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Comment by nluken | Hacker News Reader

Don't mind the "wet putty" look specifically as much as I hate the related lack of color available on cars these days. What happened that made everyone want bland, boring colors on everything? Liven up, people!

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Because people realized that glaring saturated colors everywhere is garish overkill, and that you don't need to scream personality with every square inch of the objects you own.

We've (thankfully) moved to a world that is primarily more neutral tones, that allow you to selectively choose color accents that are more easily and economically swapped out depending on your mood.

When you're next to a car or getting out of it, it's much nicer for the color accents to be coming from your clothes than from the giant car. That way they highlight you, not a big piece of machinery.

I mean, I'm not exactly advocating for everything to be neon yellow and pink everywhere all the time. I'd just like something to break up the colorless-with-accent (usually something desaturated as well!) monotony that's everywhere, lest the whole world end up looking like Mirror's Edge. It's a balance.

Where the pendulum lies might just be a matter of fashion.

Most cars aren't that interesting so making them invisible with different shades of gray makes sense. Beautiful looking cars deserve nice colors though. I would never buy a gray Porsche.

You speak too confidently about what people realize or want but your advice on how to properly vogue is spot on. You can't take that damn thing to the dance floor, can you? But I don't think it correct to ignore the idea of aesthetic preferences that are not about status or visibility, but rather invigorating and seductive 'things' ;-), the way a properly loved piece of machinery to whom we trust our fragile lives to must and should behave. Sexy. Now that is not about glitz or attention whoring, is it?

Also, I mean, you are right in that over doing anything is likely an error, but Nature is our teacher (so say the same "people") and Nature is rather keen on bright colors. I guess it really comes down on who is doing the splashing around and nothing definitive about saturated colors in themselves.

Constructing a beige world around you so that everyone else notices your colourful sweater seems like a dull way to live.

It's a feedback loop problem. Most cars that dealers order are not for a specific customer, so they choose bland colors that most people can live with, which makes those cars easier to sell. Then the automaker looks at orders and sees that most orders are for white/gray/black (in that order for NAFTA). The OEM stops offering the unpopular colors because they're data driven. Then customers who don't mind waiting for a car to be ordered want a fun color, and the choices are very limited.

And some automakers actively discourage factory orders.

The other problem is that while both partners in a couple may like bright colors, they may like different bright colors, so something neutral becomes a reasonable tradeoff.

There is a similar thing happening with houses. I have watched This Old House for years and they will often mention that when the house was built 100 years ago the exterior was painted with bright colors. My grandmother's house was stucco with molds used to make it look like it was stone blocks and each block was painted a different color. Now it seems most houses are painted boring "neutral" colors (there are exceptions, of course).

I wrote about my experiences driving a very non-neutral color. Life is too short to be that boring.

https://opposite-lock.com/topic/52688/tuscadero

> lack of color available on cars

What do you mean?

You can choose from any of these five vibrant shades of grayscale, seven if you include almost-black and white-but-not-quite, plus dull-dusty-yellow and very-dark-blue!

https://imgur.com/a/yTCEleK

PS: yes, that last one is blue.

PPS: I genuinely wrote 100% of that comment out of nowhere absolutely tongue in cheek, except with "dull-red" instead of yellow, but still figured out I'd check out VW's website[0] just for kicks to see if my joke had any sort of ground, and was so not disappointed... I even got the counts right.

PPPS: Come on, Oryx White Premium Mother-of-Pearl ?!

[0]: https://www.volkswagen.co.uk/en/new/golf.html

Novel and unusual colors are more expensive to repair (fewer parts with matching colors) and thus bump up insurance premiums. Fewer color lines are cheaper for both the manufacturer and customer.

If it was important enough to a large enough group of people, you'd think manufacturers and dealerships would jump at the chance to offer another high margin markup line item. I personally wouldn't mind a less neutral color, but I'm not interested enough to pay more for it myself.

Very few parts come pre-painted to the body shop. If you find yourself in need of one, you'll find that they'll need to paint the panel they're replacing and do blending on the adjacent panels. As good as they are at matching color, they aren't perfect.

Also, UV fades the paint. Even if you could get pre-painted panels, they wouldn't match a car that's spent much time in the sun.

I had a rattle can tinted to match the factory color on my hood. It wasn't even close on the 12 year old car. On the outside of the hood. The inside of the hood would've been pretty damn close.

It depends on if you're getting a new or a used part, no? Most times for cars over a few years old the shop can get a used panel off of a scrap car for much less than buying a new part, and in that case it might already match... Unless they are stripping and re-painting those, I have no idea.

I know rationally why a manufacturer would want to limit their color palette. I just wonder why people were more willing to pay for color in, say, the 80s than they are now. Look at the paint colors available for an early 80's Corolla [1] compared to the same car today [2]. Perhaps I'm overanalyzing but I think it's a symptom of an increasing tendency to emphasize things like insurance premiums and resale value over any kind of humanity or personality.

We see the same thing in modern interior design. Just like many of today's cars it's black, white, and grey. If you're lucky, maybe a neutral color or two. Inoffensive, but soulless.

[1]: http://importarchive.com/toyota/corolla/1980-1983/paint

[2]: http://importarchive.com/toyota/corolla/2014-2018/paint

As far as interior design goes, I think it's pretty common for realtors to recommend repainting colored walls to a neutral pallet to maintain a broad appeal / let potential buyers more easily imagine their own style in the home. There is a "chic" trend taking this to an extreme, which might just be a reaction to that, I'm not really sure.

However, it does help explain why cars come in fewer colors today- dealerships hate having cars sit unsold on their lot, and don't want colors that appeal to a tiny percentage of potential buyers. If manufacturers struggle to push colors onto dealers, then they simply stop making those colors.

Speaking of soul... if I was given a choice between the "4C8" variety of orange and cheaper insurance premiums, I'd pick cheaper insurance premiums in a heartbeat. Maybe I'm a souless impersonal robot (I've been accused of being a robot before, not so much the rest), but I really don't feel a need to express myself with the color of my car. The extra color options are very much in the "nice to have" category.

> I personally wouldn't mind a less neutral color, but I'm not interested enough to pay more for it myself.

And thats the thing, those that are interested enough can still go and get their car repainted, without making it more expensive for the rest of us that aren't as concerned with having their cars be a unique color.

Taking a brand new car to a paint shop right of the lot doesn’t seem mighty efficient.

The premium manufacturers usually offer colors other than neutrals at a premium, and what the OP is pointing at is that economy brands don’t offer that option at all. Why can’t we have both cheap neutrals and color options?

> Why can’t we have both cheap neutrals and color options?

No one wants to bear the extra costs for color lovers. Dealers don't want to be stuck with the banana-yellow cars for months on end, and manufactures don't want to switch their painting booth paints for colors that are <1% sales when they can crank out 5 more white cars in the time it takes to switch colors.

Wraps are cheaper alternative to repainting, so those who love bright colors can get an electric blue wrap right off the parking lot.

It might be less efficient for the few consumers who do want custom colors, but it is by far more efficient for the rest of consumers and the company to limit their color choices. Their manufacturing processes aren't set up to do very small runs of specific colors, and for those premium brands that do offer custom colors, the further away from the standard offering you go, the more you pay. Custom colors on some of the premium brands can easily run into the thousands of dollars, largely because they're doing effectively what I suggested -- doing a custom paint job towards the end or after assembly.

Not to mention that even supporting the pipeline of being able to order custom colors, with all the logistics that entails after manufacture, might not be something the manufacturers want to support.

> you'd think manufacturers and dealerships would jump at the chance to offer another high margin markup line item.

for whatever reason, paint and detailing work tends not to be the strong suit of a car dealership. a lot of enthusiasts will even refuse a complimentary wash when they get their car serviced.

the higher end manufacturers do offer additional paint options. but it's really expensive (Porsche charges >$20k for true paint to sample) and it takes even longer to get your car delivered. it's hard to justify at any price, but especially for the vast majority of cars that cost under $100k.

I loved the 70's for car colors. Actually, a lot of consumer products were more colorful then. To me that colorful era reflected an optimism, an enjoyment and an embrace of life.

For some reason over the decades that followed it seems we all started preparing for a funeral of some kind.

The planet's

Resale market is higher for 'neutral' colours.

Is it really though? Logic would dictate that while the market for a non-neutral color might be smaller, supply would also be smaller which should cancel the demand side out.

Anecdotally, and this might be a poor example because it's an enthusiast car and not something that most people are going to be encountering, I was looking at used Porsche Boxsters earlier this year, and the more interesting colors actually commanded a premium over silver or black cars because they're much harder to find. I do wonder how that translates to something more practical, but I have a hard time believing that it would negatively impact resale value to a huge extent.

> interesting colors actually commanded a premium over silver or black cars

Because someone paid more for that in the first place.

Every dealer is going to have a white, black, and silver/grey at 'stock' cost. After that the price goes up.

People by a car in a color because they like that color and are willing to pay more for it. People buy a car in a neutral because they want a car and don't care about the color.

You make a really good point, and while the color-price discrepancy remained true in my story for the 'stock' cost yellow and red vs. neutrals, my sample size is 1 model of car so it's hard to say how true that stays across the board.

> Is it really though? Logic would dictate that while the market for a non-neutral color might be smaller, supply would also be smaller which should cancel the demand side out.

Logic would dictate that the smaller markets will be less liquid and have wider spreads.

Another good point. Might be fine for a private seller but I could see how it would be difficult for dealers.

Yes. I worked in asset backed finance on decision systems, and that was a rule. Neutral, meaning black, grey, silver white, while not always the first choice for second hand buyers is much less of a dealbreaker than a 'wrong' color.

Commonly repeated non-sense. You can check on Autotrader yourself. There is no effect AT ALL between colors and neutral colors might actually sell for less then flashy colored cars overall.

you can always have your car painted or wrapped. No reason the car has to come from the factory in a more interesting style

https://www.google.com/search?q=amazing+car+wraps&source=lnm...

Also, I suspect it won't be long before you can get an LCD wrap or an e-ink wrap. Have already seen backpacks with animated displays.

https://pix.style/

https://cdn.shopify.com/videos/c/vp/d80e3679bac8476b9ee137ce...

Re-painting a car is expensive. It would be nice to have some better color options from the factory.

Wraps can be a cheaper option, but they also have a very different look than automotive paint.

> Wraps can be a cheaper option, but they also have a very different look than automotive paint.

The only people that notice the different look are those who "know", wraps serve the purpose for 95% of people at a fraction of the cost.

People vote with their dollars and right now this look shows that they seem to have more dollars.

nevertheless, one can lament the situation: With all the mass production and economies of scale, any desire off the beaten path becomes either extremely expensive or unobtainable.

Hey, it's more profitable to sell junk that doesn't last very long, to have a closed platform, to make a smart tv that tracks you.

When all the candidates are variations of grey it's not really voting.

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