Exterior Colors

[peterh]

The thought occurred to me - what if Ford didn't try to reinvent the wheel with new colors like Cyber Orange, etc. and simply chose its colors from prior versions? The Bronco came in just about every color, metallics and non-metallics alike. This plan in and of itself has a retro theme to it yet the model is still obviously modern - so kind of the best of both worlds? Anyone in the marketing/consumer psychology business care to comment on why that would be a good/bad idea? How cool would it be for every Bronco owner to be able to say - "yea this color is Calypso Coral, Ford produced this color from ___ to ___ and brought it back when it resurrected the Bronco" To me, that's kick ass.

Sponsored

 

[Bud2020]

I imagine the logistics of offering every color ford ever produced would be a problem for production.

We have enough of those already.

 

[Compta38]

Would love to have the space white that F150 and Mach-E has.

 

[peterh]

sorry for confusion - i did not mean Ford should offer every color at once - just choose each year’s offerings from prior colors - so for example in model year 21 choose the pallette from the prior colors Bronco was offered in - and in each successive year do the same - there were about 75 cool colors from the archives best i could estimate - and calling them by their original names would be consistent with the theme of bringing back a classic with modern style

 

[GaryB2220]

valid observation and point. This horse has been beaten to death, and after death, several times on this forum for a year. There is no official word from Ford about how or why they chose the EXACT colors they chose. We all suspect marketing has a huge push on this. Sales numbers show more greys/silver, white, and black outsell all other colors by a huge margin. The "real colors" that sell the most (not those mentioned above) are blue and red. So hence why we have 50% non-color colors, 4 blues, 2 reds, and a partridge in a pear tree (CO).

 

[peterh]

yea i guess it's just the wannabe marketing guy in me

 

[Wide Open Roads]

You asked for input from marketing folks. As the owner of a branding agency (and Bronco t-shirt company -- plug!), marketing products is far more complex than we see as consumers from behind our screens or even once we take delivery of a product.

None of the decisions to get the Bronco to this point were taken lightly, and none of them happened by accident. There are teams and teams of people solving for every variable that goes into the launch of a product like this, from many different disciplines (although people here tend to lump them all into "Ford marketing rockstars").

The decisions that those teams have made are to create a specific, curated owner experience, meaning they have an idea of the end goal -- the feeling they want people to have from owning a Bronco and interacting with the brand. To get there, they have many potential paths that encompass many choices. The thing is, they didn't ask me or you our opinion, so we tend to think "there were so many better ways so solve the problem -- why did these idiots do X, Y, Z!?!" I tend to think we have these passionate feelings because we're a passionate group of soon-to-be owners. We have opinions! We have wants and needs! And we are willing to be advocates for this brand far beyond what the average buyer will be. But we are not stakeholders on this project and our jobs don't hinge on the success of the launch. Take a look at what each of do for a living, and how asinine some of our decision must look to people from the outside who are not familiar with the challenges we face. For instance, my brother is a heavy machine operator who has a boatload of opinions on all sorts of things, from politics to marketing to real estate markets -- stuff he really doesn't know a ton about. But ask him why it takes 6 months for a 1/2 mile of highway interchange to be paved and you'd think you were the biggest idiot on Earth because you don't see all the nuances that go into planning the project, delays, etc. I see 6 guys standing around looking at each other, but ok, if you tell me there's a lot happened behind the scenes, sounds good.

So at the end of the day, someone had to make the best decision they could. And those decisions don't always align with want each of us personally want. Still, 200,000 of us liked those decisions enough to reserve a Bronco, right?

And to answer your question on the colors, personally I would love a more retro set of options. Then again, I daily drive a 60 year old car in the warmer months.

 

[lobbs611]

Taking a guess but maybe getting an exact match on older colors with modern materials could be troublesome?

 

[Iron Oxide]

On one hand the marketing department will want to create a distinct identity for the Bronco brand. That means incorporating enough unique elements that are only associated with the Bronco name, so that in the event that they can successfully launch a new brand they can point to those elements as "Bronco only". Somewhat less optimistically that also means if the brand fails, they can leave those elements in the dust. They'd treat them as radioactive as long as public perception is broadly negative and can quarantine those colors if they age badly.

