Podcast

Automotive Colours

6/9/2025

Podcast Episode: 0254
Why do cars have odd Colour names?

Unlock the secret world of car colors and discover how they shape our perceptions and influence our choices. Join us as we explore the vibrant and sometimes unexpected art of naming automotive hues, diving into stories that transform simple paints into rich narratives. From the iconic reds of Ferrari

to the bold "Mojito Green" of a Jeep Wrangler, you'll learn how these color choices go far beyond aesthetics, becoming crucial elements of brand identity and consumer connection.

I was out for work, looking for some caulking for, essentially, finish a job that we had. And as I'm going through all of them and checking out the tiles and making sure that it all matches up to make sure that this job goes well, I look over at the names of the caulking next to me and one of them stands out from the rest of it. It's just a standard gray, but its name literally jumps off the shelf right into my eyes and as I'm looking at it, I'm standing there in the Isle of Lows looking right at this tube of caulking. I had to pick it up, bring it closer and really understand it. Its name, the name of that caulking, was DeLorean Gray. Well, DeLorean’s are stainless steel, but from a long distance away, their gray can be something even more amazing, and it seems like this company has decided to use the name DeLorean to make a color gray you can use for caulking as you're putting down tile in your own house. That's just amazing and to this day I always look for it and I try and find all the amazing colors and names that go with them. That just throw you right off. Well, in the automotive world we actually have that, and this year Jeep brought back a brand new green that we're going to talk about in this podcast. So today, sit back and listen in as AutoLooks goes through some interesting car color names.

Welcome back to the outlooks podcast. I am your host, as always, the doctor to the automotive industry, Mr. Everett J, coming to you from our main host website at AutoLooks.net. If you haven't been there, stop by, check it out. Read some of the reviews, check out the ratings. Go to the corporate links website page. Big or small, we have them car companies from around the globe all in one centralized location of the AutoLooks.net website. Oh yeah, the AutoLooks podcast is brought to you by Ecomm Entertainment Group and distributed by PodBean.com. If you'd like to get in touch with us, send us an email over at [email protected].

So, like I said in the beginning, some of these names these companies choose for their colors. It's just well. It kind of goes either with the times or wait, the first thing that comes to your mind. And as I'm standing there at the Toronto Auto Show this year looking at the wall from Stellantis, of all their new colors you can get for the brand-new Jeep Wrangler, one stands out for me. It's not just green, it's Mojito green. Now, mojito is an alcoholic drink but with a mint leaf in it you get that bright green. It's not to say you should go around your Jeep Wrangler drinking and driving, no, but the green that they're utilizing looks similar to that of the mint leaf that makes it mojito. And there's a lot of car companies out there that do that.

See, every single year, big companies like DuPont look up to at least five years into the future, sometimes even further than that, to find out what colors are really going to pop for us. You ever notice when you see older cars, even today, at classic car shows and they're sitting out there in the sun with their original paint and even if they've been re-sprayed, it's the original pink color. Well, the days of these flat pastels, hell, silver flakes, even vibrant colors, have come and gone. When I was in college, I noticed this with all new entry-level vehicles, even with Mercedes and their little A-class and B-class that they're trying to bring into the North American marketplace. They're promoting them with these vibrant colors that pop. Essentially, they went with the music of the time. They popped with you, and the reason why they chose to do that is because people would think they're young and hip and cool because the color of their car matched the world around them. It wasn't just a standard, boring beige vehicle like all those people that just wear golf shirts and khaki pants. Okay, bland, it's boring. There's a lot of thought that actually goes into choosing the perfect color for cars Like the Dodge Viper.

The original color for that was more of a brighter red than by the end of its generations it went darker. The darkness of the red showed that it meant business. It got. Essentially it brought out the image of the vehicle. So, you're looking at the third generation of the Dodge Viper Put it next to the first generation both GTSs like the coupe versions and you're looking at the colors and you notice that there's difference.

