Since we tend to form an emotional bond with our cars, one influencing factor when we buy it is the paint color. Some colors do a better job of highlighting certain car designs and features, just like the right choice of clothes can make someone more attractive.
Mazda has been a pioneer of attractive colors from the start, their first mass-produced car, the popular R360 offering a wide range of refreshing colors like bright red, sky blue, and mint green, which were a breath of fresh air in the early '60s, when Japanese roads were dominated by white cars.
In the late '70s, another range of intense colors graced the body of the first-generation Mazda 323 hatchback, a car that was incredibly popular in Europe and featured colors like Muscat Green, Impulse Blue, Grand Prix Red, and Sunbeam Silver Metallic.
This idea transcended into motorsports, where the flashy green and orange Mazda 787B powered by the 710PS four-rotor 26B engine won the legendary 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1991.
In present times, Mazda took its rich history of progressive colors and turned it into an advanced painting process called Takuminuri. It is designed to enrich the Kodo designs with unique colors.
The name unites two Japanese terms for "master craftsman" (Takumi) and "paintwork" (Nuri). The avant-garde process enables Mazda to mass-produce very difficult paint finishes that in the past could only be done by hand.
Conventional paint finishes contain a color base coat and a clear coat, but Mazda's innovative metallic colors use a three-layer finish that incorporates a reflective coat and a translucent layer below the final clear coat. The goal is to enrich the depth of the color, intensifying the fluidity of the Kodo designs.
First used in 2012, the epic Soul Red paint has become Mazda's current generation symbol and the pinnacle of Takuminuri. Through the years, it has undergone continuous refining to fulfill the Japanese manufacturer's ambition to create "the world's deepest and most beautiful red".
This ambition gave birth to the Soul Red Crystal, which is available on all current models. The base coat contains two types of aluminum flakes; light-absorbing flakes, as well as bright ones that reflect light.
The translucent color coat above contains high-chroma red pigments, allowing the light to shine through them onto the aluminum flakes in the base layer, which illuminate the surface with an intense red that gives the impression it radiates from within, in contrast to the surfaces covered with light-absorbing flakes that appear blackish.
Using the Takuminuri process, unique colors like Soul Red Crystal or Polymetal Grey have become easily recognizable and give Mazda cars a unique form of elegance. They both feature on the 2020 Mazda3 that secured the World Car Design of the Year award.
Body finishing will always be one of the more elaborate phases of car manufacturing, and for some carmakers it is just as important as engine development.
Mazda has done an outstanding job of highlighting its beautiful car designs by offering some beautiful colors throughout its history, and we look forward to seeing the evolution of the Takuminuri process.
