i was thinking about the same thing last night. after much surfing on CG talk, highend3D and google, i've found...there is no readily available way to do so. not even a script hack.
Colored mesh weighting is only on rigid skinning. Smooth uses the horrible paint weights tool and that is only shades of grey. Daz I don't think you can use mult wires on the same mesh. Best way to do it is separate parts of the model that you want to be one color and so on. Sure you've already thought of that though. It's…