The chameleon paint is the brainwave of Clint, Chris and Dan Gallo. “We were sitting on a Mexican beach in 1993 desperately trying to figure out a way to get out of the rat race and become beach bums,” says Clint from his office in Houston, Texas. “We were drinking margaritas from fancy glasses that changed colour as we drank and, like you do after a few tequilas, we thought: ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if we could make cars change colour too?’”
If they were real beach bums they would have forgotten about it next morning, but instead they set to work. None of them was a professional chemist so they did their own research and experiments and finally this year, after spending $50,000, they quietly showed their product at a US motorbike show. “Everybody told us it was good. ‘Wow, that’s a trip,’ they said, so we called it Trippin’ Paint,” says Clint.
Trippin’ Paint is not an isolated development in the world of car design. This autumn will also see the debut of a new type of tinted window that uses electrochromic technology which darkens or lightens glass at the flick of a switch.
The system is essentially a gel sandwiched between two pieces of glass that darkens when an electric current is passed through it and lightens when it is stopped. Like a dimmer switch, the current varies the darkness, affording a near-infinite number of shades.
Saint-Gobain Sekurit, a French firm that supplies many of the world’s car makers with glass and which is developing the concept, refuses to reveal on which luxury saloon it will be unveiled this year, but says it hopes to see the technology in mass-produced cars in two years.
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Trippin’ Paint changes colour according to its temperature. The company has formulated the paints so the colour change occurs at predetermined thresholds. They are not subtle changes: the company boasts paints that change from black to silver, purple to blue and red to yellow.
So far most of the few hundred litres that they’ve sold have gone to custom paint shops that create designs which reveal themselves when the engine warms up and heats the painted panels, or if the car or motorbike is left in the sun.
But Clint anticipates even more dramatic uses for his invention: “I have stuck heating strips, like the ones in rear screens, to a car panel, sanded them down and painted over them,” he says. “The panel warms up when I pass 12 volts through the strips, and the paint changes colour. It takes only a couple of seconds.”
The power required to change colour would be far less than that needed to melt ice off the rear screen. At a certain temperature the paint is clear so a car with several layers of paint could give the driver the choice of numerous colours.
The big international players in car paint such as the chemical giant DuPont say the real challenge is to make a paint that changes colour but is long lasting. “Car coatings have to remain stable for many years in many kinds of weather, and it’s not easy to make a colour-changing coating that is sufficiently stable,” says Gunter Richter, head of colour chemistry for cars at DuPont in Germany.
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The Gallos guarantee their paint for 12 months or 12,000 miles, suggesting reasonable longevity, but until the patent comes through for their invention the exact formula will remain a tight secret. Until then they are doing minimal marketing but quietly selling the paint over the internet, charging about £700 for enough paint for one whole car.
“We’re not beach bums yet,” says Clint, “but maybe some day soon we will be.”