That bright red makes you remember the 90s. The dark red makes you show what decade they came from. You see, every decade's got all kinds of different types of colors out there and there's always ones on top. For a long time, it's been silver, but now, with black and white starting to creep back up, it's always been, as you could say, shades have been the top tier colors.

But we all know that there's specific colors that go with specific cars. Like buying a Ferrari, it's either red or it's yellow. A Lamborghini can be yellow, a Honda can be red, white or blue. All car companies have their own specific color, like McLaren. When you think of McLaren you think of that bright mango-style orange. It's right there, right in front of you and it makes you think of those. Could you imagine if automotive companies went out there and painted vehicles the same shade of yellow as a school bus? Well, you'd call it a bus. I remember Hummer did that with the H2. In the early 2000s Hummer's yellow was very similar to that of a school bus, not as much orange tint to it, it was still more on the yellow side, but it was close to being a school bus yellow. So, anybody that actually had the yellow H2s people just saw them as odd-looking school buses and that's what they try and create.

My first vehicle that I drove and essentially the one that you know spent a lot of time with me in my life and I wish I'd never given it up was actually a 1994 Chrysler Concorde. Now, everybody I know always looked at that car and said, oh, it's purple, it's purple, a purple car. I'm like no, it's not purple, it's more of a reddish tinge, it's just dark red that you think it's purple. Because there actually was a purple that they had and I actually proved it to somebody once, proved it to my wife when we first met. It's like no, it's a purple car. And I brought out the can of paint, I put it down and I said no, it's dark cherry red. Literally that's the name of the color that.

My Concorde was Dark Cherry Red, kind of like my Rio. It's metallic black and has silver flakes in it. Those silver flakes were a big thing. They started utilizing those in the 2000s to try and get more shine out of vehicles. Remember we just moved on from these bland, straight color pastel days. Hell, you go back to the 1950s and there were pastel colors. How many of those weird baby blue cars can you find? The funny thing that goes along with a lot of these interesting colors that people use for their vehicles to make them stand out are the names they give to them.

Like I said at the beginning that cocking it was DeLorean gray and jeep's new green is mojito green. Well, some car companies have kind of gone over the top through their generations. Fords got a few of them. They have the got to have it green. Anti-establish mint. Bring them back. Olive. Tangerine scream, fruity and guilt and thanks for a million pretty interesting names to use. And like we all get what tangerine scream is okay, that's going to be type of orange similar to what you would find on the brand-new Ford Capri. Now bring them back, olive, you like. The first thing that comes to my mind is just this faint, pasty green. Like it might make me think of olives, it might make me think of a mediterranean country, but when I see it on a car, no crap. Anti-establishment establishment, okay. So, they're going against the establishment, which means it's more of a generalized green that you would see out in the world.

Like I said, in the early 2000s, when I was going to college, I saw a lot of these entry-level cars with these intrigue, interesting pop colors, the type of colors that you would get tired of after a few years. So, by the time you had the trade in the vehicle, you were glad to do it because that horrible green was out of fashion right now. You know like everybody today goes out and gets a brand-new iPhone. Then when they release a new one, they got to get rid of the old one because they need the new one. It doesn't look as good, it doesn't handle as good, it doesn't have the great features you can have one simple thing. I kind of went with the colors. See, entry level is always the cars that try and go with the fads of today because they want to grab people and bring them in to purchase vehicles because they're entry level. They're going after the people that take public transit. They want to say to them no, you don't need to take public transit, you can own a car. That's an extension of yourself, because the colors go with everything you love and that's what they try and create for you. They bring those colors to you. But then again, some companies bring colors to you that just want you to turn heads of everybody you pass. Dodge was one of the biggest ones about it With Go Mango, plum, crazy Top Banana, furious Fuchsia, sassy Green and even Go Green.

They were bright colors Like, go Like. I basically like a stop and go light. It's that bright, bright green, sassy green. There's more of the seafoam style. Fuchsia, furious Fuchsia. Now they put those things on Challengers and Cudas back in the day. Furious Fuchsia, the pink. Now people will tell you oh, you got a pink car. It's like. No, I got furious fuchsia. It's not pink, it's a mad pink. Like top banana. What's yellow car? No, it's the top banana.

