No need to defend or apologize for John's color choice. As you can see, his thought process went from the obvious choices of safe "people pleaser" shades of blue to a racy "how dare you!" final choice. One way or another, the color is designed to make people think.
The color, the wheels, the exposed hardware...all of these styling cues say: "Take your polished, shiny, filled-seam smoothster and shove it! I'm going racing." Obviously the color accomplished it's goal.
