Car Paint Colors Have Gotten More Boring over the Years | Hacker News Reader

Car Paint Colors Have Gotten More Boring over the Years

thedrive.com

93 pointsclouddrover170 comments

As others have mentioned, geography also plays a huge part. When I used to export vehicles to Afghanistan, I noticed that they didn't like dark colors at all. I was specially told by my broker to stay away from sending black cars or cars with darker shades i.e blue, because demand for them was very low.

The highest demand was for white cars, reason being is that the areas are quite dusty. So if you have a white car, it won't look very dirty with dust on it. In contrast if you have a black car, even the slightest dust will make it appear dirty. Its harder to keep a blacker color clean.

Also, for some reason green toyotas (sienna, tercel) always sold like hot pancakes in Cameroon. To this day I still don't know why.

My memory told me Cameroon world cup teams have beautiful green jerseys and a google search confirmed that to be true.

A recent DPRK documentary pointed out that while a monochrome society used to be one of their explicitly propagandised goals, over the past decade they've become much more colourful. (under the influence of chinese tourists?)

There was a marketing theory I ran across back in the twentieth century, that societal colour palettes change in predictable ways. IIRC it was something like clothing is the first place a palette changes, then cars, then home appliances. But my memory is not the best.

The opposite reasoning from dusty white cars occurs for witches: they always have black cats, because who wants to always be cleaning white fur off the robes and pointy hat?

"Never drive black cattle in the dark."

Wow, very insightful! If you get a chance I would love to read the marketing theory.

(I will try to find it myself in the am too).

"Color forecasting" seems to be the term of art.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40691-017-0124-y

https://slate.com/culture/2012/04/pantone-color-forecasts-ar...

https://www.pantone.com/workflow/trend-forecasting

Do you have a link to the DPRK documentary?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StjIv33zJ9c&t=1960

I think white cars are commonly preferred in hot climates, as there is a noticeable difference in the inside temperature of a white vs black that have both stood parked in the sun for most of the day.

Solar gain is a huge problem in a hot climate.

You can usually get into a white or silver car and drive it away. With a black car, you may have to leave the doors open for a few minutes to allow the broiling-hot air to escape. Interior temperatures can easily reach the far side of 120F.

Yes, my personal experience is 123F internal temperature around 4pm after car being parked whole day, one time in July in California. 110F many times.

White also helps with visibility of the car, especially in dusty roads.

That’s part of it (I remember reading a study that blank cars had a 2% reduction in fuel efficiency, speculated as attributable to their higher temperature requiring more air conditioning).

But white paint also withstands desert sun much better. Just a few years with a lot of outside exposure will make blues and greens in particular look sandblasted like they’ve been exposed to the weather forever

Extremely far-fetched: green cars are easier to convert to camouflage patterned military cars?

Why is that a thing that would be happening in Cameroon, again?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglophone_Crisis

The existence of Ambazonia doesn't translate to the general populace buying cars with the aim of turning them into camouflaged military vehicles in mind, no. What sort of Rambo fantasy is that?

Is there any interesting story behind why "Southern Cameroons" is in the geographical northwest of cameroon the country?

Edit: I see, it's political. They're southern in english, and northwest in french.

Bonus clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LndrLOLJgrs

Some other comments have alluded to it, but heat is a big deal too. Black cars are non-trivially warmer baking in the sun for 12 hours.

When I was last in a dealership parking lot, it was a hot day and they had three of the same model in black, silver and white, all baking out in summer sun. The roof of the white car was noticeably cooler to the touch than the silver or black cars. It was actually quite remarkable to me how similar the silver and black felt.

There's an exhibit in the city gardens here that illustrates how cacti use colour to manage their heat in hot climates. The exhibit is four circles of paint in black, grey, green and white, and it's noticeably different on each! Even grey was noticeably cooler.

Dashboards in older black cars used to literally melt in the summer. Getting into a black car in 35+ degrees heat is hell, have to turn on the A/C right away. A white or grey car is much more preferable under such conditions. And there is no disadvantage during winter, either.

Oh, so. that's where Modest Mouse's Dashboard came from. I always thought it was a (slight) exaggeration. At least we've still got the radio. :)

Where I live we have lots of trucks - the "fuck you" trucks - and the popular ones now are matte military green, beige, and black, matte black if you're extra cool. The military aesthetic is exhausting, I almost want to move to more liberal state just to tilt the balance a bit - subarus and prius with dutch bro stickers are preferable to military-esque trucks with chimneys up the back and black and white american flag Punisher skulls. Between those and the people with the brass knuckles MMA stickers, the prevailing outward sentiment on the road here is "I'm happy to shoot or beat you." That demographic isn't interested in purple from my observations. Everyone else seems fine accepting a plain colors. I had to wait a couple extra days to get my car in the color I wanted - wasn't even a "fun" color, just a more interesting shade of blue. I heard another lady told about the wait and she just took white. I suspect that happens quite a bit. You can get fun colors, but you need to wait.