Plum crazy was always greatest. I always love that one, because when you see it and it's so bright and you're always thinking yourself purple nobody wants to buy a purple vehicle. But plum crazy. You see it on those dodges and you just think plum crazy is power. It goes with the vehicles and then go mango, like we all know what color that's going to be, it's going to fall into the orange category, but they put it on their vehicles to separate them from everyone else. You see, every car company has different colors than everyone else. They all want to be different and want to differentiate themselves.

When it comes to specific, especially halo vehicles or vehicles that need to grasp a market, they'll utilize these interesting colors and then they'll give them interesting names behind them, because when you purchase the vehicle, you just don't want it to say color green. Now, that's what your insurance and that's what your ownership will say, but the actual color coding of the sign will have Renault, alien Green, alien Green. This isn't just green, this is a green species, it's Alien Green. Now I'm thinking of Martian, like Marvin Martian, kind of Alien Green. I'm not thinking of like Alien Eat you, James Cameron. Alien yeah, I love those movies, no. But like Alien Green. Like Mercedes Green Hell. You, James Cameron alien yeah, I love those movies, no. But like alien green. Like Mercedes green hell, mango, okay, green hell.

Everybody knows what color green hell is supposed to be. It's a dark, forestry green and it's supposed to make you think green hell. If you don't know what green hell is, you listen to the wrong podcast here, because green hell is the most fabled racetrack of all time. Not talking Silverstone, I'm talking the Nürburgring. Mercedes has known about the green hill, how. They even made a movie about the Nürburgring when you go back and check the whole history of it and literally the movie is called the green hell. Why? Because there are so many problems that come with the green hell in the Nürburgring, but having it as a color on your vehicle just makes you think, oh, it's not just green, its green hell, it's the pine trees that go around the course.

You might be down there trying to get some paint to do a little touch-up job on your Mercedes SLS AMG. Just because you got, you know, somebody dingy on a parking lot and took off, you're like I'm going to go touch this thing up. You get your can of paint and it's just green. Hell on it. You know it's like, yeah, I remember that week. That was fun. I had so much fun with my friends. It becomes more of a memory to you. So just because the color of your vehicle doesn't mean it can't bring back memories of something that's even better.

Like I said you that pop Holden was famous for this with the toxic green, some like it hot red and son of a gun gray. These were mostly utilized for their HSV products because they wanted to make them stand out. You always have to differentiate your standard products from your performance products, so you've got to give them colors that make them stand out, like Dodge with the plum purple. Well, Holden did the toxic green. It's green, but it looks like it's nuclear waste and that's the shade they give it. You've got to remember there's thousands upon thousands of different colors.

Literally, as I'm talking to you in this podcast right now, the back of my microphone is giving me hundreds of different colors as it's just going around. There's green, there's some blue, there's red, there's orange, there's yellow, it's all there. You see, the thing is everybody looks at colors and they can say, oh, that's green. Well, what type of green is it? That's what you have to ask yourself. What does it look like? What does it make you think of when you see it? And these auto companies think that too, because the paint companies look at it and say look at the vehicle and we're going to paint this, but what color name are we going to give it? It's orange, right? Well, no, we're going to give it something else.

It's not just orange, it's tangerine screen. It's screaming at you from the middle of a parking lot. It's literally staring at you going. I'm here, like, how many times have you gone down the road, been in a parking lot and you see, you know, let's just put it out there because of the original vehicle of this concept, the Mojito Green Jeep. There's a green Jeep, there's a purple Jeep, there's a pink Jeep, there's an orange Jeep. It has such a vibrant color, okay, so this tangerine screen sitting there on a Ford Capri on the other side of the parking lot and literally you could see your car from a mile away. It's like its paint is literally screaming at you from 300 meters away. You can see it now mega metallic black. You think heavy metal, you think of you know something heavy, but it just blends in.

