Why aren’t all cars available in all colours?
Discussion
Jayzee said:
And they weren’t all the same panel colours on each car, either. Well, I guess if they’d made enough of them, there’d be a few identical cars.
There were only a handful of permutations.https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2013/03/volkswag...
Doofus said:
300bhp/ton said:
Is this really different to the EU, USA, Canada or Australia? I see it posted a often on here. But are there any numbers to support this?
Company cars really aren't as common in many countries around the world as they are in the UK.a new car in the US is almost always leased or purchased by a private individual who is the end user; the concept of a company car is almost unheard of
in the majority of cases, there is no tax or operational benefit for enterprises to engage in the provision of cars as remuneration
a particular subset of sales reps will get them, a CEO on a seven- or eight-figure salary may get one... but otherwise... no
my comment excludes a discussion of hire car fleets (like Avis, Hertz)
captain_cynic said:
Alucidnation said:
captain_cynic said:
In order to build a car in 20 odd hours, as many components as can be are made in advance, this means a lot of the panels are pre-painted.
I find that hard to believe.It would be a massive ball ache what with different panels coming from different batches of paint.
And I'm pretty sure they've gotten to the point where they can consistently produce the same colour in different batches.
https://blog.toyota.co.uk/factory-to-forecourt/pai...
Toyota bodies are painted before assembly.
)I can answer this question, at least as far as two of the OEM's mentioned in this thread are concerned.
Paint shops will generally have a number of loops or paint circuits e.g. 10. These are the standard colours that are offered. It is also why cars built in the same plant, regardless of brand or segment, will often be offered in the same colours if they're going through the same paintshop.
If you wanted to run a different colour, you need to basically purge one of these existing 10 circuits and load with new paint. The purging takes a long time and wastes 100's litres of paint. This is acceptable for a run of say 1,000 or 10,000 (or even say 200) cars for a limited edition or run-out model, but not for individual orders.
This is why it's not economical to offer individual vehicle colours for mass produced cars, as you'd be throwing away several hundred litres of paint just to paint one car in the paint shop. Paint material cost is also surprisingly expensive even for OEMs, so you'd be pissing away thousands of pounds. Also highly environmentally unfriendly as an aside...
Additionally, as someone alluded to previously, most plastic parts are often not painted in the paint shop but are painted by suppliers and delivered pre-painted to the factory. For them to do the same switchover process within their paint booths, and align it with just-in-time delivery would add even more cost and complexity which is just not feasible (or sensible!).
If you wanted to offer an individual paint choice through the "standard process", it would cost the OEM five figures per car (excluding any margins), so is a non-starter.
The way around the above issues is how some OEM's offer custom colours or sample matched paints.
What people don't usually realise is that these "custom" colours, or individual colours, or chromaflair etc. are NOT painted in the paintshop. They are painted by hand, individually.
A body will be painted in a standard base coat colour down the paint shop line, the line will be stopped temporarily, the body extracted, it will then be taken away into a standalone off-line facility. All the plastic parts (primed by suppliers to a common base colour) will be pulled out of the production line/logistics loop, and sent to this special facility.
There, everything is painted by hand, just like you would get if you were having your car resprayed or restored. Then this car is re-introduced into the assembly process to be built into a car. These cars are also therefore wet sanded etc. etc. and as a result have a much better paint finish. To give you an idea of the "value" (or lack of) of these custom paint options, they are not what you'd call the most profitable process, certainly not compared to normal options etc. A custom colour on a premium SUV will use approx 40-50 additional man hours in the painting process. The special/chromaflair paints also cost several hundred pounds.
Finally there is the validation costs, which would apply regardless of how you actually put the paint on the car.
Colour testing and matching takes a while, and generally these costs are five figures for a single colour validation. The main areas of testing are UV and climatic testing, material compatibility (as it'll get painted on different substrates), and colour matching. Colour matching is only relevant where you're relying on component suppliers to directly paint the plastics in the colour to sample paint, which generally isn't done (see process above). These tests could normally take approx 8-12 weeks. Any failure, would mean the colour can not be used, despite the sunk validation costs.
If it's not immediately clear from all of the above, any individual paint process is HIGHLY inefficient, and generally has high scrap rates, long delays, and is very expensive, without being massively profitable, which is why it's not prevalent in the mass produced market.
So why you might ask aren't the 10 standard colours very colourful and different? That one is one where the answer really does lie with the general public. Black, white, grey, subtle blue, that's what people buy, especially in the mainstream end of the market. Even when things like metallic green (hardly a bold colour) are offered, virtually nobody buys it. From an OEM point of view, it's nothing to do with resale etc., it's just there is no point offering yellow in your standard colour palette if you're only going to paint 10 cars a year in it.
