farmerjones

Don't get me wrong....Audi is far from the worst offender on colors!!!! Audi is certainly unique in actually building what you want if you are willing to pay and wait (thanks to a customization program that is "in-house" for sister brands Porsche, Bentley, Etc) and that certainly earns some customer's business. Your example definitely show other brands can be horrendous and building colors customers want.

I still stand by my claim that a huge part for black interiors is profit-based for the manufacturer. It's been a few years now but when I worked at Lexus back in the day cars were built via a "batch order" for each model. For example, say the next build cycle lasted for 45 days....Lexus would then decide they would build 1000 LS430 models, and then of those 1000 a certain % would have a specific exterior color...and then each of that color would have the % of interior colors set. So they new in the next 45 days there would be 200 black LS430s with 100 black interiors built, 50 in blue with ten of those blue in brown leather, and so on and so on...... Every color was set in advance of being built. So a customer wanted to custom-order a black on black LS430 during that production cycle guess what - you had to wait till the next production cycle started. They had already set the fixed black on black LS430 build number, and they would not add in or change another color combination on the assembly line to accommodate your custom order. This was to save money! The supplies were told way in advance exactly how much of each color of interior components would be used, no more and no less. This allowed for extreme inventory control by suppliers, meaning they could narrow margins and offer Lexus very lucrative bids to provide interior colored components, because they didn't need to be flexible - a fixed set of components were ordered in advance. Lexus would order 500 Mark Levinson audio components for a cycle and that was supplied, no more no less. Think about how much that could reduce costs. Audi is doing something similar. Lexus also offered cloth interior as standard on ES330s early on, leather optional. For fun we one time tried to place an order for one to see how long it would take to build. Guess what.....it never would have been. Technically why "on the web site" as an option, Lexus did not produce these cars. Ever. All marketing for a lower advertised "base starting price" for TV and print ads. Extreme control of interior color by manufactures has been going on for quite some time now.

VM

Yup, that's typical of what I've heard about the Asian automakers. They decide what they want to build. They decide what they don't want to build. Then dealers are told what is being built and can choose to have those cars sent to their dealership.

I remember reading about another interesting example - apparently at one point, Toyota Sequoia sales were so poor that they only made them for a few weeks each year. They build what they wanted to build, shipped it out or stored it, and that was it until next year. (I think other automakers, if they had a low-volume product built on the same line as a higher volume one, would just make a few of the lower volume product here and there. I don't think Audi builds allroads for 4 weeks/year and then builds EU-spec avants and sedans the rest of the year, for example.)

I don't think the European or domestic automakers do it that way. There's an order guide, and every regular production option listed on there can be built. (Unless there's a major crisis, e.g. the earthquake in Japan destroys the plant that makes the pigments for one or two paint colours) And I don't think scheduling is particularly driven by options. One interesting thing about the Audi system: when a dealer has an allocation and orders a car for inventory, then someone comes along and wants to order something different, they can change the equipment on that car and keep the production week that was assigned to that allocation. There's a limit to when they'll accept changes, obviously - I think it's a few weeks before production, but that at least is indicative of a much more flexible manufacturing system than the Toyota style.

rsilvers129

I am fine with colors on the outside. Audi doesn't need 3-4 shades of gray to choose from. But I want my inside black. My wife does also. I do like the Nougat brown seats, but the brown matching plastic door handles were not convincing. And that is the problem with non-black - the lighter colors never match on the various hard and soft plastics.

Obsidian3K

As part of the younger demographic (I'm assuming that this forum skews rather older than my mid-30s), the "you can have any interior color you want, as long as it's black" trend totally isn't my fault!

I don't think I could bring myself to buy a car with white/cream leather, because I wear jeans and don't live in a CDC clean room, so by all reports I'd spend most of my waking hours cleaning the leather. But I'd love color options other than black. I particularly like BMW's Saddle Brown leather option, but alas Audi's Nougat Brown comes with more plastic than I'd expected, is not available with Scuba Blue, and in Canada still comes with black and beige interior trim, which makes for a mix of colors that's a bit too busy for my tastes.

With the rise in JIT manufacturing and factory orders, I'm hopeful that greater customization will become available. You have the part I want and you already install it on the same assembly line, in the exact same model of car you're building for me; letting me pay you to install it in my car is not rocket science at this point.

I try not to think about this too much, because it makes me want to just drive my current car into the ground and hope that by then our autonomous Uber overlords have seized control

VM

I think, sadly, that the trend has been in the opposite direction. When you look at the amount of options that used to be available on domestic cars and still are available on domestic trucks, you conclude that less customization is where most automakers are going. It simplifies things, especially since more and more components are coming from suppliers already partially assembled into larger assemblies rather than individual parts that can be mixed and matched at the factory and in terms of spare parts availability (I continue to think the reason the full beige/grey interiors are not available in Canada is because they don't want to stock the extra interior pieces in two more colours).