This aesthetic exists everywhere. Move to a liberal city and you'll see plenty of matte colored "fuck-you" super cars, jacked up mad max jeeps, and dick-wagging 200k Mercedes G-Wagons with chrome colored wraps. People just love tacky. And in some aspects I do too....

Everywhere in the US, maybe, though based on regular SUV sales I'm sure it's only a matter of time.

In North America cars are generally bought or financed by dealers and sold to customers. Dealers don't want cars to last more than a month or so on their lot unsold.

Most people won't balk from buying a plain looking car, but they may not want a yellow, purple, red or green car. So dealers don't order many brightly varied cars.

You also have to remember that even if a person does want a green car, for instance, they may not want the options on THAT green car.

Different color paint doesn't take any longer in the paint booth, but some colors show defects better, and it's a LOT of work to do color harmonization - making the plastic bits match the painted body.

It only takes about 24 hours or less to take a car from parts to finished product, the lead time comes from getting parts from suppliers.

> In North America cars are generally bought or financed by dealers and sold to customers. Dealers don't want cars to last more than a month or so on their lot unsold.

I agree that this is common there, although I'm not sure how it actually compares with specific other places (curious for any data here), but I haven't noticed a correlation between this and interesting colors on other continents. If anything, at least in the parts of the US I've lived in, bright car colors are culturally more accepted and seem less ostentatious than in many other countries.

Over here in Europe, and particularly in Paris, people driving around in ostentatious colored cars are considered to be "that guy". Most such cars are expensive sports cars.

Citroën attempted to launch a "premium" brand a few years back, the DS (riding on their classic DS model [0]) and the ads at the time were showcasing the possibility of getting them in very bright colors, sometimes even multiple colors, to make a fashion statement. While the brand was somewhat successful (don't know the actual numbers, but they are fairly common), most of the cars on the road are actually "boring" colors, mostly white, some shade of gray and black.

Two years ago I stopped at a car dealership, and they were selling some "almost new" second hand Seats (a subsidiary of Volkswagen). They were basically demo cars, the older model that used to be exposed in the showroom. What I remember as striking is that they had three basically identical cars (same engine, trim, etc). The only difference was the color: one basic white, one metallic red and one metallic black. The red was a somewhat bright red (think Ferrari). It was the cheapest of the three. When I asked why, the guy told me that they wouldn't be as easy to move off the lot when second hand, so people wouldn't want to spend as much on them. Of course, brand new, the red would be as expensive as the black one. The white was in the middle as it was the presumably "cheap" paint (this was an entry level Ibiza).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citro%C3%ABn_DS

I think historically at least, red paint is the quickest to fade and deteriorate in the sun.

Red cars would also be stopped by cops more often, because they stand out.

Is that red in particular or any color that stands out? Say bright yellow or orange.

Red cars also pays higher premium for insurance

My insurance company never asked for my car's color. I don't think that's a common practice over here.

This is a particularly pervasive urban myth.

Is that because they stand out, or because people more inclined to break driving laws like red cars?

Imagine you are a cop enforcing speed limits. Multiple cars pass by, all speeding, one of them is red. Which car will grab your eye's attention first?

Statistically, the one with the black driver.

All the cops I've spoken with about this (maybe a dozen) say they don't consciously or subconsciously notice a car's color, but they do notice it's behavior. A speeder will change lanes frequently and abruptly to get around traffic, panic break, and do other stuff that cops easily notice.

I am sorry, I am not buying the equal justice for all argument. Of course the cops will not admit they are biased based on color. Err - CAR color.

It's a studied fact that red attracts attention, we find people wearing red more attractive, etc. It's RED.

Europe and Japan are almost all build to order (as I understand it) - no or almost no dealer inventory. I'm not sure about the rest of the world.

Spec houses are always beige inside for the same reason. I hate beige interiors :-)

Or gray. Ugh.

One of the colors that seems to have been lost over the past 20 years or so is Quinacridone Gold, denoted by pigment number PO 49. The pigment is part of the family of quinacridone pigments used everywhere, but reportedly this gold hue variation of the pigment wasn't popular enough to sustain production despite being used by artist paint manufacturers. Paint companies typically buy pigments from a relatively small number of pigment manufacturers. From the perspective of pigment manufacturers, paint for artists is a small market in comparison to other uses like the automotive industry. When the pigment went out of production, a watercolor paint company in Seattle, Daniel Smith, purchased the last batch and had a roughly 17 year monopoly on the color. Of course, artists figured out that the pigment was going away and started buying up the last of the stock, and now it is considered an "extinct pigment," no longer available for purchase in any new paint. There is a reformulated "New Quinacridone Gold" that uses a mixture of two pigments (PO 48 + PY 150), but some artists swear by single pigment colors for their more predictable mixing properties.

I think there are a few things to think about:

- some "plain" colors are actually quite beautiful now - they have some pretty interesting metallic or multicoat (or even flat-look) paints.

- wraps. These have appeared and I think become really mainstream in the last 10 years. I don't know what the numbers are but I've seen more and more of them. They probably show up as plain-jane colors on the stats, and minimize the number of purple and yellow cars. I've seen chrome pink cars, lots of gold cars, matte purple and black and more.

Given that the Tesla Model 3 has limited customization options and has now become the “California Camry” (meaning, they’re everywhere), wrapping has become very popular in the Tesla community as a way of differentiating your car.

I suppose part of this is fashion, but I’m sure that part of the explanation is resale value. Choosing an inoffensive colour makes it easier to sell, and I think (anecdotally) that that consideration became more prominent over time.

Did people previously not resell their cars?

Perhaps less as cars are becoming more reliable and with less new features year over year?

It’s the way financing these days works on brand new cars.

The buyer is paying off the difference between the price at the time of sale and the price at the end of finance term (plus interest on the difference)

The price at the end of the term is due to depreciation. If the buyer opts for a neutral/non-polarising color, then the depreciation is lesser than compared to choosing a different color. This is because it is assumed (mostly correctly) that it will be relatively easier to sell a grey/black car than a bright yellow/red car.

That also results in the non-neutral coloured car costing more to finance over the term.

Anecdotally, I’ve never heard of getting a deal on a used car simply because its red or yellow. Mileage and by proxy wear and tear is so much more meaningful on price.

You can't sell a leased car.

No, you'd return it or buy it out, but that begs the questions - if you had two identical models, but different colors, would the less desirable color have a lower residual at the end of the lease?

I'd assume so since the dealer needs to off-load it and if it's a wacky color, they won't get as much.

Or maybe the choice of colors for lease vehicles is limited to ones that aren't hard to off-load at the end of the lease?

People became too focused on money.

Focus on money almost makes everything less fun.

It used to be that people just bought a yellow car because they like it.

But when you do that today some people will say 'but what about the resell value?'. This will make you question your decision.

People are becoming less and less authentic. This sucks.

Just buy a car you like. Having a good time is more important than resell value.

I still kick myself for not buying a sunburst yellow Miata when I saw a low mile one come up for sale in the early 2000s.

Red was good, but they were common.

(Last time I checked, there was about a 3x premium on the yellow ones, because there were only 1500 of them made. The one that got away and all that.)

It makes sense for people to focus on money if they feel the probability of income loss and/or probability of a large expense is too high.

Considering the financial status for most of the people in my country (USA), I would say they can’t afford to care about their car’s color.

I'd guess more in the direction of first sale latency. Remarkable colors might fly off the lot, or they might moulder until they're dumped next year at a loss. Grayscale palette doesn't invite a risk of emotional response introducing volatility to sales.

Oddly enough, the models most likely to be available in actual colors fit the market most likely to care about resale value. Catastrophic depreciation hasn't ever seemed to impact luxury car sales. For excellent value retention, the other end of the market is where it's at. If MSRP for any trim level dips under US$20,000 it's certain to be available in bold colors. The other exceptions are the brand identification models - Miata, Supra, Mustang, Camaro - Emotional response is a desired outcome, so they're available in colors someone might actually form an opinion about.

Cars like Mazda or Dodge come to mind. They tend to have bad depreciation, but are much more likely to offer orange/copper, deep reds and blues, etc. Like those found in the Neon/Dart and Mazda 3. They are "fun" cars so color is part of the package, and they appeal to individuality rather than fitting in.

I look around and I see white SUVs filling up entire parking lots. This is like the "ideal vision" people want to step into... the family person with the versatile car.

Try going to Korea... you will have a difficult time finding anything other than Black, White, or Grey/Silver! It's easily over 90%.

Most cars that aren't B/W are brand advertisements (Blue,Yellow, Red or Green). People that want to stand out usually have crazy Gold/Purple/Pink/Polkadot/Zebra patterns on their cars.

http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20170319000054

Seems like a lot of this must be that manufacturers have decided to use paint color as a way to milk you at buy time, where fun colors often cost $2000 on options sheet, which is like pure markup.

I didn't to pay that much, but it cost me an extra $200 to get my car in red vs black (circa 2018).

I don't mind this, though. If you really want a fancy color, go ahead and pay for it. I am fine with 'boring' color, but then again, if I'm buying new, I'm also likely to get a boring compact, efficient car (hopefully electric).

If it’s tracking global numbers, then white colour dominance could be attributed to Asia, especially Southeast. They love white cars as they heat up much less in the sun. My rough eye balling estimate is that 80% of cars in Vietnam are white.

I see a correlation with how boring and sequelized movies, games, etc. have gotten over the years. Companies don't want to take chances anymore and play it safe for guaranteed money.

It's not just companies, the buying decision factors the resale value in, which in turn is higher for the more boring colors.

In general I feel the Internet had a dampening effect when it comes to lived creativity for a large part of society that does not actively value it this much. My gutfeeling tells me that for every person creating a YouTube Channel, or writing Blogposts, there are ten people that don't choose to do something creatively because they are faced with exhaustive choice and just select everything mostly economically.