Paint shops will generally have a number of loops or paint circuits e.g. 10. These are the standard colours that are offered. It is also why cars built in the same plant, regardless of brand or segment, will often be offered in the same colours if they're going through the same paintshop.
If you wanted to run a different colour, you need to basically purge one of these existing 10 circuits and load with new paint. The purging takes a long time and wastes 100's litres of paint. This is acceptable for a run of say 1,000 or 10,000 (or even say 200) cars for a limited edition or run-out model, but not for individual orders.
This is why it's not economical to offer individual vehicle colours for mass produced cars, as you'd be throwing away several hundred litres of paint just to paint one car in the paint shop. Paint material cost is also surprisingly expensive even for OEMs, so you'd be pissing away thousands of pounds. Also highly environmentally unfriendly as an aside...
Additionally, as someone alluded to previously, most plastic parts are often not painted in the paint shop but are painted by suppliers and delivered pre-painted to the factory. For them to do the same switchover process within their paint booths, and align it with just-in-time delivery would add even more cost and complexity which is just not feasible (or sensible!).
If you wanted to offer an individual paint choice through the "standard process", it would cost the OEM five figures per car (excluding any margins), so is a non-starter.
The way around the above issues is how some OEM's offer custom colours or sample matched paints.
What people don't usually realise is that these "custom" colours, or individual colours, or chromaflair etc. are NOT painted in the paintshop. They are painted by hand, individually.
A body will be painted in a standard base coat colour down the paint shop line, the line will be stopped temporarily, the body extracted, it will then be taken away into a standalone off-line facility. All the plastic parts (primed by suppliers to a common base colour) will be pulled out of the production line/logistics loop, and sent to this special facility.
There, everything is painted by hand, just like you would get if you were having your car resprayed or restored. Then this car is re-introduced into the assembly process to be built into a car. These cars are also therefore wet sanded etc. etc. and as a result have a much better paint finish. To give you an idea of the "value" (or lack of) of these custom paint options, they are not what you'd call the most profitable process, certainly not compared to normal options etc. A custom colour on a premium SUV will use approx 40-50 additional man hours in the painting process. The special/chromaflair paints also cost several hundred pounds.
Finally there is the validation costs, which would apply regardless of how you actually put the paint on the car.
Colour testing and matching takes a while, and generally these costs are five figures for a single colour validation. The main areas of testing are UV and climatic testing, material compatibility (as it'll get painted on different substrates), and colour matching. Colour matching is only relevant where you're relying on component suppliers to directly paint the plastics in the colour to sample paint, which generally isn't done (see process above). These tests could normally take approx 8-12 weeks. Any failure, would mean the colour can not be used, despite the sunk validation costs.
If it's not immediately clear from all of the above, any individual paint process is HIGHLY inefficient, and generally has high scrap rates, long delays, and is very expensive, without being massively profitable, which is why it's not prevalent in the mass produced market.
So why you might ask aren't the 10 standard colours very colourful and different? That one is one where the answer really does lie with the general public. Black, white, grey, subtle blue, that's what people buy, especially in the mainstream end of the market. Even when things like metallic green (hardly a bold colour) are offered, virtually nobody buys it. From an OEM point of view, it's nothing to do with resale etc., it's just there is no point offering yellow in your standard colour palette if you're only going to paint 10 cars a year in it.
SuperPav said:
I can answer this question, at least as far as two of the OEM's mentioned in this thread are concerned.
Paint shops will generally have a number of loops or paint circuits e.g. 10. These are the standard colours that are offered. It is also why cars built in the same plant, regardless of brand or segment, will often be offered in the same colours if they're going through the same paintshop.
If you wanted to run a different colour, you need to basically purge one of these existing 10 circuits and load with new paint. The purging takes a long time and wastes 100's litres of paint. This is acceptable for a run of say 1,000 or 10,000 (or even say 200) cars for a limited edition or run-out model, but not for individual orders.
This is why it's not economical to offer individual vehicle colours for mass produced cars, as you'd be throwing away several hundred litres of paint just to paint one car in the paint shop. Paint material cost is also surprisingly expensive even for OEMs, so you'd be pissing away thousands of pounds. Also highly environmentally unfriendly as an aside...
Additionally, as someone alluded to previously, most plastic parts are often not painted in the paint shop but are painted by suppliers and delivered pre-painted to the factory. For them to do the same switchover process within their paint booths, and align it with just-in-time delivery would add even more cost and complexity which is just not feasible (or sensible!).
