Car companies are paying more attention to color because consumers are. Having the right--or wrong--color in stock can affect the bottom line. Design teams at automakers like Ford, General Motors
and Volkswagen AG's Audi are tweaking the paint choices consumers will be reviewing for cars in 2011 and beyond.
Jon Hall, Ford Motor's chief paint designer, attended about 10 fashion
shows at New York Fashion Week in September. Runway season is "the time when we're actually trying to confirm our own design forecasts," Hall says.
On average, a new paint color takes
about five years to develop and test. But merely copying the same color seen on runways and tossing it onto a car will never work, says Chris Webb, lead creative designer for trend and exterior color
at GM. And despite the race to identify and cultivate niche colors, global color preferences stay within a narrow range of white, silver and black.
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