A lot of clothes are these days black too. You see rarely someone who stand out in the crowd. Even the most people are dressed very well, it is totaly boring.

IN all honesty, though, if bright colors sold better, they'd have bright colors. I personally would rather have a boring colored car in most cases. The main reason I'm not currently choosy about color is because I buy used cars. The current car is a 20-year-old Toyota, purchased earlier in the summer. (The car gets used 2-4 times a month, and I don't drive due to oversight after moving overseas).

And it isn't like companies don't offer choices. People are simply buying "boring" colors more often.

On the other hand, tesla doesn't offer many choices. Maybe took a page from the iphone colors playbook.

Nope, I'm pretty sure that was taken directly from Henry Ford's playbook. Cars at one time were basically only sold in black. But the theory is the same as with the iphone and Tesla: If you are the wanted thing of the time, you don't have to offer so much. Luckily, there are a lot more choices - but I might have a skewed opinion on the choices. I'm in Norway, and electric vehicles are everywhere here (and the infrastructure is growing at a fast pace as well).

Folks can always get an aftermarket paint job if they want, though.

I'd see the equivalence is more choosing video game characters, where you now have far more options.

All I want is a non-glossy-teal or non-glossy-space-purple though. Currently have a white and black car (Citroen C4 Cactus, white main color, black accents).

I don't know, I somehow don't like glossy colors for some reason. Also it eats into Raytracing performance for no reason.

You can have your car wrapped in vinyl in whatever color matte or semi-matte finish you like.

Yes but... That just doesn't feel right?

I have a strong ambivalence between "I don't want to know anything about this product because I don't want to know its flaws" and "Heck. I can McGyver that together in like 5 min and live with the flaws", depending on the topic. And for cars, I just want to be "lied" to and want people to tell me that it is perfectly fine I guess?

I’ll be honest: I’m not exactly following your last comment. I was just trying to let you know of a viable solution if all you want is a matte teal or space-purple car and didn’t know it existed (since it only got semi-popular in the last few years).

Yeah sorry, let me rephrase part of it:

For cars (and some other things) I feel like unless it is "as the manufacturer produced it" (and not aftermarket stuff) it feels wrong.

Like... I could paint my car myself, change its color or foil it with some matte foil but... Unless it's 100% officially provided by the manufacturer I guess it just feels.... wrong.

Ah. I’m with you on that in general, but I am considering buying a used 911, want Speed Yellow or Riviera Blue, and have realized that it might be much cheaper and easier to find a black/silver/white car with the mechanical options I want and wrap it for color. Especially white as they seem to come with a discount.

Wrapping is reversible though. And pretty well established at this point. It could also protect your original coat - that’s a benefit.

Too bad you can't use automatic carwashes with it.

I think you actually can bring wrapped cars through automatic touchless (spray only, no brushes) car washes.

From what I have been told by multiple wrappers is you can't use the manual spray washes either. The water power is too high and will cause damage. Have to hand wash it.

Edit: This was for about 3-years between 2015-2018 as I wanted to wrap the cars in the winter.

frankly I wouldn't take a car without a wrap through one of those touchless car washes either. I took my gti through one once and it blasted one of those rubber stoppers out from between the hatch and the sill.

Don't worry you're not alone feeling this way.

What a reversal... a far cry from the 80s and 90s where owning a non-modified car felt wrong

In Australia all new residential buildings are the worst..

Everything is in greys.

Go to any shop whether for paint or tiles it is impossible to find a bright colour.

Even the colours (when you find any) have a distinct grey tone.

The "greige-ification" of the world is a truly miserable phenomena. The phenomena has to do with everything being made generic due to resale value (mentioned on another thread). All things with character also have the capacity to offend and all offense lowers a thing's total value.

https://www.thespruce.com/greige-best-neutral-color-ever-797...

You say "greige-ification" while Polish architecture and design communities lament the pasteloza ("pastelosis") trend. It came to be when existing commie blocks were thermally insulated with styrofoam and their façades painted with pastel colors in 2000's and 2010's. You can't please everyone, I guess... Although some of the designs created in response to "pasteloza" use bright colors sparingly, so there's that.

Scanning google images for the pasteloza, the nice looking building have strong colors and the horrible, depressing buildings basically a mixture of gray and pastel, a lot like greige, IMO.

https://www.google.com/search?q=poland+pasteloza&client=ubun...

Yes the new residential houses are hard-edged bunkers built from randomly connected boxes chosen for function, that fill every last square metre on the block. It is ugly, aggressive and unsettling to look at.

The rare house with a classical interpretation is a godsend to look at. Your eye can actually rest along a well designed set of horizontal lines and a trianglar roof. They are the last refuge of nice curves and shapes that make full use of all three dimensions.

The flat and boring cubes randomly mangled together with a single tacked-on feature to show off and some expensive materials that attempt to pass for grace, are the coming wave of babylonian australia that I cant see the virtue in. Painting that stuff purple won't save it.

I’m a big fan of modernist architecture but I’ve noticed once modern type buildings become the default they start to look like horrible boxes someone drew in 30 minutes on a computer.

And the interiors of these new places too!

White walls, white cabinetry, neutral coloured couches.

It's very much in fashion now, I wonder whether they will look as drab as brutalist buildings in the coming decades (well in the decades before brutalist became novel and exciting again).

Yeah but on the other hand, try to find a plain carpet that is truly grey. It's pretty difficult! Everything is some shade of brown or grey-brown.

The practical reason is that it is camouflage to hide dirt and stains.

This is what I like about some American cities like Los Angeles and New Orleans. Not unexpected to come across a purple house.

I got a red car to fight against the tyranny of black/white/grey/silver I see in parking lots.

It’s also fastah!

Seriously though, I have a light yellow car, because it’s always easy to find in the parking lots.

I do get the resale thing of course, but I’m keeping this bastard until it’ll be financially sound to swap to electronic, and by that time, it’ll sadly be worthless regardless of colour. Hell, the yellow may even increase it’a value by then because only future hipsters will want to buy it.

Electronic cars would give a whole new meaning to IC engines!

> Seriously though, I have a light yellow car, because it’s always easy to find in the parking lots.

A couple of years ago, someone took me to a shop and didn't want to come inside with me and waited in the car. When I came out, I had to peak into each car because I couldn't tell one car from another on the car park. 100% of them were metal grey! (and since they more or less have the same shape nowadays...)

That was when I remembered how, in the 80s, people would mock eastern countries for having almost only a single type of car. "Imagine how sad that would be, you wouldn't want to live under such a regime." That would be the typical ultimate anti-communist argument in bar conversations...

Well, fast-forward 15 years and into the West, in the first decade of the XXIst century, basically all cars sold here (in France) were metal grey. Big change for the second decade: all cars sold were this time either black or white, yay... Can't wait for the fad of the present decade, 50 shades of grey perhaps?

To increase the depression rate, public transport was also often made grey; the rebirth of tramways: metal grey + black mirror windows in many places, trains as well. In the city in which I lived, they even replaced the much acclaimed blue/yellow/red livery of a few buses with white or grey. (This depended on cities, some kept colourful paints.) And then you'd get into your work building (for the external appearance, if it is new enough, no more brick cover, probably grey walls + mirror grey windows), and inside the floor carpet was grey, the partition walls were grey, the false ceiling was grey, the windows were grey (aluminium), most furniture was grey. Inside and outside, people wearing grey and black. Thanks you, joyful economic liberalism, for saving me from the boredom of planned state socialism :-)

> (and since they more or less have the same shape nowadays...)

Aerodynamics and safety legislation about things like gaps between engine and bonnet (hood) are harsh mistresses.

Leaves a lot less room from creativity especially combined with platforms/drive-train re-use setting basic floorplan sizes.

Honestly doesn't bother me, a car is a box with four wheels to go from A to B but I'm not a car guy, I like motorcycles and there at least there is still a lot of room for aesthetics.

> Aerodynamics and safety legislation about things like gaps between engine and bonnet (hood) are harsh mistresses.

Yeah, but it is also a bit of an excuse for everyone just copying a model that sold well in the previous year. You can find "sport" cars which are still pretty different and yet perfectly obey the legislations.

> I'm not a car guy

I'm not either. I probably only step in a car once a year (I do everything by bike).

However, we are talking about aesthetics. External aesthetics. That is, what is exposed and seen by others: other car drivers, motorbike riders, bicycle riders, pedestrians, horse riders, everyone passing by. The huge majority of the time, cars are just parked with no one inside.

This exposition is continuous. The number of cars in my country has doubled since the 80s (despite basically every home having a car already then). It is aggravated by the fact that nowadays the paint jobs are much more resistant and many people don't bother parking the cars in a garage or any kind of shelter and just leave them in the street, in the public space. Even in the country, in my village, the streets & roads are now surrounded by a never ending line of parked cars.

Those wheeled devices are seen much more than what they are used.

I agree about the aesthetics, I had not thought about that before.

The first, and last, new car I had was a special red. Funny enough, it increased resale value. Hard to find used cars in anything else than various shades of white, grey or black. So black it is now.

Ah, and sand with a bright orange roof on my hobby/project car.

It’s also safer. A red car is much more visible to other motorists, compared to grey or black.

Speaking from experience: it’s also more visible to the police...

You know, I've heard this - more often in the light of 'cops will see you more' - but I've never seen proof of it. I suspect it is an outdated thing, since newer cars are more likely to have things like daytime headlights, side lights, and multiple lights on the back of the car. I'm going to guess lights more than make up for the small gain in visibility.

Red also fades badly.

Moreso that the paints used two decades ago that you see faded now were crap even back then.

I bought my white car (Camaro) in 2011, when true white was really rare. Every white car around was off-white.

The other day I parked in a line of 7 white vehicles in a row.

In my defense, I wanted orange, but the orange they offered was more of a red than an orange. They had two other types of red available, so that was ridiculous. Then I wanted a deep gray, but the Japanese tsunami wiped out the plant that made the pigment. I would have liked green, but their green option was also a terrible shade.

So, white. With black stripes.

I noticed a few years ago, that almost all cars you see are white, black or silver/grey, and haven’t been able to figure out when or why this happened. I guess there is some logic to this design language. Cars are after all big hunks of metal so being painted metallic rather than earthy or natural colors somehow makes more sense than trying to disguise their nature as mechanical objects. I wonder if in an increasingly technological, cyberpunk world people subconsciously want their technology items to look “techy” or serious.

> haven’t been able to figure out when or why this happened.

If you want an exciting color, you'll wrap. That's what has changed.

Good video from CNBC on the subject of boring car colors:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbFjnPxDXUQ

I don't know if this is applicable to other places, but I have a clue why it's the case where I live: it's difficult to buy a car right away. You need to "order" it.

For some models you need to wait for months. So you don't get to choose an exotic color, unless you agree to wait even more, like many months. I guess colors are chosen so people can suffer them. I like orange or yellow, but I wouldn't buy green. So they have white, gray and black.

Curious: where do you live?

Oh, I removed all info from the profile. Madrid.

I remember my father furious about having to wait too long. That was 40 years ago. I always choose short times over color. Maybe next time...

It's the same in France. For 20 years, buyers have almost always been given the choice between a grey (now black or white) car that is in stock and can be delivered right away, or a coloured one in many weeks.

Now buying a new car is something that is though about for a long time before performing the act (often along many months), is a commitment for a long time after the buying act, and in a majority of cases happens without any emergency while they already own a well functioning vehicle (or several), so why people cannot integrate this waiting period in their process? I don't think it is reasonable, but we can only observe as a fact that once they have made their final decision, they don't want to wait any more.

That's exactly what happened to me with my first car. I was considering a Mazda MX-3, learned in the dealer that it was disontinued, walked by the neighbour Toyota dealer and in half an hour I went from "too expensive" to "I want it already", even if it's white.

I've made a quick research and it seems that painting a car costs no more than two thousand euros, probably less. Next time, I will buy the white version (cheapest) and it will go to painting right away. I don't like the out of the box options anyway.

I think there were cars in the past, say the lime green 1970s Dodge Challenger, where the distinct color was part of the entire package and not simply a add-on.

I don't think that kind of package is as common - possibly because present days cars have substantial selling points.

The mazda I want to buy next comes only in six colors: two whites, two grays, red and blue. So more like four colors if you're not a designer or something.

They made a limited edition in orange. So in a sense, it is like you say. A special package, with the color as a signal.

There are a couple of pastel colors that I've seen in the streets that are gorgeous: something like peaches and a sky blue. Not out of the box, not sure how much is painting, of course it isn't something practical. You need to pay extra.

Special cars still come in plenty of special colors, such as 911 GT3 RS: https://blog.dupontregistry.com/porsche/2019-911-gt3-rs-colo...

My Audi is Nardo Grey, which you can’t get on other models, it’s unique to the class.

But the selling point of this car is its performance, I just happened to like the color :)

What's annoying is that even cars you have to wait for don't have interesting color choices. Pretty much the only way to get a Tesla is to order it online and wait for them to build it for you. So why don't they have any interesting colors to choose?

Because they're trying to avoid manufacturing complexity for the sake of growth and (until recently) survival.

I used to see some variant of british racing green all the time. It really made my acura look great at the time.

I miss the yellows, oranges and greens from the 70s

Agree.

Car colors went to shit after the 70's.

I blame Mercedes for making all cars silver. Silver became the color of luxury.

People play it too safe these days. They buy safe colored cars. Don't want to stand out, worried about resale...

I was told by a friend, "Hey, silver doesn't show dirt as well." Is that the motivation for choosing the color of a car today? Man, what happened to being expressive, what happened to art?

Then there was that whole decade of metallic...

[What? No, I'm not mad. I'm on a rant though. Car colors have always just... Can I get back to you?]

There were cars that I could only describe as Metallic Puke. Or Metallic Putty. Remember that decade? Christ!

I want Kermit the Frog green. I want Candy Apple Red. Not this muted metallic rust crap they call red. I want my muscle-car colors.

And, hey, what is it with the popularity of the "new" muscle cars but they flinch when it comes to colors? Or chrome bumpers for that matter.

Hear, hear.

There's one current color that catches my eye every time I see it. Mazda's "Soul Red Crystal" (had to look that up just now. I just know it as "that crazy highlight-y red")

It's insane to me how much it shimmers and varies depending on how the light hits it. I want more car companies to do this in more hues.

https://insidemazda.mazdausa.com/the-mazda-way/design/soul-r...

