Well, I'm driving one this week, a 2007 Pontiac Solstice, the turbocharged GXP edition. But its color is not just red, it's "Aggressive Red."
I was showing the car to a few friends last night and when one of them looked at the keyholder, noticed the embellished name color and said, "Why can't they just call it red?"
It's a fair question. And from what I've read, it's a unique answer: Manufacturers introduce car colors based on social trends.
One current trend, according to an article in USA Today, is to name cars after food because of American consumers' obsession with food.
Ford, for example, has cars with the colors Salsa Red Metallic and Cappuccino Frost Metallic. One color option for the Honda Element is Root Beer.
Geography terms are popular, too, and thus Hyundai's color, Venetian Blue, and Toyota's color, Desert Sand Mica.
According to a report by syndicated automotive writer Lou Ann Hammond (CarList.com) General Motors has five different hues of blue among its vehicles: transition blue metallic, passage blue metallic, imperial blue metallic, traverse blue metallic and pace blue.
Despite the myriad shades and odd names, studies determining the popularity of car colors is black and white, so to speak.
In 2006, the most popular car colors: luxury cars (white, 25 percent), sport and compact cars (silver 18 percent) and full or intermediate size cars (silver 25 percent).
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That's interesting James. (I'm going to expose my nerdiness a little here...) Colors can also be patented based on the formula used to create them. For example: Fire Engine Red is a special formula red that can only be used for fire engines. I wouldn't be surprised if all of the various colors have special formulas and are not the same even when they look very similar. Since true Black is all colors and true white is the absence of color, I'd venture to say that those colors cannot be patented. Pearl White or White Sands could well be though...
Posted by: Kimberlee Morrison | August 1, 2007 6:54 PM | Permalink to Comment