DTW has taken a look at a lot of show cars and tried to see if there are any colour trends apparent.
Most of these are concept cars rather than new launches. What is noticeable is that green is a rarity. Both the greens shown here come from Bentley. The flat orange is distinctive and is from Opel’s Karl. Notice that it is redder than the 021C orange that has been in use for a decade, made famous by Marc Newson’s Ford concept car of the same name.
This orange is more of a 60s racing orange than an industrial design orange. The black or near black is used on Mercedes’ hybrid C-class which is unexpected. It’s a very ordinary shade whereas you might expect a hybrid to have a more distinctive hue for show car purposes. Honda have used white for their Civic-R. Yellow is under-represented. Rich blues are a rarity and were mostly on production cars such as Hyundai’s new SUV.
What I haven’t captured is the use of dual colours. Pininfarina’s Sergio is yellow and black (the bonnet is matte black). It is actually the same as their 2013 showing. Have they nothing new? Ferrari’s own car, the 488 GTB was predictably red. The murky yellow is actually a gold colour and is used on VW’s Passat CC “concept”. It’s nice to see gold return. Maybe we will see some more of that but reaction to it has been negative in comments I have read.