If you wanted to offer an individual paint choice through the "standard process", it would cost the OEM five figures per car (excluding any margins), so is a non-starter.
The way around the above issues is how some OEM's offer custom colours or sample matched paints.
What people don't usually realise is that these "custom" colours, or individual colours, or chromaflair etc. are NOT painted in the paintshop. They are painted by hand, individually.
A body will be painted in a standard base coat colour down the paint shop line, the line will be stopped temporarily, the body extracted, it will then be taken away into a standalone off-line facility. All the plastic parts (primed by suppliers to a common base colour) will be pulled out of the production line/logistics loop, and sent to this special facility.
There, everything is painted by hand, just like you would get if you were having your car resprayed or restored. Then this car is re-introduced into the assembly process to be built into a car. These cars are also therefore wet sanded etc. etc. and as a result have a much better paint finish. To give you an idea of the "value" (or lack of) of these custom paint options, they are not what you'd call the most profitable process, certainly not compared to normal options etc. A custom colour on a premium SUV will use approx 40-50 additional man hours in the painting process. The special/chromaflair paints also cost several hundred pounds.
Finally there is the validation costs, which would apply regardless of how you actually put the paint on the car.
Colour testing and matching takes a while, and generally these costs are five figures for a single colour validation. The main areas of testing are UV and climatic testing, material compatibility (as it'll get painted on different substrates), and colour matching. Colour matching is only relevant where you're relying on component suppliers to directly paint the plastics in the colour to sample paint, which generally isn't done (see process above). These tests could normally take approx 8-12 weeks. Any failure, would mean the colour can not be used, despite the sunk validation costs.
If it's not immediately clear from all of the above, any individual paint process is HIGHLY inefficient, and generally has high scrap rates, long delays, and is very expensive, without being massively profitable, which is why it's not prevalent in the mass produced market.
So why you might ask aren't the 10 standard colours very colourful and different? That one is one where the answer really does lie with the general public. Black, white, grey, subtle blue, that's what people buy, especially in the mainstream end of the market. Even when things like metallic green (hardly a bold colour) are offered, virtually nobody buys it. From an OEM point of view, it's nothing to do with resale etc., it's just there is no point offering yellow in your standard colour palette if you're only going to paint 10 cars a year in it.
really interesting, thanks. However it doesn't really answer the question why the Czech market will have a veritable smorgasbord of colour whereas the dull UK gets about 5 shades of silver, 4 black, 3 white, 2 grey, red and blue...Paint shops will generally have a number of loops or paint circuits e.g. 10. These are the standard colours that are offered. It is also why cars built in the same plant, regardless of brand or segment, will often be offered in the same colours if they're going through the same paintshop.
If you wanted to run a different colour, you need to basically purge one of these existing 10 circuits and load with new paint. The purging takes a long time and wastes 100's litres of paint. This is acceptable for a run of say 1,000 or 10,000 (or even say 200) cars for a limited edition or run-out model, but not for individual orders.
This is why it's not economical to offer individual vehicle colours for mass produced cars, as you'd be throwing away several hundred litres of paint just to paint one car in the paint shop. Paint material cost is also surprisingly expensive even for OEMs, so you'd be pissing away thousands of pounds. Also highly environmentally unfriendly as an aside...
Additionally, as someone alluded to previously, most plastic parts are often not painted in the paint shop but are painted by suppliers and delivered pre-painted to the factory. For them to do the same switchover process within their paint booths, and align it with just-in-time delivery would add even more cost and complexity which is just not feasible (or sensible!).
If you wanted to offer an individual paint choice through the "standard process", it would cost the OEM five figures per car (excluding any margins), so is a non-starter.
The way around the above issues is how some OEM's offer custom colours or sample matched paints.
What people don't usually realise is that these "custom" colours, or individual colours, or chromaflair etc. are NOT painted in the paintshop. They are painted by hand, individually.
A body will be painted in a standard base coat colour down the paint shop line, the line will be stopped temporarily, the body extracted, it will then be taken away into a standalone off-line facility. All the plastic parts (primed by suppliers to a common base colour) will be pulled out of the production line/logistics loop, and sent to this special facility.
There, everything is painted by hand, just like you would get if you were having your car resprayed or restored. Then this car is re-introduced into the assembly process to be built into a car. These cars are also therefore wet sanded etc. etc. and as a result have a much better paint finish. To give you an idea of the "value" (or lack of) of these custom paint options, they are not what you'd call the most profitable process, certainly not compared to normal options etc. A custom colour on a premium SUV will use approx 40-50 additional man hours in the painting process. The special/chromaflair paints also cost several hundred pounds.
