The world of automotive exterior colors has recently taken a small step away from the black, gray and white of the past decade. Porsche, for example, recently announced that it will expand its Paint to Sample program to deliver more colors than ever before.
And while this may seem like an easy decision, finding, choosing, and testing new paint colors turns out to be more difficult than one might imagine. Daniela Milosevic, a designer in the color and finish design department at Porsche’s Weissach Development Center, says she has to think years ahead of trends in order to ensure the color on your vehicle matches the popular color.
That’s because the paint color you’re considering today will not be approved for at least three to four years. Each color must pass a range of tests to prove, among other things, that it can withstand exposure to the weather. To do this, paint is applied to test plates placed in bright sunlight for two years.
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“Anything that passes the Florida color fastness test is definitely lightfast,” Milosevic says, adding that fire safety tests, salt water, and stone effect follow. The sample plates are known as “colored frogs” and they look like a miniature 911.
For inspiration, Milosevic and her team tend to look outside the automotive world. Shows such as the Milan Furniture Show help designers to reflect on the missing colors from the Porsche collection. “We use interior design and architecture as a source of ideas for our work,” Milosevic says. “Fashion is moving very fast. In return, customers buy a sofa and keep it for several years – like a car.”
In her mixing bench, Milošević can create new color recipes and experiment with other color scheme libraries from Pantone and NCS. Experimenting with colors is important and Porsche encourages polarizing ideas in order to keep itself at the forefront of design.
To make matters more complicated, each color you develop must also work in harmony with the upholstery and trim options as the exterior color can be seen from inside the vehicle.
All this means that every year Milošević and her team develop 12 paint colors for new models and derivatives, of which only four are selected and developed.