Seeing Red…No, not THAT red!

I bought a new truck a couple of weeks ago. There was nothing wrong with the old one, at least nothing that a new truck wouldn’t fix. But after fifteen years and 212,000 miles, I felt I deserved a new truck.

As the daredevil I’ve deluded myself to be, I went out on a limb, lived on the edge, and pushed the envelope and the replacement for our 2010 Honda Ridgeline RTL is — wait for it! — a 2025 Honda Ridgeline RTL. But in a dramatic turn of events, it’s red…a drastic change from the old truck’s maroon-ish (it’s actually called Dark Cherry Red) color (which Honda no longer offers, and I’m contemplating the possibility of perhaps writing a sternly-worded letter of non-approbation to Mr. Takizawa himself. I’m definitely maybe gonna do that.).

This unfortunate detail has subjected me to the most egregious accusations from some close friends who claim that the new vehicle is now a rolling advertisement for a certain university located in the beautiful-albeit-very-flat city of Lubbock, Texas (said uni known mostly for its tortillas). I’m referring of course to Texas Tech.

The purpose of this post is to set the record straight and disabuse those friends of that misconception. I’ll not accuse them of scurrility; they’re merely misguided. And very wrong. And I can prove it.

The graphic below compares the official school color of Texas Tech* with Honda’s Radiant Red M II** paint color:

I don’t know how the evidence could be more black and white…or, well, red and different red. I trust that I’ve made my point***, and we can move on to more important topics, such as whether hyenas are more closely related to cats or to dogs**** and thus whether they could recognize the obvious difference in those colors.

I’m sure I’ll continue to get comments about “Texas Tech red,” and I can handle that (as far as you know). The saving grace is that no one will ever mistake the truck color for burnt orange.

I know you’re dying (not literally, I pray) to know how the new truck stacks up against the old one, at least cosmetically. Drag the yellow line to uncover the new model and its decidely non-maroonish but definitely-not-Tech-red paint.

By the way, I’m sure you’re not surprised that the new model is significantly improved over the old one, in almost every aspect. I told Debbie that it’s like upgrading from an iPhone 6 to a 16 Pro.

Notes of feet

*I turned to my good Texas Techsian amigo, noted professional artist, graphic designer, cartoonist, and all-around swell guy Norman Johnson for help in identifying the official TT school colors. The red is PMS (no, not THAT PMS…it refers to the Pantone Matching System) #186C (hexadecimal equivalent is #C8102E). [return]

**The closest Pantone equivalent to Honda’s Radiant Red is PMS 7621C (hex equivalent #AB2328). However, the flat color shown above is not perfectly representative of the metallic nature of Honda’s paint. [return]

***Why do I care? For the same reason my friends accuse me of representing Texas Tech; my loyalties lie with Texas A&M — hence the mourning of the loss of a maroon-ish color option. [return]

****Spoiler: The answer is cats. Really. [return]