Finally there is the validation costs, which would apply regardless of how you actually put the paint on the car.
Colour testing and matching takes a while, and generally these costs are five figures for a single colour validation. The main areas of testing are UV and climatic testing, material compatibility (as it'll get painted on different substrates), and colour matching. Colour matching is only relevant where you're relying on component suppliers to directly paint the plastics in the colour to sample paint, which generally isn't done (see process above). These tests could normally take approx 8-12 weeks. Any failure, would mean the colour can not be used, despite the sunk validation costs.
If it's not immediately clear from all of the above, any individual paint process is HIGHLY inefficient, and generally has high scrap rates, long delays, and is very expensive, without being massively profitable, which is why it's not prevalent in the mass produced market.
So why you might ask aren't the 10 standard colours very colourful and different? That one is one where the answer really does lie with the general public. Black, white, grey, subtle blue, that's what people buy, especially in the mainstream end of the market. Even when things like metallic green (hardly a bold colour) are offered, virtually nobody buys it. From an OEM point of view, it's nothing to do with resale etc., it's just there is no point offering yellow in your standard colour palette if you're only going to paint 10 cars a year in it.
GroundEffect said:
Of course they are, that's the only sensible way to do it. BIW is painted (including doors/closures) then the doors/closures are removed again for trim fitting. The odd thing out are the bumpers - these are painted separately (mostly from the supplier directly) therefore you end up with the colour-match issues.
I got thinking after that post and there has to be a few different materials going into the exterior of a modern car that are painted the same. Plastic bumpers, metal bodies. Manufacturers must have a way of ensuring that the colours are matching. irocfan said:
really interesting, thanks. However it doesn't really answer the question why the Czech market will have a veritable smorgasbord of colour whereas the dull UK gets about 5 shades of silver, 4 black, 3 white, 2 grey, red and blue...
I'd guess that manufacturers would base their colour selection on what they would expect to sell in the UK based on customer demand and previous sales. Manufacturers assign cars to markets months in advance. When I ordered my BMW M240i the dealer was able to spot one 3 months in advance with the colour and spec I wanted that hadn't even started production but had already been allocated to UK stock.
irocfan said:
really interesting, thanks. However it doesn't really answer the question why the Czech market will have a veritable smorgasbord of colour whereas the dull UK gets about 5 shades of silver, 4 black, 3 white, 2 grey, red and blue...
Probably taken off the production line in primer and painted in a shed in Czechsylvania somewhere, possibly by a bloke called Ivan.He'll do a great job, cost a third the price of a UK equivalent, and actually turn up for the job on time, as well I'll bet.
captain_cynic said:
irocfan said:
really interesting, thanks. However it doesn't really answer the question why the Czech market will have a veritable smorgasbord of colour whereas the dull UK gets about 5 shades of silver, 4 black, 3 white, 2 grey, red and blue...
I'd guess that manufacturers would base their colour selection on what they would expect to sell in the UK based on customer demand and previous sales. Manufacturers assign cars to markets months in advance. When I ordered my BMW M240i the dealer was able to spot one 3 months in advance with the colour and spec I wanted that hadn't even started production but had already been allocated to UK stock.
They may have some sort of limited off-line paint facility there, which is clearly not profitable at the prices they seem to charge in SK (£600 ish), possibly offering it on their flagship model only to support local market brand positioning, but entirely unnecessary in other markets, therefore not offered outside of Slovakia.
With regards to individual paint sometimes being available/not available in certain markets, that's usually just down to quota allocation and timing, or where a market sees no demand for it they just won't offer it as it's less hassle.
Arnd said:
That’s fantastic, great info.
One question though, why do they have to throw away paint? Why can’t it go back into the system?
Correct, not all of the paint will get "flushed down the loo" obviously, but you have to purge the system of paint, then flush through with cleaners/thinners etc. There is a lot of wastage. One question though, why do they have to throw away paint? Why can’t it go back into the system?
ETA: It's parts of the paint process like this that actually hammer home the importance of the switch water-based paints. Despite their inferiority in terms of robustness, you can appreciate how these types of operations with organic thinners are not exactly pleasant to the environment.
Edited by SuperPav on Tuesday 26th February 16:49
Jimmy Recard said:
Pica-Pica said:
Each colour undergoes substantial testing in varying and extreme conditions. some of this involves panels in desert sunshine for a considerable period, to check for UV degradation of colour. This can be done in a lab, of course, but is supplemented by real world usage.
My understanding is that both Volkswagen and Vauxhall forgot to do this with their red paint Gassing Station | General Gassing | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff