Audi explains how it chooses new colours for its models and introduces new ones for the TT and Q3 range

The colour palette of all brands has grown significantly over the years, especially when we look at the premium brands, which, thanks to their personalisation programmes and departments, offer individual and unique colours so that each customer can express their tastes and personality when buying their vehicle.

The brands’ catalogues always feature the basic colours, complemented by metallic finishes, which have been and still are very popular, but those who want to give their vehicle greater expressiveness and sportiness opt for special or matt finishes, the latter with an increasing presence in the brands’ colour palettes. An example of this is Audi, which is introducing new matt finishes to reinforce the sporty character of the Audi TT and Q3 range and, while doing so, takes the opportunity to explain to us how this process is carried out.

Everything begins in the Color & Trim departments of Audi Design and the Product Marketing department, which develop new colours based on the trends that are constantly analysed by the design departments in Ingolstadt, Beijing and Malibu. Once this is done, the Product Marketing team presents a wide variety of colours to Audi customers so they can choose among them and, once this process is complete, the departments proceed to give these new colours appropriate names according to the range on offer.

Audi states that in Germany three out of four customers choose white, black or grey/silver, closely followed by blue, but the brand with the four rings maintains that, alongside pearlescent effect colours, there is currently a greater demand for matt finishes, especially when it comes to the RS performance versions of the brand. For the first time, Audi is introducing matt finishes across the TT and Q3 range, both manufactured at the Győr plant in Hungary, where both models are built, carrying out the painting and production process at the same plant.

The process of creating these new paints is complex, as they require, in addition to the phosphate layer, four other very thin layers (cathodic electrocoating (CDP), filler, base coat and clear coat), resulting in a combined thickness of no more than a tenth of a millimetre, or roughly the thickness of a human hair. In addition, primer, filler and colour layers are applied to finish with a matt clear coat, which contains silicate particles applied directly over the base coat to give these paints their characteristic finish. These layers have a thickness ranging from 40 to 50 micrometres, figures similar to conventional clear coats.

This is the process that Audi has followed, also for the rest of the brand’s models, to create the new matt colours arriving in the Audi TT, TTS and TT RS range, in both Coupé and Roadster versions, named Daytona Grey, Florett Silver and Python Yellow. The Audi Q3 and RS Q3, along with their respective Sportback versions, will also benefit from these finishes, with the exception that for the SUV, Python Yellow is replaced by Dew Silver.

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CrossoverAudi Q344 versions · from 46,620 €