The art of car colour

Mazda Motor Corporation is introducing its new rhodium white premium, a special colour born from its “takuminuri” painting technology. 

It will be introduced with the launch of the all-new CX-60, pictured, the first of the marque’s large-product group models.

The company believes colour is a crucial part of what gives shape to a vehicle and has focused efforts on developing those that accentuate a dynamic and delicate expression via the kodo – soul of motion – design theme. 

Rhodium white premium is a pure white inspired by Japanese aesthetics “finding beauty in simplicity and the absence of superfluous elements”. Its fine grain accentuates shadows on vehicles surfaces complementing its metallic texture.

To achieve this, Mazda has successfully mass produced an expressive colour using only three layers – clear, reflective and colour.

The colour layer provides a newly developed white pigment that delivers a silky smooth, fine-grain white. As standard practice with white, the undercoat tends to show through and the clear coat is generally thicker than for other colours. 

However, rhodium white premium uses a newly developed pigment, which has enabled the reduction of the thickness of the colour layer by up to 30 per cent. 

This also contributes to more efficient use of resources and a reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions during the production process.

For the reflective layer, paint containing ultra-thin and high-luminance aluminium flakes is applied to achieve a uniform thickness, which dramatically shrinks in volume during the drying process. This results in an extremely thin reflective layer of about 0.5 microns or seven per cent of the thickness of a typical reflective layer.

A hand-painted like finish has been achieved with the aluminium flakes smoothly aligned at regular intervals in the reflective layer, so the entire surface gleams when exposed to light to display a realistic metallic texture. 

These flakes are distributed evenly and parallel to the undulations of the body surface, producing a glossy and shaded appearance when hit by light despite the brightness of rhodium white premium.

Mazda believes colour to be a key component of any vehicle and will continue to pursue new colour expressions and painting technologies to enhance the attractiveness of our products, aiming to become a brand that shares a special bond with its customers.

The company says its takuminuri approach to painting technology reproduces a precise, high-quality paint finish “as if done by the hands of a skilled craftsman on an automobile mass-production line”. The new colour is the third of such colours following soul-red crystal and machine-grey premium.

Mazda’s all-new CX-60 will be available in New Zealand next year.