USA TODAY International Edition
‘Sahara’ bronze tapped as car color of the year
Warmer tone works both inside and out
If you’re a fashion-forward car shopper, get ready to accessorize around bronze, coppery colors as automakers move away from the white, black silver and grey shades that have dominated the market.
Sahara is hot, and I don’t mean climate change. It’s the name of the 2019 automotive color of the year, developed by Axalta, the largest supplier of automotive paint.
New technologies and changing tastes in vehicles influenced the choice, along with a keen eye to trends in fashion and design, said Nancy Lockhart, Axalta’s global color marketing manager. Axalta was DuPont’s paint group before being spun off in 2013.
“Sahara works on all types of vehicles,” Lockhart said recently at Axalta’s automotive headquarters. “It looks good on large SUVs and trucks – vehicles as big as a Chevy Suburban or Ford F-150 – but also on a little Fiat.”
Not every color does. Bright colors like pink and some greens may look fine on a compact or sporty car, but could be overpowering on larger vehicles. Sahara is a proprietary color Axalta created to showcase the type of colors it sees trending upward.
It’s unlikely any automaker will ever use Sahara’s exact shade. The color serves more as a conversation starter when Axalta works with designers and takes color samples to automakers around the world.
The company will make Sahara available to aftermarket paint shops, though. The color of the year has become a big deal in the five years since Axalta announced the first one. Some customers will call local paint shops as soon as the color is announced, asking to have it applied to their vehicle.
“It’s a warm and sandy color that’s timeless, with echoes of gold,” Lockhart said. “It’s reminiscent of orange without being orange.
Developing colors for self-driving cars
Last year’s color, called Starlite, was a gleaming white. White is the most popular color for vehicles around the world, but Lockhart sees a trend toward brighter, more expressive colors.
Axalta chose white last year in part because it’s investigating paints that work with the lidar and other sensors of self-driving vehicles.
People won’t forget they like different colors when they start buying autonomous vehicles though, so Axalta is developing a whole palette for them.
Sahara is highly visible to Lidar, a key autonomous sensor. At the same time, it’s transparent enough to radar that the color can be used to paint over sensors embedded in the vehicle’s bumpers and sides.
It’s a soothing color that can be used inside vehicles as well as on exterior panels, Lockhart said.
“Sahara has a bit of a retro feel, without looking old,” she said. That helps it work on performance vehicles, where it could recall the famous gold Pontiac used for paint and accents when its Firebird Trans Am was a cultural icon.
The color is also compatible with accents, stripes and black roofs, all of which are likely to become more common as automakers offer more ways for people to customize their car right from the factory.
“It was designed to work well with two-toning,” Lockhart said.
In addition to mass customization, Axalta sees a growing trend to matte finishes – frequently black – for accents and stripes. “Sahara isn’t one of the top colors in the world today, but it’s trending in certain regions,” Lockhart said. Beiges and browns – the part of the spectrum that includes the warmer, gold-tinged Sahara – are increasingly popular in China, the world’s largest vehicle market. More than 60 percent of vehicles sold in China today are white.