The color of 2012 might be Tangerine Tango, but at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, it's all about red.
Buyers tend to go for silver, gray, black and white cars, which were also prevalent inside Cobo Center. But many of the new cars revealed to the press for the first time on Monday -- the ones that get photographed the most -- were bright red. Is it true what they say about speeding tickets? Do red cars actually look faster?
Marketers spend a great deal of time and money creating names of colors to best represent the personalities of cars and their potential owners. What a casual observer might simply call "bright red" becomes entirely different, depending on the automobile brand: there's "Victory Red" for Chevrolet, "Rosso Mondiale" for Maserati and "Guards Red" for Porsche.
But Phil Colley, who works in communications at Buick, said that marketers aren't the ones picking the colors of the cars in the spotlight at the auto show.
"It's heavily dependent on the design team," Colley said. "It's what they think looks best."
Joe Baker, who designed the bright red Chevrolet Code 130R concept car that was revealed Monday, said red was chosen because it brings to mind a whole legacy of high-speed cars.
"It's an homage to the original Victory Red on performance cars," Baker said.
So the experts have it: Red really does look faster.
Take a look at our gallery of cars in the spotlight on Monday. Which color are you drawn to?
