SEMA Top Ten Trends: What’s Hot In Paint

By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

For a SEMA show car, the final finish is crucial: it’s the paint that’ll make the car either pop or fade into the wallpaper. And in a sea of lavishly-colored vehicles, it’s really important to be on the cutting edge, because cars wearing last year’s trends get totally passed over. This time around, I’ve been noticing a ton of striking two-tone paint jobs—sometimes it’s like builders couldn’t decide between their two favorite colors, so they went with both. We’ve already seen the dual-hue treatment on the Dale Jr. Camaro, the color-matched Mustang, and this eye-searing Prius, and it’s also turning up on everything from tuners to hot rods. Another big theme is metal flake, with metallic treatments running the gamut from subtle sparkle to disco glitter. And we’re seeing a huge return of traditional flames in crazy colors, a contrast to the hyper-realistic photographic flames of last year. Finally, while we figured the satin-paint thing had peaked at SEMA 2007, Greg at the DuPont Hot Hues booth told me that varying degrees of flat is what he’s getting asked about most this year. Follow the jump for a few more shots.