Peugeot has some nice special colours. They had some nice red a couple of years ago. They had a red/black paint scheme for their GTi models. And a special blue (or was it a goldish yellow?) for their 208 EV. Not that a lot of people buy them, so... Which is a shame if you ask me. Heck, even Jaguar got rid of British Racing Green from their standard catalogue last time I checked...

> Peugeot has some nice special colours. [...] Not that a lot of people buy them, so...

Oh, on their catalogues, car manufacturers do still present various colours in general. However, once you get to their seller, he always announces large delays for coloured ones, while "you can get the grey/black/white tomorrow." They twist the buyer's arm this way.

So true!

> I was told by a friend, "Hey, silver doesn't show dirt as well."

I've had a green-ish brown car. It was exactly the colour of dried mud. I just had to remember not to lean on it :)

But yeah. Go to Toyota. Look for a colour. You won't find any. Even what's labeled as a colour is so washed out it may as well be gray.

The article title doesn't really support the graph content, but what's evident is White eating Silver & Black portions.

Wonder if it's tied to global warming in any way?

I know personally I'd never buy a black car. It would get extremely hot, and it looks awful during spring due to a thick layer of pollen.

Speaking of car paint, I have a mid-80's VW Westfalia camper in need of a fresh, bomb look.

Honestly, what paint job would you go with in the US southwest?

1. Two-tone red and white with matching interior

2. One of those radioactive-fluorescent 80's pastel colors like shouting in all caps: school bus green, hot pink, magenta, baby-blue-cyan, bright red

3. Boring smoke metallic fleck silver like a Mercedes Sprinter conversion with a vibrant custom plaid interior

4. Something else even more ridiculous

If it makes any difference, I'm a straight dude and it has to be appealing to 20-somethings.

My family has gone for white cars on the theory that it reflects sunlight and therefore heats up less.

I don’t feel like that’s a theory as much as it is just established science. Unless you mean “theory” in the sense that everything is technically a theory.

Well, whether it makes a difference in practice depends on questions like: What fraction of sunlight's energy is delivered in the visible spectrum that the white paint would reflect? (Are there any significant differences in absorption of infrared or UV that would counteract it?) How much total power does that integrate to over the area of the car? At what rate does the heated exterior of the car conduct heat into the interior? Etc.

I don't know these quantities myself. As I wrote the above message, it seemed possible that the effect could turn out to be very small and not worth bothering about; I vaguely remembered reading that it might be a few degrees. Well, if we google a bit:

"We took two nearly identical vehicles, one white and one black, and let them bake in the hot Georgia summer sun. When we measured the interior temperature after a few hours, ... The black car’s cabin measured a scorching 130 degrees Fahrenheit, while the white car’s interior registered only 113 degrees." https://www.autotrader.com/car-video/car-color-test-are-blac... Ok, that is substantial.

I'm disappointed they parked the cars at two drastically different angles relative to the sun, and they didn't specify if the interior was the same, or if the white car had a white interior and the black black...

> My family has gone for white cars on the theory that it reflects sunlight and therefore heats up less.

Maybe the outside heats up less, but wouldn’t white reflect more light into the cabin? (Your own or nearby vehicle’s)

Maybe our problem is that we don’t make black cars with white interiors.

It also increases the albedo of the planet. Perhaps it should be mandatory.

> I should note that the data is sourced from Poland, but if you’re hoping for the situation to be any better in the U.S., unfortunately it isn’t. Over 23 percent of cars last year in the US were white and another 23 percent were black, while purple languishes, unloved, as the least popular.

I'd be interested to see the US-based figures, and I wonder if the above stats include sales to car rental companies, which I'd guess skew in favor of boring colors.

EDIT: here's some US data from CarMax https://www.carmax.com/articles/car-color-popularity

Was it always more expensive for a non-silver/black/white colour?

Good question. I bought new for the first time recently and found it hard to believe how many people appear to be willing to pay £500+ just for a colour (and one they’ll barely see when using the car). Sure, I have preferences, but not ones I’m willing to put actual money on.

In the U.S. car buying is much more like an old world bazaar than a modern transaction. Dealers might knock this fee off to get you to sign.

Hmm, clever: back down by £500 on the sticker that has zero production cost.

It used to be that grey was often the metallic paint, more durable, and was more expensive than all others, and you'd only find it on 'business class' cars. Now they all have the same qualities.

You could probably make the same chart about suit colors. I am thinking about the flashy suit colors from the 90s which I don't really miss.

My economy prof told me Cadillac/Ford(back in the bigger days 70's ect)found that old people could not really perceive the depth of colors at their age and had major preference for white shades. Since old people have money it caused a major shift towards white/black scheme cars

You are pretty much stuck with exotic luxury cars, sports cars, and motorcycles, if you want a vehicle in a non standard color.

This issue with boring colors also is in housing, if you are going sell a house the boring colors work and even slight deviation can lead to having your rep ask you to repaint.

You can take it one more step, business attire.