Giving it a name that kind of stands out from the rest of the crowd is usually done to the colors that will stand out in a crowd. You're not going to have standard beige and be like you know this is, uh well, let's just say Pantera Gray. No, you're not going to give it that color because it's literally the most boring beige in the world. You're going to call it sandstone beige. Okay, and that's what a lot of these companies do. They choose the names based on what type of memory you will get from it over time.

They have to change these up. They have to add new hues to it. They add silver flakes. They're going to add more chrome. They're going to add more and more because our colors and our tastes constantly change. White is one of the few that really hasn't changed in a long time.

But colors that aren't super popular, like orange, green, purple, pink and even brown, you have to change them up. If you go back and you look at a truck from the 1980s or even 70s that painted brown, its brown will be completely different than what you find today and back in the day when British Leyland still existed, they had a brown called O-Fudge. Now the first thing that comes to my mind when I hear O-Fudge is FudgeeO, the cookie. I love them, I love FudgeeO and I think of this dark, dark color and it brings back a memory for me. So you may just see it as red, white, blue, green, purple, black, white, silver, gray, gold, but they all have different names and their names are an expression of themselves AMC back in the day, big bad blue, and the reason why they call it big bad blue is because it was such a vibrant color of blue that AMC vehicles that were painted in them would stand out in a crowd. So, they had to give it a name that would stand out like its Vauxhall, Red and Roll. It's a darker, standard color of red.

Kia with their Vanilla Shake. It's not white, it's not beige, it's not sand, it's Vanilla Shake. And when you see it, that's the first thing that comes to your mind. Do you really think that people sit down in a boardroom look at this, you know a hundred new colors that they're going to come out with next year and go okay, that's red, that's red two, that's red. Three, that's red four. We got purple four. I think we're going to go with green five and orange two down there. Okay, so when people go up to the counter and they need to get more paint, they're just going to go out and say, oh, I need a Kia orange two, okay, well, we don't have any of that today, but it's the same. As you know.

Chevrolet orange four no, they got to give it a name because when you're thinking orange, you're just thinking a standard, bland, boring color. You got to give it names, just like the automobiles that these colors sit on. You got to give the color a name that's just as vibrant as it stands and that's what these paint companies realize. You can't just call everything by its natural color in a rainbow. You have to give it more. You can't just call it fuchsia, you got to call it furious fuchsia, because it's not just fuchsia, it's a mad fuchsia Because it's on a car with power that's mad at the world, it's powerful, it's angry, it wants to get out there.

And even when it comes to luxury colors, the names of those tend to go with them. If you get a really dark shade of purple on a luxury vehicle like a Honky H5, a lot of times those will use more luxurious nameplates with them, like a royal purple. And why do they do that? Because it goes with the vehicle. It makes you think of prestige. Do you think Rolls-Royce just calls the black on their vehicle black? No, they give them luxurious names because every detail that goes into the vehicle has to be an extension of what it is.

If you want to use the most bland, boring basic car colors on any bland, boring basic vehicle, go right ahead. You can have an AMC Pacer, a Pinto hell, even the Chevrolet Cavalier. It can be bland, it can be boring, it can blend in with the crowd. But if you want to make a statement, let's make a statement with the color. Let's choose a name for that color that stands with the car it's on. You know, jeeps aren't just Jeeps, not just desert brown, forest green. They could be backwoods, mud or a nice dark brown. They could be a deep river. Then you're thinking blue. They want you to remember all these things and they want you to know about them Because they need these colors to imprint themselves in you, because a vehicle isn't just something you buy and throw out tomorrow.

So, when you go to the store and you buy Hot Wheels and you buy this car today, you'll play with it, but then when you get bored of it, you'll just put it in a box, shove it off in the corner and forget about it. You can't do that with your vehicle. When you pick your vehicle out, you have to pick a color that you can withstand. So that snot green that was on my Mustang when it originally came out in 1970, I don't even know why they chose that color. I don't even know why somebody would even think to use that color, but they put it on a Mustang that was supposed to be more of a premium model. So, they wanted to create more of a luxurious feel. So, greens at that point in time in history were create more of a luxurious feel. So, greens at that point in time in history were considered more of a luxury color. A green, a black, dark brown. It was luxurious.

