“Hang Around Brown”, “Prosthetic Limb Beige” and umpteen other epithets are often used to describe the brown, tan and cream paint schemes once beloved of the bingo parlor and 120 millimeter cigarette set. Well, let me tell you, beige is beautiful, what’s more I think beige will be making a comeback, especially in the luxury segment. I’m specifically excluding trucks which have, for the last few years been offered in tans, khakis and olive drabs presumably to impart a feeling of soldierly toughness to their flaccid owners. But, I do think it probable that we’ll be seeing creamy, beigey, Werther’s Original tone cars from Tesla, Genesis, JLR, Audi, Lincoln et al.
No, I do not have an inside line to the design studios, my only bellwether is my gut instinct. I was scrolling the Malaise Motors Facebook group and a ’74 Firebird made me stop and scrutinize every line and curve of the car. Why? The color. The car was painted Carmel Beige over tan guts. Not a screaming chicken or chest hair to be found anywhere. And it looked great! The color scheme gave the trailer park’s favorite Gran Turismo real gravitas. The engine turned dash had also been supplanted by ersatz woodgrain. The effect was more Coventry than country & western.
But here’s the thing, the proliferation of slate, gray, silver and anthracite has to end sometime. But I don’t see buyers splashing out on 1950’s type pastel hues ever again. The times we live in are too uncertain to make cars of such an effervescent, celebratory mien. The creamy palette is suitably discrete, non threatening, tastefully neutral enough to appeal to the paranoid modern consumer. I maintain that one of the biggest reasons people don’t buy bold colors is pure fear, but, that, like the rest of this piece is pure conjecture.
Perhaps my tastes have been shaped by ownership of a 1989 Lincoln Town Car painted Pastel Adobe, with Sandalwood leather? Or perhaps I’m the prognosticator of paint schemes? It’s been three decades since colors of the beigey kind were commonplace on luxury cars. Sufficiently distant in the collective memory to seem fresh. It’s time, time for brown...Again
