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Comment by llm_nerd | Hacker News Reader

The four most common vehicle colours in the US are white, black, grey and silver. I believe this covers like 80%+ of vehicles. Canada is worse still (so much so that many makers basically just offer the shades of grey, sometimes with a special-order red or something for the rebels), and a few days ago I was on a walk and saw a light turn red and a dozen cars that pulled up to stop and every single one was white.

People have other colour choices, but they're constantly choosing the most spectacularly boring, neutral colours possible.

The colour thing is neat, but I'm not sure it's going to be a big deal. It might actually lead to the paradox of choice where people basically feel even worse about their options.

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It also just so happens grey scale is almost always cheaper. Car color historically correlates with prosperity in the US

https://magazine.northeast.aaa.com/daily/life/cars-trucks/au...

https://www.ppg.com/en-US/autocoatings/color/history-of-colo...

I really don't think that's a big factor in this, at least in modern times. Maybe it was once the case where colour was difficult or something.

I mean I see the inverse as true, and entry level vehicles seem to have the most colour diversity in their sales. It is cars like the Nissan Versa where you see real colour variations.

That strikes me as a forced correlation. Something along the lines of "some people are willing to pay more for British racing green, so let's charge $X for it".

Going by what I hear talking to friends and family, they often don't want to choose outside of those range of bland colors as they're worried about resale value. Its probably easier to find a buyer who is OK with a black car than someone who would want metallic purple and gold car or a bright pink car.

Wraps are typically pretty easy to remove. Far easier than removing a paint job.

I could have sworn there was actually some kind of study that proved this. Cars are sufficiently expensive and longer lived these days that resale value is actually something buyers at least think they need to take into account.

It's actually a little depressing if you're sitting in traffic, just watch the cars go by and see how few of them actually have a unique color. And most of the exceptions are something like an almost gray blue.

For my part I've found new car styling hideous with little difference between brands my entire adult life. Probably for nostalgic reasons I like the sharp geometric shapes of cars from the 1980s which largely disappeared with a focus aerodynamics for gas mileage. So I'm usually satisfied with whatever color is on the lot since I hate the look by default anyway.

If you’re that worried about resale value, I’d think that buying a 2-4 year old used car is a way better proposition.

> It might actually lead to the paradox of choice where people basically feel even worse about their options.

Very good point, that will be interesting to see

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