Car Colours Are Getting Pretty Drab

Thursday, 11. November 2010

: Image via Wikipedia

What has happened to the colour of our cars? Wherever you went a few years ago you would see a rainbow of colours driving up and down our roads but drive along a motorway these days you will drive along side a series of pretty monotone coloured cars. Three quarters of all cars registered this year are black, white, silver or grey. In 2000 the third and fourth most popular colours were blue and green. They have now dropped heavily in popularity according to leading automotive paint supplier, PPG. Their statistics show that green has dropped from a level of 15% of all new cars to virtually zero. In fact there is so little demand that some manufacturers have dropped the colour completely. Blue isn’t far behind but still has a bit of a following having dropped from 25% to 9% this year. On the other hand black is now on a quarter of all new cars, leaving it second behind silver/grey which accounts for a third of all sales, up from 7% in 2000. The demise of green has been customer driven according to VW who said they dropped the colour due to low demand. Ford still has green available but charges more for green than any other metallic colour at £700 compared to £470. I personally think that car colours are boring now but would I have a bright orange or yellow car? Nope! What do you think, would you like to see pinks, lime greens and baby blues re-enter the manufacturers’ palettes? By Graham Hill