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Car Paint Colors: Charts, Samples and Simulators
Every year, each automaker spends millions of hard-earned marketing dollars providing one service—online car paint colors and simulations—letting prospective buyers “build” their own vehicles online with just a few drags and a mouse click or two.
“Build a Perfect Online Car”
Ford, for example, provided its sales staff with the means to “build” new Flex models, when they were introduced in 2008 as 2009 models so that customers could tailor the long, lean front-drive wagon with:
- The car paint color options
- The roof options
- The specialty options
- The wheel options
So that each customer could put together a Flex model with the external colors and lighting options that suited the customer’s fancy, as well as the wheel possibilities that were also available, a 360-degree computer program was developed. The customer could then turn the vehicle to see every angle possible and could then decide whether they liked the dark blue body and white roof or the special panoramic roof and small window units for the rear seats.
All Options Offered
Further, the customer could also decide on the interior options including rear-mounted entertainment system; ceiling-mounted screen or headrest-mounted screens and they could also decide if they wanted the industry’s only (at the time) refrigerator unit that took away one of the middle row seats.
Each time the program was run the customer was not only given a complete printout—in color—of all of the options available, the prospective buyer was also given color samples and, because it was a computer simulation, the customer also received the color simulations.
Ford found this to be a great sales tool and it worked well with its more standard sales brochures that were sitting in a back closet waiting for a customer to ask about a vehicle and the colors available. For example, if a customer wanted a white Edge with a panoramic roof and brown leather seats, the sales person could then just go into the closet and pull out a brochure with this information available.
The feature that customers seemed to like most, though, was the ability to design a vehicle online to their exact specs. Then using their own home computers, they are able to look at any angle they chose and if they wanted to change wheels or colors in the middle of a session a couple of mouse clicks and that’s exactly what happened.
“Internet Sales Special”
Between the standard sales brochure and the online vehicle building ability, each customer knew before they arrived at the dealership just about everything there was to know about a specific vehicle, including price because one of the interesting features of these systems is that since they were online the customer was also able to get a “special” Internet price to help entice them to come into the dealership.
Altogether this provided the customer with the color charts, samples and simulators they needed to find the vehicle they wanted.
Where to Find Color Charts, Samples and Simulators
Internet: You can find color charts, simulators and samples online. There are a number of websites displaying the chart. One of the many websites which displays the color chart is http://www.autotrimdesign.com/Standard Color Chart-Vinyl.htm. You can also try different looks of your car at http://fotoflexer.com/
Automobile Dealer: You can also visit the automobile dealer and request for their car color chart. Most of the companies offer threir brochures for the purpose.
Car Paint Companies: Just like automobile dealers, they also offer the color chart to help the potential customer.