But for myself would I keep it the color? No, I'd strip it right down and call it metallic blue. Actually, the name of the paint my dad used when he repainted the Mustang was cold iron blue and when you see it it's flat. But you see how this color on this car looks like steel. That vehicle is made of metal. It's not made of plastic. You can tell the chrome is chrome and you can tell the hood is metal, because even the name of the paint makes it so that we know what it is. It's powerful and it stands with the car.

The colors on automobiles are made to honor so many different things. They're made to show power, to show luxury, to honor places, to honor people, to bring in old school memories. They're there for us to remember. And there are so many weird names out there. With their automobiles, like Cadillac literally has their own brand of pink, all thanks to the song Pink Cadillac and Elvis's Pink Cadillac. They literally have a color card called Cadillac Pink and that shade is Cadillac Pink forever, like the cocking. That shade is forever DeLorean gray.

A car can create a name for its color for itself if it's big enough. Like specific color of yellow. You can have Ferrari yellow, a Lamborghini yellow or even a Corvette yellow, and people would understand the hue of that yellow. When you pick up your kid's crayons next time, look at the names of the colors that are on them. They give crayons interesting names too, because when you pick up the crayon you hold it up. What does that color make you think of. It's the same thing the color of your car has to make you think of.

It's not just a car, it's essentially a work of art. No matter how bad the design is, it's still essentially a work of art. It took a lot of hours to make it and bring it to life. That if you just paint it with the exact same color, like Henry Ford said, you can have any color as long as it's black. Now, the only reason why he said that, and the only reason why he did that, is because it was way cheaper to do it with the black, because it dried quicker than any other paint color, which means he can move his vehicles out that much faster. Then remember, all those vehicles are the exact same color. You'll never find yours in a parking lot.

And what color of black is it Black Today? When you look at the black, what do you think? The black on a Model T is Charcoal black, coal black. You know workman's black, I don't know. It's a chalky style of black. Like I said, the next time you look at your car, ask yourself what would I call that color? I look at my RAV and its red. But when I look at it, I actually think no, I think it's more of a burgundy mom ride. My truck is white and I look at it and I'm like its snow white. That's not the name of my truck, my truck's Marty, but the white is like freshly fallen snow, so it's snow white.

Everything has a name and just because automotive companies choose these incredible names for their vehicles, like dark cherry red, everybody thinks it's purple. Well, no, it's dark cherry red, everybody thinks it's purple, but it's no, it's plum crazy purple. We have to tell people what it is and when they hear those names, a memory will kick in, just like seeing those cars. Memories are all tied to colors. Every color out there has specific memory for it. Like, if I give you an ivory white, how many people out there are thinking of a wedding dress? If I tell you a silver Aston, how many people think of the DB5? If I say green, how green? How many people think of the Nürburgring? So, they all mean what they are. Jeep wasn't off in calling their new green Mojito Green, because it literally looks like a mint leaf. It's the same shade, it's Mojito. So, when they saw it, that's what they knew it was going to be. That's not just green, it's Mojito Green and for that we get our car color names.

So, if you like this podcast, please like, share or comment about it on any of the major social feeds or streaming sites that you've found the AutoLooks podcast on, and after that, stop by the website, read some of the reviews, check out some of the ratings, go to the Corporate Links website page. Big or small, we have them all Car companies from around the globe all available on the AutoLooks.net website. The AutoLooks podcast is brought to you by Ecomm Entertainment Group, a distributed by PodBean.com. If you'd like to get in touch with us, send us an email over at [email protected]. So, for myself Everett Jay, the Ecomm Entertainment Group and AutoLooks.net, strap yourself in for one fun wild ride that the color names are going to take us on.

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