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What Does The Color Of Your Car Say About You?

DETROIT (CBSDetroit) - What's in a color? Quite a bit according to BASF -- and even more telling is the color of the car you drive.

Coming up with new colors in vehicles is an art -- so what better place to display color than in a gallery setting.

A historic building in Detroit is the backdrop for Automotive Color Trends.

The color blue leads the pack.

"Blue is one of the color spaces that you can do a lot of different color shades and nuances to and all of them can be very beautiful and very automotive," says Paul Czornij with BASF Design.

Designers for BASF have been researching trends in other areas to come up with this year's color palette -- looking at things like human skin tones over technology for this year says WWJ's Auto Reporter Jeff Gilbert. "It's important that they get it right."

"There are several things," says Czornij that make the color of a car important, "it works very closely together with the car body shape -- it's something that's a visual expression of the car owner and it's something that's an attention grabber for somebody in the market to buy a car."

Technology's encroachment on our daily lives and the desire to break away and reconnect to a more natural world, the community with renewed emphasis on open debate and our own body were the inspirations behind the top three North American colors according to BASF.

Undercurrent Blue: A very dark, navy blue color with a silky texture that exudes a sense of mystery and celebration of self. This color leverages simple, in-use pigmentation technology, yet offers a sophisticated color position.

Abyss: An absolute metallic black, almost devoid of color, absorbing visible hues. It's a dark color that shows its texture only under certain angles.

Cabochon: A turquoise blue, unsaturated color, with a smooth, futuristic texture. Named after an uncut but highly polished stone, it's intended to celebrate nature but underscore the importance of human interaction.

The colors that the designers are working on today will be seen on vehicles in the next four to five years.

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