More and more cars are offering clients the opportunity to customize the appearance with a color that is closer to their personality. Seat is one of the brands who started to offer more customization inside its range of new models.
A specialised team analyses market trends and propose the range of colours of new models to be launched. A total of 1,000 litres of paint are required to create a new shade.
Mixtures are carried out in the lab that makes the work of creating a new colour strictly an exercise in chemistry. In the case of the colour palette for the SEAT Arona, “by mixing 50 different pigments and metal particles we’ve created nearly 100 variations of the same colour to see which shade is the most suitable”, says Carol Gómez from the Color&Trim department.
An example of this is the new SEAT Arona, which gives customers the opportunity of choosing from among more than 68 different colour combinations.
Once the colour is defined, it has to be tested on a metal plate to verify its application and the visual effect it produces.
In the booths, cars are painted at a temperature of between 21 and 25 degrees. Two and a half kilos of paint is applied on each car in an automated process performed by 84 robots that takes six hours per vehicle. The paint booths feature a ventilation system that is similar to the ones found in a surgery room to prevent dust and other impurities from the exterior to settle on the freshly painted cars. Seven coats in all, each as thin as a hair width but as hard as a rock, which are baked in an oven at 140 degrees.
Once painted, all it takes is 43 seconds to verify there are no deficiencies in the paint application. The vehicles pass through a scanner that checks for smooth surfaces and ensures there are no impurities.
