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"Sophisticated automotive styling cues, such as the color silver, express the technology driven lifestyles of today's consumers," said Robert S. Daily, color styling and marketing manager for DuPont Herberts Automotive Systems, the OEM coatings unit of DuPont Automotive. "We're seeing new vehicle designs with clean lines and sharp edges that are enhanced by silver."
In North America, compared to a year ago, silver rose to the top color choice in the luxury category, while remaining dominant in the full/intermediate and sport/compact segments. Silver remains the second most popular color in the SUV/truck/van segment, but is fast becoming a contender for the lead.
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An ongoing retro-trend is also apparent, with the rise of yellow as a top-12 color over the past two years, and continued gains predicted for 2002. It is seen in pale shades and soft golden metallics for sport luxury vehicles with stronger hues adding punch to sporty cars and light trucks. The last time yellow experienced this level of popularity was when bright sun-colored VW Beetles tooled down the road to the tune of the Beatles' "Yellow Submarine."
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"Accents remain important, and certainly in the United States, red, white and blue are highly visible in recent months on American roads as nearly every vehicle sports patriotic symbols to demonstrate national unity," said Daily. Red, white and blue are in the top five colors in three out of four vehicle categories for 2001, and will be a theme in a variety of new product concepts for months to come.
New dimensional flake effects will add new life to traditional colors, especially metallic red, while the new DuPont SupraShield(tm) scratch and mar resistant clearcoat technology will protect the mirror-like finishes of darker colors.
DuPont expects to see neutrals continue gaining popularity over the next two to three years, along with a wide range of blues and yellow-golds as automotive designers search for new ways to improve consumer appeal of vehicles through color.
DuPont Herberts Automotive Systems continues to be the world's leading supplier of automotive coatings. In North America, DuPont coatings were used on nine of the 10 top selling vehicles in 2001, as well as the leading sellers in Europe.