The default for Terminal.app profile Pro is a black background with ANSI colors. Since the background is black the preferred color setting for Vim is background=dark. In this combination red text (emitted from syntax highlighting) is indistinguishable from grey text (at least for me):
"Foo" is red, "bar" is grey. A color picker reveals that red is rendered as R=243, G=222, B=222, so yes it actually is a slight bit more red than grey.
None of the color changing options in Terminal.app preferences allows me to change this to something that makes me recognize it as red. So how can i make red look red?
Edit (Further information from the comments): The issue is reproducible with any Vim (local or ssh remote, from OS X or mac ports) as long as Terminal.app is used for display.