The blue paint on the Pepsi Concorde cost $1M and caused a unique issue for the supersonic aircraft

The blue paint on the Pepsi Concorde cost one million dollars to complete, but ended up causing problems for the supersonic aircraft.

This was one of the biggest publicity campaigns of the 1990s, and didn’t come around easily.

It took over 200 liters of paint and thousands of man-hours to get done.

But this project would end up causing issues for the jet later down the line.

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The backstory of how a Pepsi Concorde jet ended up being painted blue for a campaign

Yes, 1996 was a great year – Independence Day was dominating the box office, everyone was doing the Macarena, and the Spice Girls had burst onto the music scene.

It was also the year that Pepsi launched ‘Project Blue’.

You might be old enough to remember when Pepsi cans were primarily white and red.

The problem with that? The red was too similar to the company’s rival, Coca-Cola.

So it was decided a blue makeover was needed, and a big blue Concorde was the perfect way to spearhead the campaign.

Pepsi approached Air France and British Airways with its intentions, and the former agreed that Concorde would fly for two weeks with blue Pepsi livery.

And that’s how the Pepsi Concorde was born.

How this blue plane ended up causing problems

The Pepsi Concorde ended up going on a ten-city promotional tour across Europe and the Middle East.

But it did so under one condition – the plane had to pull back on the speed.

That feels contrary to the nature of Concorde, right?

Well, the reason for the reduced speed was because of the blue paint.

Let us explain.

All Concordes were painted white, which might seem like a style choice at first glance.

However, there’s a practical reason behind it – because the aircraft was subjected to extremely high temperatures, white was the best color to help deflect the heat.

So the blue livery of the Pepsi makeover actually stopped protecting the supersonic plane from the extremely high temperatures.

As a result, this meant that it only cruised at its iconic Mach 2 speeds for 20 minutes at a time.

After briefly existing as the Pepsi Concorde, Air France decided to return to its original condition.

Believe it or not, this wasn’t even Pepsi’s most outlandish publicity stunt of the decade.

You may recall that the company made a commercial in which it told people they could collect ‘Pepsi Points’ with each purchase they made and win prizes, including a fighter jet.

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