10 INTENSELY COLOURFUL PAINT JOBS
In the world of unusual automotive paint jobs, it can sometimes seem like enthusiasm takes over from good taste. Check out these 10 paint jobs you can probably see from orbit.
Rolls-Royce Dawn Fuxia
The Rolls-Royce bespoke program allows customers to order pretty much any colour they want and have it splashed anywhere on the car. This is perhaps the most puzzling part of the Dawn Fuxia, a convertible finished in a colour named after owner Michael Fux, and one which was allegedly inspired by the “fuchsia petals from Pebble Beach lawns.”
Sublime Green Dodge Challenger
Back in the 1970s, Mopar was all-in on arresting paint colours with equally evocative names such as Sublime and Plum Crazy. Flash forward to today, and you can once again purchase the limest of Sublime green retro-themed Challengers.
Hello Kitty Mitsubishi Mirage
Mitsubishi made a pink version of the Mirage, adorned it with Hello Kitty stickers and sold 400 of them in Japan. They also put a big Hello Kitty pillow inside.
Land Rover Range Rover Chroma Flair
Land Rover has traditionally offered its customers a unique palette of paint colours, but few hues were as memorable as Spectral Amber ChromaFlair. The paint process involves flakes of aluminum coated with magnesium fluoride, which are in turn combined with a layer of chromium that creates a prism-like effect that alters light depending on where you are standing.
Bugatti Veyron L’or Blanc
What happens when you take a multimillion-dollar supercar and mash it up with a fetish for equally high-end porcelain? The answer is the Bugatti Veyron L’or Blanc, a vehicle that not only contains porcelain inlays in the wheels and fuel cap, but also happens to feature a blue-on-white hand-swirlled, dripped-on paint job.
Dakar Yellow BMW E36 M3
Dakar Yellow wasn’t exclusive to the E36-generation M3, but it’s clear to us that the mid-’90s sport sedan was the BMW model that wore it best. In fact, alongside Laguna Blue and Phoenix Yellow, it’s become one of the shades most strongly associated with the brand’s popular performance car.
Jeff Koons MBW M3 GT Art Car
BMW has a long tradition of building art cars. One of the most recent and surprisingly uncontroversial entries came from Jeff Koons, a provocative artist who channelled what could only be described as a rainbow melting into hyperspace across the elegant lines of the M3 GT Le Mans car in 2010.
Volkswagen Golf Harlequin
One day, a Volkswagen executive pondered the question of what a MK3 Golf hatchback would look like if it were stolen, sent to a chop shop and then reassembled using the body panels of different-coloured Golfs that happened to be lying around. Then that car was actually built by VW, dubbed the Harlequin, and sold for exactly one model year before disappearing forever.
Ford Mustang Mystic Cobra
In 1996, Ford was eager to draw attention to the new Mustang SVT Cobra, and as a result turned to BASF for a paint job that would shift between green, blue, black, purple, gold, and brown depending on how the light happened to hit it. It was like nothing else on the road in the ’90s, and although the finish would later become available on the aftermarket, Ford only used it for a single model year.
Audi R8 Chrome Edition
In case you were wondering whether automakers were also capable of making terrible decisions relating to full-chrome paint jobs, this one-off Audi R8 proves that the answer is a resounding yes. This specific model was built and then donated to a charity auction, where hopefully it was purchased by a collector willing to keep it parked in a subterranean garage.