Bold colors at the auto show reflect what the customer wants

When they ask you in 10 years, "What was the look and feel of new cars back in 2023?" don't be a downer. Don't tell them that the Detroit auto show was so lacking in inspiration that most automakers couldn't muster the enthusiasm to participate in the biggest show in America.

They won't understand.

Tell them this: The cool waning days of summer in Detroit provided a brilliant mirror of what consumers were thinking. That after three exhausting years of pandemic disruption, deprivation and anxiety, the auto market was suddenly awash in brighter colors. Blues were inexplicably deep and electric. Reds were an unearthly ruby, and splashes of green, gray and orange were being lathered onto bodies like thick lacquers of olden days.

Tell them one color was not enough, that carmakers were shifting fast to two-tone coatings, with flashy black cladding and trim popping like glossy glass.

Tell them that in 2023, designers had figured out how to make "boxy" a delightfully satisfying attribute. Boxy fronts and boxy silhouettes and back ends that beckoned buyers who wanted to feel free in a world where people still felt nervously cooped up in apartments and houses, where "boxy" evoked a spirit of off-road escape — to mountains, to the countryside or wilderness. Soft curves were disappearing, you can tell them, because designers understood that boxy communicated power and strength and health.

Tell them that 2023 was a snapshot of an auto industry in a fit of transformation, where the looks of the past were all about to disappear.