It’s no secret that some of the world’s most profound “inventions” were more like discoveries, or at best, created by mistake or accidentally. With car production on the fritz across the board, no one can afford production mistakes these days. Even more so, screwing up a popular model like the Ford Mustang Mach-E is a costly mistake, indeed. Ford programming neglected to clean out a paint gun before spraying a new Mach-E body, causing the creation of the only bubblegum pink factory Ford Mustang Mach-E. 

What happened to this Ford Mustang Mach-E? 

According to Carscoops, a paint sprayer sprayed a white basecoat before painting a Mach-E Rapid Red Metallic. The paint machine failed to clean the paint gun before spraying the red pigment. As we learned in pre-school, the two colors mixed, and the first bubblegum pink Ford Mustang Mach-E was born. 

Funnily enough, this mistake reflects history in a way that feels a little too coincidental. According to the Thrillist, the bubblegum pink color we all know was mistakenly created itself. Well, the color itself wasn’t created by mistake per se, but when gum was first invented in the late 1800s, pink was the only available food coloring, and this bubblegum became pink. 

The Drive first discovered photos posted to Facebook by Mechatronics Engineer Alexis Aguilar Gomez, who was working at Ford’s Cuautitlan Plant as a contractor overviewing paint and external defects in 2020 during the EV’s pre-production phase. 

“The Mach-E project had two pre-production stages before the mass production started,” Gomez told Carscoops. “During these phases, the first units were test subjects for various things; usually quality tests, some of these units had minor or major defects since the body area and often were used as test mules for the rest of the process as practice.” 

Should Ford make pink cars? 

Car colors have gotten boring. Once upon a time, seeing purple, green, pink, yellow, orange, red, and damn near any other bright color you could come up with on a car was not only available but available on the coolest of muscle cars. The most common colors today are white and silver. I’m sorry, but that just ain’t where it’s at. 

Although some genders may be adverse to such a pink hue, it’s impossible to deny how refreshing it is to see such a vibrantly-colored car these days. 

Unfortunately, Gomez broke the news to Carscoops that this bubblegum pink Mustang Mach-E didn’t survive, at least not painted like this. 

“This pink one had like three other paint layers underneath, and after it was accidentally painted pink, it remained on the paint area for a couple of days standing by and eventually was resprayed again for test,” he told Carscoops. 

What happens to OEM test cars?

Ford often uses the testers for a while, then get them as close to factory spec as possible after multiple paint jobs and sells them at a discount to Ford employees. 

While bubblegum pink didn’t make it to the official spec sheet for Mach-E, it is a nice reminder that we need more fun car colors. If this shade of pink can inspire this much excitement, imagine what would happen if Ford brought back colors like Avocado Metallic, Inca Gold, or Calypso Coral? Come on, Ford. Like Spike Lee said, Do the right thing.