Ford's Special Vehicle Team (SVT) unveiled the 2004 SVT Mustang Cobra Mystichrome package – with color-shifting paint that changes from green to blue to purple to black – at the 2003 New York Auto Show. The package also features the industry's first production application of color-shifting leather interior trim. The 2004 SVT Mustang Cobra Mystichrome features an advanced formula of color-shifting paint, first offered in 1996 on the SVT Mustang Cobra with Mystic paint. The original formula changed from black to purple to root-beer brown.

The Special Vehicle Team worked with Alan Eggly, Ford's color and trim director for North America, to develop the Mystichrome paint and leather. Both the exterior and interior treatments utilize ChromaFlair® light interference pigments, from Flex Products, Inc. in Santa Rosa, California. These tiny particles (each an average size of 17 microns) are comprised of five layers of colorless film. Combined, these layers produce shimmering, vibrant colors. The microscopic layers act like a tiny prism: White light is reflected off the core layer, and then split by outer layers into visible colors. As the viewing angle changes, so does the visible color. The color produced is controlled by precise variances—measured in atoms—in the prismatic layers: The thinnest ChromaFlair pigment shifts from gold through silver and into light blue; The thickest pigment shifts from silver through green, and into purplish blue.