The other aspect is that they can dole out throwback or "heritage" colors on a model year or generational basis, so they can always have a well to go back to for the retro appeal. No sense in giving everyone access to everything all at once when all it's going to do is dilute the impact of those colors. Plus, your economy of scale circles the drain if you offer too many colors all at once.

 

[MayhemMike]

Car colors are based on predictions of what the market will want in the upcoming years. A few years back, blue was the color expected to be in demand. Most people are afraid to stand out so they opt for the standard silver or gray. Few want the over the top colors, simply because in a few years these colors are deemed horrendous. Car assembly lines only have so many robots to shoot the paint. I do believe Ford should have dropped a few of the current Bronco colors for more Bronco traditional hues, but at this point, I’d take a Bronco in primer so I could paint it myself , in order to take ownership.

 

[peterh]

"And to answer your question on the colors, personally I would love a more retro set of options. Then again, I daily drive a 60 year old car in the warmer months."
I am with you!
As for the rest of your post, I certainly agree with the notion that most people have very definite opinions about many things they know almost nothing about - which is why I tried to approach the topic in a non-accusatory kind of way.

It just always made sense to me that in order to "build a movement" like Ford is looking to do with the Bronco, it made sense to tap into the energy of the zealots out there - the folks who would then become Ford's biggest cheerleaders. And those folks would likely be really jazzed to be able to pick from "archival/historical" colors - I wonder if the folks who actually had to choose the final colors are surprised at the amount of debate which has transpired over it - or whether it's like this with every new vehicle.

The people who know it's Brittany Blue from way back think it's awesome for that reason (mission accomplished) and the folks that don't don't care one way or another - they just like/dislike the color

 

[AZ_Liberty]

Logistics matter.

Ford is only building the Bronco in one manufacturing facility.
The robots that paint the cars only have so many paint reservoirs.
The robots are super impressive. It's not like the old days where "today we paint blue", they can change color on a vehicle by vehicle basis.

Thus, Broncos and Rangers share the same paint colors.
Also, to add a color, you have to remove a color, the robots are full.

I started counting colors while driving home the other day. More than half the cars here are white. More than half the remaining are light silver.

So, white and iconic silver are going to take up two of the slots no matter what. Velocity Blue is a popular Ranger color, so that has to be there as well. And for some reason, people buy black cars (crazy, but true).

I'd also love to see some heritage colors, or some modern flat colors. I ended up ordering Rapid Red because it's the color I disliked the least.

 

[Lab00Rat]

Maybe if Ford spun Bronco off as it's own brand we'd see more iconic lifestyle choices in the design execution and less corporate fleet feel. I'm sure every choice that was made had a cost analysis component that was considered, and it shows most in the color choices and trim packages.

 

[Darforce]

valid observation and point. This horse has been beaten to death, and after death, several times on this forum for a year. There is no official word from Ford about how or why they chose the EXACT colors they chose. We all suspect marketing has a huge push on this. Sales numbers show more greys/silver, white, and black outsell all other colors by a huge margin. The "real colors" that sell the most (not those mentioned above) are blue and red. So hence why we have 50% non-color colors, 4 blues, 2 reds, and a partridge in a pear tree (CO).

Question is why people choose black grey and white. Is it because dealers order the most generic colors thinking they’ll be easier to sell or is that people’s choice? I do recall my dad would always order a car rather than buy off the lot. We’d try to talk my dad into getting some fun color but all those fancy colors were very expensive especially anything metallic.

 

[JKinTX]

Question is why people choose black grey and white. Is it because dealers order the most generic colors thinking they’ll be easier to sell or is that people’s choice? I do recall my dad would always order a car rather than buy off the lot. We’d try to talk my dad into getting some fun color but all those fancy colors were very expensive especially anything metallic.

Thats probably right. Studies out there say that 70ish percent of all new vehicles sold are in shades of white and black. Thats nutty to me, but when my Velocity Blue Raptor is in a parking lot it sticks out like a sore thumb in a sea of whites and blacks. It even sparkles lol.

If I can get my hands on a Bronco, the Cyber Orange or whatever is what I am looking at. At the Houston Auto Show, I overheard most talking about the dark blues, grey and silvers. Guess everyone just wants to fit it in and that makes life boring. If they made the Raps or Broncos in the GT350 green, I might get that too. Lambo green or Orange would be badass as well.

Sponsored