HIROSHIMA: If there's one automaker that can talk at length about a single colour, it's Mazda.
Last week, it issued a long statement devoted to a new body colour it calls Rhodium White.
It said it's a special paint created using Mazda’s "Takuminuri" painting technology. With a reputation for striking exteriors and award-winning design, the new colour joins Soul Red Crystal and Machine Grey as a third signature body colour and will debut on the all-new CX-60 later this year.
Takuminuri refers to Mazda’s painting technology that reproduces a precise, high-quality paint finish as if done by a skilled craftsman on an automobile mass production line.
Mazda believes that paintwork is a crucial part of what gives shape to a vehicle, and so it has focused its efforts on developing hues that accentuate the dynamic and delicate expression of the company’s Kodo: Soul of Motion design philosophy.
Rhodium White is a pure white inspired by Japanese aesthetics, finding beauty in simplicity and the absence of superfluous elements. Furthermore, the paint’s fine grain accentuates the shadows on the surface of the vehicle complementing the metallic texture of Rhodium White.
Mazda’s approach uses advanced paint technology to create colours with rich depth and radiance that highlight every sensuous curve and line of a car, while also ensuring to reduce the environmental impact of the painting process in keeping with the brand’s long-term Sustainable Zoom-Zoom 2030 vision.
The Takuminuri process uses painting robots that has been fed data obtained through simulation painting with Mazda’s best craftsmen to replicate traditional techniques to give mass-production vehicles a precise, high-quality and hand-sprayed finish.
While developing Rhodium White, Mazda was able to take Takuminuri to new heights, successfully mass producing an expressive finish using only three layers: a clear layer, a reflective layer and the coloured layer.
The coloured layer provides a newly developed white pigment that delivers a silky smooth, fine-grain white.
As standard practice with white paints, the undercoat tends to show through, and the clear coat is generally thicker than for other tonalities. Rhodium White however, uses a newly developed pigment which Mazda was able to reduce the thickness of the clear coat by up to 30 per cent. This contributes to a more efficient use of resources and a reduction of CO2 emissions during the production process.
Mazda uses a method in which paint containing ultra-thin, high luminance aluminium flakes are applied to achieve a uniform thickness and which then shrink in volume during the drying process for the reflective layer. The result is an extremely thin reflective layer of 0.5 microns or about 7 per cent of the thickness of a typical reflective layer.
In addition, the Hiroshima-based company was able to achieve a hand-painted like finish with the aluminium flakes smoothly aligned at regular intervals in the reflective layer.
The entire surface gleams when exposed to light and displays a realistic metallic texture. Individual aluminium flakes are distributed evenly and parallel to the undulations of the body surface, producing a glossy and shaded appearance when touched by light despite the brightness of Rhodium White.
After CX-60, the colour would be rolled out across upcoming models in Mazda’s Large Product group.
