For the past year or two, I’ve found myself noticing some cars looking…weird. Though it was very difficult to elucidate, the paint jobs on more and more cars seemed somehow unfinished to me, or just otherwise wrong. These vehicles weren’t matte. That’s an uncommon look, but one that’s easy to explain. Instead, these cars still had gloss, yet also seemed dull.

An Audi looking weird in “Nardo Grey” [Photo credit: Viktor Hadjiev]

Recently, the universe presented me with an answer to the question I didn’t even know how to ask. I somehow stumbled on a rather frenetic YouTube video that matched my repeated thought (“That car looks peculiar, but I don’t know why”), then did a faster-than-real-time dive into the matter. That led me to this 19-month-old piece that covers the subject perfectly.

On the most concrete level, what’s happening with these paints isn’t just that they are significantly grayed down, but that they contain a very low amount, if not a total absence, of “flake” — the tiny metallic flecks that car manufacturers have been mixing into paint for decades, which makes their vehicles sparkle and helps highlight their (ostensibly) seductive, undulating lines.

There it is! There’s the explanation. These bizarro cars I’ve recently been seeing more and more lack flake. It’s strange to my eye, and I don’t much care for it. But after many months, I’m relieved that I at least finally know what’s going on.