Sheesh, Your Car Looks So Yummy!

Anthony Fontanelle
July 6, 2007

Once you start thinking of colors in connection with foodstuff, it is difficult to stop. When you think of luscious colorful foods, you develop a strong craving that would drive you to your kitchen or to the nearest diner. Foods have this dramatic impact on individuals. And the auto industry wanted to grab hold of this powerful stigma.

Chefs have learned a lesson auto designers want their superiors to recognize: presentation counts. Whether the product is cars or food, it is not just what you spank onto the plate, but the appeal, ambiance and style with which you serve it. Like chefs, designers in the auto industry are in the business of selling sizzle and steak. As such, auto designers should be addicted to everything about color and food.

J Mays, the Ford Motor Co.’s vice president for design, is fond of noting how obsessed we are with food. Naming a color after a food triggers an additional sense, Mays said. Taste added to sight doubles the power of association and memory.

Ford’s publicists had some fun with their food connection. “We are not only naming but developing vehicle colors that are rich and appetizing,” Susan Lampinen, the group chief designer, color and materials, said in a press release. “Now customers will not only hunger after their vehicle’s performance but their luscious paint colors, too.” Ford also hired the chef Rocco DiSpirito to appear in a television commercial.

These colors include Orange Frost for the Escape, Lime Gold for the Mustang, Dark Cherry for the Explorer and White Chocolate for the Lincoln Navigator. How do you like your Ford coupe with fine burgundies? How about Freestyle in Merlot? Would you ignore a Lincoln MKX in Crème Brulee? Ford is now offering product lines with food-named colors.

For the Chrysler Group designers, designing new car colors and naming them is as important as choosing the hue itself. “When our product design office designs a new color we give it a descriptive name,” Margaret Hackstedde, the director of color and trim design for the Chrysler Group, wrote in an e-mail message. “The name is also a part of our creative process; it creates the image we’re portraying with the color and the vehicle. For example, a Dodge isn’t just red, but inferno red for added emphasis as to the bold nature of the brand.” There is a lesson here - to name is to design.

Today’s auto browns have different associations from Saddle Tan, and different names. Brown is now about coffee and chocolate, said Chris Webb, the exterior color trend designer at GM, which has the colors Dark Mocha and Cocoa. Other GM colors are Black Licorice, Cappuccino Frost and Salsa Red.

But not all the associations tied to color names are appreciated. Given its history on 1960s and 1970s kitchen appliances, Avocado green is hopelessly tainted with negative results. This limits green. Nobody wants their Mercedes to remind them of guacamole. Also, you would not like your Ford Focus parts in green, right? And while many people love red sports cars, they also know that they will attract the eye of law enforcement. As the saying goes - “Smokey Bait Red.”

But colors also transcend reason. As a fact, colors affect raw perception. Remember Ludwig Wittgenstein‘s “Remarks on Color”? There, the philosopher argued that the way people name colors is part of language, not nature. What is important is that people go on green and stop on red. Detroit gurus may find Wittgenstein not popular, but they are certainly buying into his ideas.

Now, are you thinking of Rolls-Royce Phantom in Consort Red? Want some raspberry gelato?

Source:  Amazines.com