I attribute this to the increasing attitude of treating a car as an appliance. It seems cars have less to did with an individual's identity than in past years, and tinkering is less common. Perhaps the reduction in tinkering is because some people with the tinkering inclination have moved t computers and software instead.

I guess, but I am the epitome of someone who doesn't give a crap about their car, and I would have chosen a fun color if one were available. The options I had were white, gray, and another gray.

I'm wondering if cars are boring colors for the same reason task #1 after buying a house is always to paint the walls a color that's slightly less awful than Sell-My-House Taupe. Data-driven decisionmaking favors the boring.

Thanks for the input.

> I attribute this to the increasing attitude of treating a car as an appliance.

Perhaps we should do the same test with smartphones. People use colored cases for their smartphone, but a lot of people also use a transparent case.

I could be wrong, but smartphones seem to be a status symbol or personal accessory, so I would expect colors there to spring form a different motivation than colors for cars.

But you can buy brightly coloured appliances. My toaster is bright blue. There was also bright red available.

Thats been the case since the 1950s. But who buys that? Look on your craigslist for apartments and I bet $1000 you wont find any stove or fridge that isn’t stainless steel or white.

I saw some orange fridges in stores for a while. But they seem to be gone now :(

Edit: No, the Gorenjes with the pretty colours are still there. But I live in eastern europe :)

It’s all about resale value. Muted colors are more universal and can match many personalities.

While we’re on the subject of boring color trends, I’d be curious to see a similar graph for US house paint colors. It seems to have become dominated by variations of gray

Even McDonald’s, a once vibrantly colored place has turned gray.

I wonder is this trend of more boring colors will hold true in the future. Seems like every new, hip electric car from traditional manufacturers (in Europe at least) has some neon green or other colorful accent (e.g. Opel Mokka-e).

Hypothesis 1: Inverse of variation is correlated with daily internet use and increasing group think. Hypothesis 2: Car lifecycle getting more efficient, hardware lasts longer. Same in iPhones?

Car designs too. Companies just want stuff that is easy to move at low risk... only the luxury companies take risks because nobody is going to buy a $200K car that looks like a turd.

Car designs are also increasingly limited by aerodynamics, manufacturability and regulations.

Have hope: The innovation that is quickly changing this, are wraps.

Full vehicle wraps are incredible. You can get damn near any color you want, get stripes or other designs if you please, all while protecting the real paint underneath for future resale value, like a miracle from God.

It makes sense then to buy some neutral color like black or white, and wrap up a vehicle later in a color you really want. You could even change colors later.

The only reason it’s not more common yet is the price, costing about $2k-$3k to wrap a whole vehicle, but the effects of competition and capitalism will eventually bring that down for the masses, until wrapping a vehicle costs little more than applying window tints.

Soon enough, exotic, bombastic, offensive colors will be common in our streets. There has never been a more exciting time for the automobile.

wraps have been around for a while, and they're still pretty expensive to put on. Tint is cheaper because you don't have to disassemble a car, and a flat surface is much cheaper to wrap than a car with curves and edges. I don't see the price going down unless you can somehow automate it, theres a lot of labor involved. Also, wraps need special care. You can't leave it in the sun too long, otherwise it will literally bake onto your car, making it look bad and removal tough. If you don't clean it once a week, you'll have nasty stains from bird poop and other dirt thats impossible to remove. Also, you need to remove and re-wrap every 5 years, even if you care for it well. It doesn't make sense for 99% of people who don't really care about the color of their car.

> The only reason it’s not more common yet is the price, costing about $2k-$3k to wrap a whole vehicle

Tesla charging thousands on the Model 3 for any color besides black, at least in the US and the UK, is a great opportunity here. I convinced my parents to eventually go this route once they've gotten bored with the "free" black. The alternative was paying $3-5k (?) for another color that didn't blow them away and probably wouldn't have been of astounding quality given that it's Tesla...

I think the best days were in the muscle car era.

Grabber Orange, Plum Crazy (purple), Panther Pink... those were some good days for car colors.

A social scientist has to ask the why has the car paint colors changed question? Is it the same coloring preference for houses?

It’s not just cars, but also bicycles. A lot of manufacturers are painting them black, white, or gray. Bleh.

Bicycles are much worse. At least cars are not covered in huge decals of the brand. The worse is expensive bikes, where instead of decals they have painted the damn logo and it cannot be removed unless you sand the whole frame. This is utterly stupid. I would buy an expensive bike if it wasn't for that.

Oh yeh no doubt. Bianca is probably the worst. They out their brand name on every single part of their bikes.

Tape.

At the top end its different. There are many top of line bikes that follow the vaporwave aesthetic now, including a trek worth several thousand.

I've seen a lot of interesting colors, colors that just don't get captured by that chart.

So - lets assume that every extra colour costs more. Except the basic colour coating (white). Next in low-price are simple colour coatings (just one coating, no complex colour errors possible (black, etc.)

Which basically, what turns this nice graph - into a spending capability graph.

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