Cars are less colorful than they were 20 years ago: study
thedrive.com
thedrive.com
Also this: https://www.hagerty.co.uk/articles/automotive-history/vw-pol...
I think the other reason is probably that car manufacturers charge crazy amounts for non-default colours, so presumably everyone is buying the stock colours and those have to be fairly generic.
I live in a rather hot place where most cars are white, once again because everyone gets a white car because of the sun.
(Site blocks EU citizens)
Corporate buyers (fleet owners, hire car companies, and so on) don't want to deal with drivers complaining about a colour they don't like - in the UK giving certain colour cars to employees who support certain football teams is going to just cause pushback. Neutrals just make life a lot easier.
Auto makers sell mostly black and white vehicles, and because of that, they think that's what people want.
The reason, though, is that fleet buyers (especially governments at all levels) only buy black or white vehicles, because they're easy to brand.
Ten people buying red cars with green stripes aren't going to register when the city Public Works department buys 1,000 plain white ones.
Then the auto makers stop making red cars with green stripes, and the regular people end up buying black and white because that's what's available.
However their neighbours at Honda only seem to have desaturated colours that may as well be grey...
Personally I'm hoping it's sooner then later because I want to see more color in design.
Puritan-descended cultures are today still one of the most dominant cultural forces in America. And with the persistent preference for sadd, it seems less like a trend and more like a deeply-embedded cultural preference.
If those colors were actually available in new vehicles, then there would be no article about the variety decline.
http://www.benspaintsupply.com/2011/05/japan-tragedy-affects...
That color was grey, though, so…
What I really would have liked was an orange, but they only had an orange that was more red than orange - along with two other red options. I also would have gone for a nice deep green, but they only had a bright lime green that’s very similar to my two year old’s Power Wheels.
For me the reason I ended up with a neutral color (white) is because I didn’t like the color options given to me. The first manufacturer that figures out a process to let people choose from hundreds of colors will make bank.
When I think about the cars with lively colors that were available in the 2000s I think about a lot of cars designed to be “first cars” for youth buyers. Brands like Scion and makes like the Neon. But nobody is going to make cars like that when their buyer has much more toned down sensibilities.
I also buy the argument that so many cars sold on leases will influence the options available. No dealer wants to lease out an odd package of options like a pink manual transmission CRV with the top trim package and have to turn around and try to sell that after the car is returned.
Honestly I felt that gunmetal grey would also age/date a car, but it does have staying power.
Yes, it complicates Tesla's logistics, but there are people that want purple cars and that's a market opportunity for Tesla and other BTO manufacturers.
I really want to see something like that come to the US, as it means you could have the bland color underneath to preserve the resale value argument, while having the color you want.
There are many people who will not buy a colorful car. There are very few people who won't buy a car if the color is too plain. Therefore people value the colorful cars less because there's a smaller customer base and the market shifts to producing vehicles in plain, minimally offensive colors.
Anyway, Jeep has been great about offering bright colors, and I love my fuchsia Jeep, and my yellow Jeep. Life is too short to live greyscale.
And other people tend to love the pink Jeep. I wrote about some of the reactions I’ve received: https://opposite-lock.com/topic/52688/tuscadero
A far greater effect are Home Owners Associations, city ordinances etc.
https://www.purewow.com/home/beigification-beige-color-trend
https://www.businessinsider.com/millennial-gray-home-interio...
And I do think it connects to cars. There's been a recent trend (maybe now a year or so passe, but still relatively strong) for Nardo Grey.
https://www.blackbirdspyplane.com/p/why-do-new-cars-look-lik...
There's a lot of gray.
Here are a few resources/articles that get into that discussion:
https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/gen-z-interior-des...
Check out how colorful IKEA's resugent retro designs are:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRSJqGficVw
Postmodern design (trending in 2022 and beyond):
It is because if you buy one item in huge quantities it is cheaper. Then the car manufacturers negociate a small number of colors.
So, maybe it's not surprising that cars are becoming the same color as appliances.
There's also a noticeable pro-transit, meh-cars sentiment among Millennials/younger people that is in stark contrast to previous generations who seemed to place a lot of personal and cultural significance on their car. But between rideshares and more urban living, Millennials are probably the first generation to have less need of a personal car since there's been cars.
Come to think of it, I can't think of anyone I know who owns a car that was not chosen in the same way we'd choose an appliance. There's no sports cars, nothing luxury beyond the average luxury sedan, no pickup trucks or jeeps or anything other than practical 4 door vehicles of various sizes with lots of safety features and good gas mileage (if not electric).
I did have a small sporty vehicle as well but that didn't make sense once I didn't have a commute any longer.
But I don't live in a city and rarely travel to one in which case my priorities might be different--though even the people I know who do live in the city pretty much all own vehicles for weekend activities.
I read this a lot but I don't find the data that supports it. There appears to be a very loud group of millennials online who won't shut up about how awful cars are, but I can't find data supporting this among the age cohort.
(Also, generation theory is great for napkin math but so misleading that it shouldn't be used for serious work. In doing a quick search to see if maybe I had just missed obvious data, I found studies using different year brackets for "Millennials", which makes this all apples and oranges.)
> Come to think of it, I can't think of anyone I know who owns a car that was not chosen in the same way we'd choose an appliance. There's no sports cars, nothing luxury beyond the average luxury sedan, no pickup trucks or jeeps or anything other than practical 4 door vehicles of various sizes with lots of safety features and good gas mileage (if not electric).
I spent most of my adult life in Georgia, in Atlanta specifically and also in the ginormous metro. I've known plenty of folks who drove pickups and jeeps, sports cars and muscle cars. And tons of SUVs. More than luxury sedans, folks would buy luxury SUVs. There were regular sedans, but those tended to be older and/or the second car. I can't think of anyone who went out and bought a new Camry.
... can this be extended to homes? And I don't mean only paint colours, but also size, layout etc.