Nardo!

[jesse_the_k]

I was delighted to learn that I wasn’t imagining a new trend in car paint. Hank Green hankschannel also wondered why more and more cars look like clay and demonstrated how to find out the reason (at his typically fast pace and high volume, with B+ autocraptions).

Nardo Gray is the original case—a dark gray that's contrasty enough to use for large but not regular-size print. Audi tests its cars at the Nardò, Italy racetrack. That’s where they debuted this doubly cool color. (Not only is it soothing, it's got blue undertones, unlike the brown undertones that create warm grays.. Much more detail at nardo-grey.com.

What makes these colors unusual is the lack of metallic paint (no little flecks of reflective metal, what I called "candy flake" when I was assembling model cars growing up.) So now I find myself hollering Nardo! whenever I catch sight of these mellow colors. Do you roll with nardo or do you prefer shiny candy flake?

Hank explains on YouTube

Watch on YouTube

Comments

[pauraque]

I saw that video too, and I've been noticing cars like that ever since! I don't think I was conscious of it before.

Tee hee

[jesse_the_k]

I have to disagree with Hank's claims that only low-intensity earthy pastels can be nardo. I've seen nardo reds and browns and of course the US Postal vehicles are white nardo (if only because constant weather makes them matte).

Re: Tee hee

[full_metal_ox]

I suspect that Hank is unfamiliar with the vocabulary of nail polish finishes, which might offer a useful analogy.

Nardo reds and browns may seem more natural because those are precisely clay colors; cool and neutral Nardo colors may evoke an Uncanny Valley reaction because they’ve customarily been interpreted as metallics—silver and pewter and gunmetal, and unsaturated yellows and browns as gold, copper, and bronze—to add some visual interest to the inherent drabness of the colors.

[petra]

Thanks for this! I had noticed too but had no context for it.

Decades spent in fannish pursuits

[jesse_the_k]

...prepared us both for noticing the absence of metal flakes :,)

[azurelunatic]

A few years back, I told Belovedest a fun fact I'd learned, which was that the auto industry was the biggest consumer of glitter that exists. And then I started pointing out the cars that did not have any glitter in their paint. So I started noticing the un-glittered gloss grey painted cars as they started to become more common.

When my dad was a boy (and had recently had a Sunday School unit on David and Goliath) he became very interested in slings. After getting a rock over the wash [empty concrete canal for Los Angeles flash floods] onto the metallic painted hood of a neighbor's new car, and getting in severe trouble for it, he switched to bitter oranges. Metallic paint is more difficult to touch up, or at least it was in the 1950s.

We did get a "free" sample

[jesse_the_k]

of touch up paint for our new, glittery metallic burgundy van, but the weather hasn't warmed up enough to test this out. Will report back.

Also, the "auto industry uses the most glitter" statistic is mind-boggling, and (naturally) the subject of Internet conspiracy theories.

[talkswithwind]

I've been wondering for a while why cars suddenly started showing up in great volumes sporting various "wet cement" colors. Thanks!

[anatsuno]

I think solid white, orange and red cars without flakes (so, already nardos) are a thing that co-existed in the all-cars-glitter period, which is why Hank's eye is not finding them wild or weird :))