She colors Volvo
A black car. What does that signal? For Cecilia Stark, who is the person strategically responsible for color and material at Volvo, the answer is simple: Elegance, sportiness and attitude.
“Black is always right,” she says. Blue, silver grey and black - those are the three most popular colors among Volvo’s customers. Together they make up for close to 80% of all the colors on today’s models. In other words, canary yellow, tomato red and baby blue are fighting over a fairly small percentage – 30.

“Black always works,” Cecilia says. “It stands for so much, and look at the designers themselves, most of them dress in black because it works so well. It used to be that we connected black with prestigious German cars, but that no longer holds true.” Whenever Volvo develops a new car or a concept car, it is Cecilia who decides what colors in should come in. The special deep shiny copper color for the S60, for instance, was her idea and it came with nail polishes in matching colors. The problem with special colors though, is that they become popular over night, but rarely last as long as the classical colors. “White was really ‘in’ in the 1980’s, then the interest in that color was on the wane, now it’s coming again.” Cecilia so much loves black, that Volvo now offers three shades of it: A solid black, a metallic black, and one with an exclusive mix of copper. The solid one is the deepest one and the one that has been around the longest. The only problem with a black car is that it absorbs heat, but says Cecilia: “There are air conditioners in all cars these days.” She herself drives a Volvo V50. Black, of course.