Are we even remotely surprised that it's yet another beige? At this point, I think they're trolling us.
Are we even remotely surprised that it's yet another beige? At this point, I think they're trolling us.
Bring on the NE already.
Mazda needs to hire the person responsible for the Wrangler colors. Accept that the Miata is a fun car, not a serious premium auto.
Keith Tanner said:Mazda needs to hire the person responsible for the Wrangler colors. Accept that the Miata is a fun car, not a serious premium auto.
They'll wind up trying to stuff a Hellcat engine in it, though.
Brett_Murphy (Agent of Chaos) said:Keith Tanner said:Mazda needs to hire the person responsible for the Wrangler colors. Accept that the Miata is a fun car, not a serious premium auto.
They'll wind up trying to stuff a Hellcat engine in it, though.
And the problem with that is what exactly? 
-Rob
If I had written that article headline, there are many adjectives I might have use to describe the new color... "Fresh" is not one of them.
I guess Miata is always the answer, especially when asking what new car now comes in the color palette of the 1990 Toyota Camry.
I want to have a conversation with the person who was going to buy a Miata, looked through the available hues of white, off-white, grey, off-grey and decided, "I'm just going to wait for a beige." Since that person doesn't exist, I want to have a conversation with the person at Mazda who *thinks* that person exists. We know there's overhead to adding new colors, but wouldn't you just instinctively want to make any additional color be as far away from the currently available colors as possible in order to attract as many buyers as possible?
I know we keep talking about this, but I genuinely want to understand the decision-making. I feel like I'm software engineer because I'm good at it, and the paint people at Mazda are presumably good at their jobs, too. And because I'm not a paint person, there's got to be lots I just don't understand. Keith has pointed out a couple of the things I didn't understand: the car looks better in metallic colors and it was tested and doesn't look good in BRG. Okay. But how is it that offering your affordable, impractical roadster in shouty colors is a bad idea?
Are we sure this isn't just a different market's name of the 2022 color we got called "Platinum Quartz Metallic"?
Berck said:I know we keep talking about this, but I genuinely want to understand the decision-making. I feel like I'm software engineer because I'm good at it, and the paint people at Mazda are presumably good at their jobs, too. And because I'm not a paint person, there's got to be lots I just don't understand. Keith has pointed out a couple of the things I didn't understand: the car looks better in metallic colors and it was tested and doesn't look good in BRG. Okay. But how is it that offering your affordable, impractical roadster in shouty colors is a bad idea?
Once again it is quantities of scale. Mazda is a fairly small car company so for the most part a color that will go on a car will probably have to work also the lineup. It is a question of would the additional cost of a new Miata only color help sell more cars? I am guessing market research shows that that isn't the case or at least in a high enough volume to help drive profit.
In reply to 93EXCivic :
Given the popularity of highlighter blue and bright orange on the Subaru Crosstrek, I'd think shouty colors should sell just fine on the CX-30/CX-5 as well.
they know that if somebody wants a crazy color they are just going to wrap it. Its a pain to purge the paint lines they swap between colors. For a low volume car like this I have a hard time believeing they can do that economically.
The ND is very much like the Elise in terms of surface detailing, and I'd wager that almost any Elise color would look good on the ND. They're all metallics and all fairly bright, with only a few boring ones.
The NA years taught Mazda that rolling out a special edition color every year kept people interested, and the 30AE reinforced that. That car was nothing special really, just some orange accents in the interior and on the brake calipers, an off-the-shelf suspension package and some existing aftermarket wheels - and very orange paint. Mazda has proven they can do short run Miata colors by doing short run Miata colors as recently as a couple of years ago. I don't know who forgot those lessons.
The one I want to see is Lexus Ultrasonic Blue. It's basically Soul Red, but blue. Here's our old Catfish in that color, and the Catfish shares the same sort of surface detailing and scale.
Driven5 said:If I had written that article headline, there are many adjectives I might have use to describe the new color... "Flesh" is one of them.
FTFY
buzzboy said:Driven5 said:If I had written that article headline, there are many adjectives I might have use to describe the new color... "Flesh" is one of them.
FTFY
IBM clone beige
In reply to Keith Tanner :
Sign me up, that would look great. I bet something close to the old Laguna Blue would probably work with the new body as well. I'd also happily buy a yellow, or some BRG-like metallic if real BRG won't work.
The Elise I drove at the Rally for the Lane a couple weeks ago reminded me a bit of Montego Blue, but darker and more green. I don't think it's one of the ones in your photo up there, but would also work: 
I wouldn't pick the color, but I bet it'd sell on most Mazda's offerings, and would make a heck of lot more sense than beige in terms of selling cars.
I'd also bet something like that Krypton Green (which I also wouldn't buy) would sell more than beige.
And is it wrong that I like Mazda Racing Beige?
In reply to David S. Wallens :
I was about to say the same. Especially in that lead-in pic taken during the golden hour
In reply to Mr_Asa :
Would either of you pick it over any of the other 6 options, though? (I mean, would it be your first choice given the other options that are already there?)
Mr_Asa said:In reply to David S. Wallens :
I was about to say the same. Especially in that lead-in pic taken during the golden hour
Years ago, someone joined us at Daytona with a CRX wearing Cargo Khaki from a Honda Element. It looks so good.
See also: the beige FR-S.
And I do hear you all on the need/desire for bright colors. The navy ND that joined us at the Challenge looked terrific.
Berck said:In reply to Mr_Asa :
Would either of you pick it over any of the other 6 options, though? (I mean, would it be your first choice given the other options that are already there?)
Based on what is on Mazda's site now, maybe. Only one above it is the blue that Travis has on his and that color is just sublime.
Thing is, it doesn't show it online. In pics I was like "ok, thats good." but in person the blue color shifts as the light hits it and is just amazing. Looking at what is in the website, neither the blue or the quartz metallic look like anything special. Hell, the soul red doesn't look like anything special online.
You can't really compare colors online, gotta see it in person.
In reply to Mr_Asa :
The 2019 RF that FM owned (and it's still in the FM family) was that blue. It's pretty but it's a little more subtle than I was hoping for. I chose it based on some pics of the color from Europe, and it became clear that those pics had been tampered with. It looks great in person and in your garage, but it won't catch your eye going the other way on the interstate or pop in catalog shots. We need more colors that are wow and fun instead of pretty. We can have both :) We just don't need 5 shades of grey.
wearymicrobe said:Its a pain to purge the paint lines they swap between colors. For a low volume car like this I have a hard time believeing they can do that economically.
I beg to differ. They have already demonstrated that they can do it economically, otherwise Mazda would only offer 3 colors. It's just that the vast majority of low-selling colors they've done it with have almost all also been moderately to severely bland so far too. Regardless, this is not actually a constraint preventing them from offering low and/or limited production interesting colors on a regular basis, nor is the cost of developing a plethora of poor selling bland colors vs a blend of poor selling bland colors and poor selling interesting colors. If the bean counters won't allow Miata specific colors anymore, that can still be worked with. Make a 'soul red, but blue', as Keith put it, and it would look great on the rest of their lineup too... As would 'soul red, but copper orange'.
Watch "Build a Car in 24 Hours" on Prime Video, specifically episode 2 for the purposes of this discussion, and see the automated paint system instantly switch between any one of up to 16 colors for any given car on the line. No batching or sequencing of colors required on the line, nor any purging or cleaning of lines. They don't even have a physical barrier separating two cars being painted totally different colors just a few feet away from each other. The fact that the show was even allowed to film it tells me that there is nothing particularly new or novel about it, such that it has likely been utilized on every mass production automotive assembly line for quite a few years now... Including the Miata.
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