ORIGINAL: WhiteHeat
That said, do we really need two shades of red or two shades of gray? Are there buyers out there thinking "I wanted a Challenger, but its got to be Titanium. If I have to choose silver or black then I'll just get a Camaro instead."? If your marketing strategy is based on "if they like our car better than the competition, they'll buy it regardless of color", then why not go the Henry Ford route of
"any color, as long as it's black?"
If they take away Silver and Dark Red and substitute Plum Crazy and Sublime are the Police Departments and bank VPs going to be affected? i doubt it.
PS: I'm offering up my ox to be gored here. At present, Dark Red is my choice and I'm not interested in Plum Crazy or Sublime. But I'll switch to Black or Silver if it'll get more happy Challenger drivers on the road.
And anybody who wants Panther Pink is on their own!
Agreed. And the "Any color - as long as it's black" statement was in my mind as well when I wrote that.
The redundancy of colors you mention (two shades of silver and red) confuses me when other colors are omitted completely from the choices. While I'm not a fan of either, browns and greens seem to be "second class colors" when colors are selected for cars (trucks seem to offer more in these colors, though). Ford comes out with the Bullitt Mustang now and I think you'll see green paint offered on more cars as a result.
The other thing I wanted to mention was the cost of the paint. Red, for example, is an expensive color to manufacture. Dodge offers the Inferno Red paint at an additional cost. I'm unsure of how other auto makers handle their paint options/costs, so I won't attempt to venture a guess.
Needless to say, you can't please everybody, so the thought is to please as many as you can with a reasonable amout of effort/choices.