2022.09.16 Hyundai Motor Group
Unique Personality: The Charm of Car Colors
The color of a car is an important design element that reflects the individuality of the vehicle type and is the most important option that expresses the individual driver’s taste. Here is a story about the charm of car colors that make cars more beautiful with various colors and textures.
When buying a car, there is a moment of choice that you must face: the color of the car, the most enjoyable but the most difficult choice. Color is an important design element that determines the impression of a car, and is also an exterior element that reflects personal taste. The choice of car color becomes more important because the impression of a car depends on its color. Recently, Hyundai Motor Group’s automobiles are expanding the range of customer choices by introducing various color options. The automaker offers superior uniqueness with beautiful color and saturation, and also introduces unusual colors using the unique texture of the paint.
There are also trends in car colors. Achromatic colors such as white, black, and gray are the easiest options and are the most popular among car colors. However, the rest of the color choices change according to the trend. According to the ‘2021 BASF Color Report for Automotive OEM Coatings’ published by the coatings division of BASF, a global chemical company, people are choosing blue and red more often in recent years. Also, although there are not many green and beige colors, their share has been steadily increasing. This change seems to have been influenced by the rapidly spreading electrification trend in the automobile industry. This is because most global automakers express the property of being eco‒friendly with their own colors.
Hyundai Motor Group’s cars also offer a variety of colors that emphasize the styling of the car, including colors that reflect recent trends. For example, the Niro, Kia’s signature eco‒friendly family SUV, offers a total of seven exterior colors. Among them, ‘Cityscape Green’ is the color that best shows Niro’s design. Cityscape Green reflects the most popular green color trend not only in automobiles but also in the fashion industry as a whole. In order to express Niro’s boldness in a minimal and modern way, pearl particles are put into transparent pigments, and the pearly feel as clean as glass beads is sophisticated and urban.
In addition, the Kia Niro introduced a variety of color combinations through the Aero Pillar, which was unprecedented in current mass‒produced cars. The four color combinations are Snow White Pearl and Steel Gray, Steel Gray and Interstellar Gray, Mineral Blue and Aurora Black Pearl, Cityscape Green, and Aurora Black Pearl. In addition, ‘Bespoke,’ which allows the owner to choose the exterior color according to the owner’s taste, gives the Niro a unique personality and contributes to enhancing customer satisfaction.
IONIQ 5, Hyundai Motor’s dedicated EV, also has a distinctive color lineup. The new color, Atlas White, emphasizes the clean and pure image of electric vehicles. Lucid Blue Pearl embodies the image of the refreshing winds of the Antarctic and Arctic, and Digital Teal Green Pearl expresses the combination of the purity of minerals and electric vehicle technology. Among the 9 exterior colors, the most eye‒catching color is Gravity Gold Matte. This color is the result of the automaker’s focus on visualizing invisible cutting‒edge technology, and it is characterized by a beautiful expression of the finely polished metal color through a matte texture.
The color of Genesis’ dedicated EV GV60 is bolder and more diverse. The exterior color of the GV60 consists of 8 types of glossy and 3 types of matte, providing a total of 11 colors. It can be called a special color. These colors were born under the CMF (Color Material Finish) design strategy that emphasizes the luxurious and eco‒friendly image unique to Genesis electric vehicles. Hanauma Mint captures the beauty of Hanauma Bay, one of the most beautiful beaches in Hawaii, and Atacama Copper emphasizes the metallic feel of copper, a key material for electrical components, to create a sophisticated electric vehicle image. For reference, the name Atacama comes from San Pedro de Atacama in Chile, where copper is abundant.
The flagship sedan of Genesis, the G90, offers 12 exterior colors. This number is the highest for a single car model by Hyundai Motor Group, because the automaker considered not only the universal choice of achromatic colors, but also the diverse tastes of customers who pursue overwhelming value. Even the black color, which is a universally popular color, has two options. Vik Black emphasizes luxury with fine pearl pigments, and Maui Black, inspired by the Black Sand Beach in Maui, Hawaii, stands out for its pure high‒concentration black color. On the other hand, G90’s Hallasan Green is the first color with a Korean name on Genesis, and it is a deep green color inspired by Korean nature, which contains the Korean luxury that Genesis pursues.
Through ‘Build Your Own Hyundai’ provided on the Hyundai Motor website, you can check the color preference trends of consumers who purchased the car model as well as the exterior color provided for each vehicle. The most popular color for most car models is also achromatic. Gray and white were the main colors for Hyundai Motor’s main car models, such as Avante(Elantra), Grandeur, Tucson, Santa Fe, and Palisade. One thing that stands out is the high popularity of Amazon Gray Metallic. Amazon Gray, which was introduced as a new color with the launch of Avante, is a medium chroma color with blue pearl and turquoise green pearl based on aluminum particles with a hard metallic feel. The dual color of gray and green, which stands out depending on the light, reflects the latest color trend, and was popular not only among Avante but also among Tucson and Tucson hybrid owners.
Depending on the model, chromatic exterior colors are also popular. The owners of Hyundai Venue preferred Denim Blue Pearl with a deep blue pearly feel, and for the Kona Hybrid, Dive Blue with a light blue color was chosen a lot. As such, chromatic colors are often chosen for small cars that young consumers mainly have. Among Hyundai cars, only certain colors were selected for Avante N and Kona N. 40% of buyers of Avante N(M/T) chose Performance Blue color, and 33% of buyers of Kona N chose Sonic Blue, proving the high popularity of N brand exclusive color.
Performance Blue, which can be found in Hyundai Motor’s high‒performance brand N, has already established itself as a symbolic brand color. It is characterized by high saturation and catches the eye at once, and is commonly used in racing cars such as Hyundai Motorsport’s i20 N WRC rally car, Avante N TCR, and Avante N‒cup race car. In addition, Performance Blue clearly expresses the presence of N brand models in the interior of the steering wheel, gear knob, and stitches.
As above, Hyundai Motor Group’s recent models present a variety of colors. From achromatic colors, which are always loved for their clean and neat image for a long time, to special unique colors that match the concept of each car, people can enjoy the charm and beauty of color in Hyundai Motor Group’s diverse color lineup. Hyundai Motor Group will increase the appeal of its car design through the development of new colors. Many people are expecting new colors to be unveiled that suit future mobility technologies, such as exotic colors that reflect the latest color trends.
