Soul Red Metallic: the Color of Seduction

Mazda’s signature color began seducing me in May, when I first encountered it up close, just at the time I began seriously contemplating replacing my 17-year-old Saturn.

I’d actually used up my AAA calls for the year between dead batteries, flat tires, and other problems. The car had 165,000 miles on it. The lining was peeling off the inside of the roof. A persistent electrical problem meant that the driver’s side brake light didn’t work, as total strangers helpfully pointed out to me on more than one occasion. And my first year living in Oakley had given me bursitis in my left hip, because Highway 4 and manual transmissions are not a good combination.

On one of those dead-battery occasions, I ended up walking over to Grocery Outlet, a distance of less than a mile in each direction. By the time I got home with my groceries, I was practically crippled. Appalled at how out-of-shape I was even for someone who spends 12 hours a day at a computer, I began a program of daily walking, which I combined with an examination of lawn alternatives.

I found the Mazda 3 hatchback parked in a driveway one bright May morning. I liked the shape of it. I loved the color of it. I took a photo so I could remember what it was and find out more about it.

Not that I was planning to get a red car. And I hadn’t been thinking about a Mazda before, because I knew nothing about them. But that color was simply too remarkable to ignore, even though I’d noticed that several different makes of cars had come out with impressive shades of red paint in the past couple of years.

I started researching cars, and found out that the Mazda 3 got fantastic reviews, which was encouraging. But I couldn’t make up my mind between trying to buy and trying to lease, so I didn’t do much besides just look at every compact or mid-sized sedan I saw parked on the street until September.

In August I had my Best Month Ever. Best in terms of income, I mean. It was exhausting, and in some ways I’m still recovering from the effort, but suddenly I was in a position to buy a car. So I started looking around to see what was actually available. And, of course, I started to notice Mazdas all around me.

When I pointed out a Mazda 3 hatchback to my husband in a parking lot, he remarked that it seemed kind of small. The Mazda 3 is no smaller than a Saturn SL1, but the Saturn (apart from its age and disreputable condition) was not ideally suited to my position as my husband’s schlepper-in-chief. It could handle the two of us and our luggage for a road trip, but not a third person, and certainly not a third person’s luggage.

As it happened, there was a Mazda 6 parked not far away in the same parking lot. My husband liked that one better. I liked it, too, but had been thinking of it as out of range. There’s a fairly substantial price difference between the two cars, proportionate to the difference in size and cargo capacity. Once I was considering the Mazda 6, I needed to consider the Honda Accord and the Kia Optima and the Hyundai Sonata and the Ford Fusion and the Nissan Altima.

All of those are attractive cars and get good reviews. What I found when I started doing in-depth searches on KBB.com, however, was that there are dozens of late-model, low-mileage Fords and Nissans for sale. That suggests that people who buy them aren’t inclined to keep them very long. And that (given the inventory of dealer-certified pre-owned cars in my price range and also within a reasonable distance of me) left me with a choice between a 2013 Honda Accord and a 2016 Mazda 6.

The Honda that I test-drove in Dublin was a lovely car. The pale champagne-gold color reminded me of my late lamented Geo Prizm. The ivory cloth interior would be well-suited to the climate in Oakley. And it was an EX, meaning it came with lots of options, from the right-turn camera to the moon roof to the all-weather floor mats in the back.

The one thing that had disappointed me about the Honda was its comparatively cramped trunk, which narrowed about halfway back. It didn’t seem any larger than the trunk on the Saturn.

I still expected to buy it. I was saved from an impulse purchase by two things. First, it was Saturday and the bank wouldn’t be open until Monday. Second, I knew that if I never test-drove a Mazda 6, I would always wonder. But I really thought I’d be back at the Honda dealership later that day.

Across the lot at Dublin Mazda, I opted to test-drive the silver car. My choices were silver, white, black, and red. I wasn’t planning to buy a red car, and black just doesn’t seem logical in Oakley’s heat. I’d been thinking of blue or green, but I rarely saw them listed and there wasn’t one in stock.

One thing that impressed me right away was the huge trunk. “You can fit me in this trunk,” the young salesperson said. “One customer made me demonstrate.” (Actually, it looked big enough for two of him.)

And I loved driving it. Saturns are painfully under-powered. Fuel-efficiency and performance are not always compatible, and I needed the fuel-efficiency to cope with all those trips to the airport. The Mazda accelerates. Uphill.

I was definitely sold, and sat down to figure out my out-the-door costs so I’d know what amount to have the bank put on the cashier’s check.

But as I drove home, I started to think “I want the red one.”

There was a problem with that, however. The red Mazda in Dublin had some damage to the paint–not a few tiny scratches, but a large, clumsily-patched blotch. Since I was not about to hand over my hard-earned cash for a damaged car, I returned to my search.

By this time I knew that Mazda calls this color “soul red metallic.” Their website contains several articles about how they formulated it, as both a design and an engineering problem.

Soul red metallic. It’s the color of seduction, the color of temptation, the color of longing. It is the color of Sappho’s “limb-loosening desire” (λυσιμέλης ἔρος). It is the color you think of when you hear the expression “cherry-red lips.” (Cherries are the only thing I can think of that have the same combination of depth, shine, and sensuality.) It is not, however, a color I would have associated with my soul, if I’d thought of my soul as having a color.

Before I had even arrived at Tracy Mazda to inspect her in minute detail, I had decided to call this car The Temptress. She was simply impossible for me to resist.

On October 31st, 2016, ten years to the day since I had purchased the Saturn, I wrote a personal check for nearly $18,000 and drove off the lot with my new soul red metallic Mazda 6. This morning we made our first trip to the airport in heavy traffic.

I am definitely in love.