1998 Seadoo Gtx Magneta Color Paint
''As furnishings aggrandize into added articles -- antic goods, fashion, added automated architecture -- it will be added adequate on autos,'' said Jon R. Hall, blush development administrator for the BASF Corporation in Southfield, Mich., a arch auto-paint supplier.
Alan E. Eggly, blush and trim architecture administrator for the Ford Motor Company, concurred. ''Great novelties that about-face your arch -- the majority don't appetite it,'' he said.
Among the best amazing and cher furnishings are the color-shifting ChromaFlair pigments by Flex Products. ChromaFlair was aboriginal acclimated in 1996 on 1,200 appropriate Ford Mustang Cobras; collectors paid an added $800 for the paint, which accouterment from abysmal dejected to purple-black depending on the examination angle. This year, Nissan put the chameleon colors on two limited-edition European models. ChromaFlair is additionally in advanced apportionment in a nonautomotive application: On the face of the new $20 bill, the numerals in the lower appropriate bend are active with it.
Ron Guilliams, a anatomy boutique administrator in Fountain Valley, Calif., said he acquainted like a Hollywood celebrity in a General Motors EV1 that had been corrective with a color-shifting acrylic alleged ''absolute purpleen.'' ''If you're accepting a bad-hair day, you wouldn't appetite to be active this car,'' he said, alluding to the absorption the electric-purple electric car attracted.
Using technology originally developed for the military, area coatings are activated in films as attenuate as a few molecules, ChromaFlair is created in a five-layer sandwich. Light penetrates the top two layers, but alone a allocation of the blush spectrum is reflected off the third layer. A color-shifting aftereffect occurs on the contours of a corrective commodity as it, or the viewer, moves. Depending on the bend at which a eyewitness is attractive at a car, an arrangement of colors may be seen.
Color accouterment like green-to-purple or magenta-to-gold are accomplished by capricious the layers' thickness. ''We alarm it 'color by physics' technology,'' said F. Jerry Droll, business administrator for Flex, aforetime a assemblage of Optical Coatings Laboratory, which has been acquired by JDS Uniphase. ''We anticipate blush by physics will become a mainstay in the auto industry as aggregate goes up.''
Flex is abetment that affirmation with a $15 actor amplification of a colorant branch in Santa Rosa, Calif.; it affairs two new plants in Asia. ChromaFlair pigments are awash to acrylic makers like DuPont, BASF and PPG, which boggle with the formulations and bazaar their own hue-shifting paints. Rivals like E. M. Industries plan to aftermath a aggressive color-shifting acrylic in Germany.
The colorant is acceptable to acquisition its antecedent bazaar amid custom-car enthusiasts, collectors of scale-model racecars and those accommodating to pay for a alluring promotion. The address will augment as consumers see it acclimated added widely, predicted Christina B. Dickey, blush and trim administrator for Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A., citation the color-shifting acrylic acclimated on a few cars in the refurbished Autopia allure at Disneyland. ''I anticipate chump absorption will go up because of these Disneyland cars,'' she said.
Mr. Eggley, at Ford, additionally brand a new colorant alleged Xirallic, which E. M. Industries makes from candy aluminum flakes that are coated with metal oxides and accord added animation to paint.
''It is the future, but not afore the 2003 archetypal year,'' said Sigrid F. Teaney, automotive administrator for E. M., a assemblage of E. Merck of Germany.
Several producers advance that glass-infused acrylic will be readily adopted by automakers, who await on new colors to accomplish distinctions amid makes and archetypal years. At auto shows this year, General Motors, Ford and Isuzu displayed some abstraction cars -- architecture studies that are generally approaching assembly cartage in beard -- that wore glass-chip and glass-bead paints.
''There is absolutely added sparkle, added wow factor,'' said Jon A. Moss, the administrator of appropriate cartage for G.M. Bottle acrylic poses no accomplishment or account hurdles and will be alien gradually over the abutting three years, he said.
Glass additives can lower a paint's amount and advance its durability. Glass-enhanced acrylic is acknowledgment and easier to bout and could accomplish a agent added arresting at night, said Bob Fritz, carnality admiral in allegation of Nippon Paint's blush architecture studio. A supplier to Nippon Acrylic is Glaztec Inc. of Ronkonkoma, N.Y., which pulverizes recycled bottle and mirrors by centrifuge into micron-sized chips.
Mr. Fritz said that one carmaker had already best seven glass-chip colors. ''By 2003, you'll see it on cars,'' he said.
Two industry admiral appropriate that Toyota would be the aboriginal to use glass-chip acrylic on assembly cars, admitting Ms. Dickey, the company's trim manager, would affirm alone that the acrylic was beneath study.
In February, G.M. added bottle chaplet 8 microns advanced -- about a tenth of the bore of a animal beard -- to its accustomed colorant list, said David E. Burnett, admiral and co-founder of Prizmalite Industries, which food chaplet of bottle -- new, not recycled -- to acrylic makers. ''It's not 'if,' but 'when,' this catches on,'' Mr. Burnett said.
Among the skeptics is Mr. Eggley of Ford, who doesn't accede glass-bead or glass-chip paints to be distinctive. ''You can carbon the aforementioned furnishings by adjusting pigments,'' he said, although he conceded that bottle chaplet did accomplish it easier to bout colors back authoritative repairs.
''I've spent two years and a lot of assets aggravating to put bottle in everything,'' he said. ''We can't alike what we see in appearance cars'' which are ''tricked out'' beneath anxiously controlled altitude that cannot be bifold in accumulation production. ''A compression of ChromaFlair or Xirallic -- now that makes a difference,'' he added.
Correction: October 9, 2000, Monday An commodity in the Automobiles area on Sept. 29 about new acrylic technologies misstated the cardinal of appropriate Ford Mustang Cobras corrective with Flex Products' ChromaFlair, a color-shifting paint, and their hues. It was 2,000, not 1,200 cars, and the blush afflicted from aphotic blooming to aphotic purple, not from abysmal dejected to purple-black. The commodity additionally misstated the aeon in which Nissan acclimated ChromaFlair on two cars in Europe. It was 1998 and 1999, not this year. The commodity additionally misstated Flex Products' advance in new colorant plants, and the cardinal of new plants in Asia. It is added than $45 million, not $15 million, and the aggregation is architecture one Asian plant, not two. The commodity referred afield to the colorant acclimated on numerals of the $20 bill. It is an ink acclimated alone in the press of securities; it is not ChromaFlair.
