Automakers get yummy ideas for car color names
— -- From cappuccino to French silk, the growing popularity of television cooking shows is starting to influence the names chosen to describe the colors of cars.
The automaker also has hired celebrity chief Rocco DiSpirito as a pitchman.
"We seem to be a society that is absolutely enamored with food right now," says J Mays, Ford's global design chief. "If I tell you the color is lime green, you not only get the idea of what it looks like, but I've got your taste buds working as well."
DuPont, largest supplier of automotive paint, themed last year's presentation of new colors to the industry around food, with all its new colors named after foods. Orange became mango, green was celebrated as iced daiquiri and red was called gazpacho.
It isn't just cars. Margaret Walch, director of the Color Association of the United States, says interest in food is showing up in color names for household interiors. "People are very focused on food," she says.
But car colors are especially important to the auto industry because they figure in buying decisions 91% of the time, DuPont found in a survey nine years ago.
Food analogies mark a departure from the auto industry norm of naming colors after places, such as Hyundai's Venetian blue, or geography, such as Toyota's desert sand mica.
Honda's new Element small SUV comes in a brown metallic called root beer. "We wanted something fun," says John Watts, Honda's manager of product planning.
Ford is sinking its fork deepest, however. Eight food- and wine-themed names are among the 20 or so color names this year, and more are on the way.
Related Stories
ABC News Live