacks and whites, the ticket-me-reds and save-the-environment-greens. But these days, the industry is exploring ever more creative shades and color combinations, many of them made possible by new paint technology.

Looking out a couple years, you’re likely to see a strong influence of denim, PPG is forecasting. Silver isn’t going away, but it will evolve, stresses Boettcher, with richer, darker or more unusual variations, including those with subtle, underlying tones of blue or red.

Mixing metal, mica or synthetic particles into paint can create what the industry likes to call “flop.” Walk around the vehicle and the colors will seem to change. PPG has Central Park, a green paint that takes on a decidedly orange tone, and American Walnut, which shifts between brown, green and copper.

Silver for conservatives

To get a sense of what’s going to connect with consumers, you’ll often find DuPont’s paint guru, Bob Daily, scouring fashion magazines. He’s also got an eye focused on current events. Silver is a color that tends to gain popularity in conservative times. The bright pastels of the ’50s reflected the unbridled optimism the nation felt at that time.

“The auto industry is cyclical, and if you wait long enough, trends return,” Daily notes.

Ford is betting on that. In the coming months, the automaker will install sophisticated new paint hardware in the factories producing its all-new F-150 pickup. Dubbed wet-on-wet, or WoW, the system makes it possible to spray two different colors at a time, without a truck having to make a second pass through the paint booth — a slow and expensive process.

“We’re just starting to explore the possibilities (of two-tone paint) again,” says Ford’s design director, J Mays, acknowledging his unabashed admiration for the wildly creative colors of the original two-tone era.

Two and even three-color combinations have already been making a modest comeback. Two-tone is the option of choice for buyers of Maybach’s M57 and M62 sedans, and it’s expected to be the norm on the new, $1 million Buagatti Veyron.

Chrysler PT Dream Cruiser Series 3

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Volkswagen, meanwhile, expects to offer two-tone for the Beetle, which company insiders tell TheCarConnection could be added to the option list as early as next year.

At GM, new design director Ed Wellburn says, two-tone “might be an effective way of personalizing our products – if we can find the right way to do it,” though he stresses it would likely be used on niche, rather than mainstream, product lines.

One tone or two, getting the color right is critical, emphasizes Ford’s design chief, J Mays. And he finds it increasingly important to “harmonize” interior and exterior colors.

While there are plenty of folks who’ll settle for whatever color they can get – especially if the price is right — there are lots of others who’ll walk out of the showroom if they don’t get the right paint job. So in today’s increasingly competitive market, it’s critical to get things right.

“Color sells,” says Mays.