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Maybe it's just a local geographic thing to me. But just eyeballing the cars on the roads and freeways here (Central CA), it seems like 80% of all cars are painted black, white, or some intermediate color (gray, silver).
The remaining other colors...your reds, burgundys, blues, yellows, make up just the remaining 20%. The best part of the color spectrum is used on the smallest percentage of vehicles.
Why?
Is this an effect of cars in general having gotten so boring and utilitarian? Twenty and thirty years ago, cars were sold on their aesthetics, performance, and color.
Today it's for their reliability, mileage, and whatever electronic gadegtry is installed. So maybe people just don't care about looks the way they used to.
In the olden days more people ordered a vehicle. Dealerships were downtown and had little in inventory.
One could order a green, blue, red, etc vehicle.
In the olden days Chevrolet for example had 43 different color combinations for interior and exterior. Today one is lucky to find 2.
Today with megadealers the least common denominator of colors. Most today want to drive the new car home today. So whatever is on lot - that's the choice. Some do wait for a dealer transfer for a particular color. But few actually will order a vehicle from the factory. Some don't even know that a new car can be ordered from the factory with the color and options that they want/need.
I read somewhere that companies like Apple with their monochrome coloured products have had an influence on the colours of cars that people go for.
No idea if that does have anything to do with it.
Red seems to be making a come back.
For me a good guage of what is 'on trend' is to see what coloured cars the manufacturers show in their ads, or release to car journalists, and I have seen a number of red cars feature over here in Europe.
I'm not sure people don't care about how a car looks. I think Unit731 is right: close to 100% of new cars are sold right off the lot, rather than ordered. Gray, charcoal, and silver may be boring, but there are very few people who find them downright offensive, offensive enough to scrap a deal on a car that otherwise meets their needs.
Consequently, dealers don't want cars on the lot that won't sell. Who knows, maybe the next person on the lot will be that one person who wants their Camry or Taurus in puce, fuchsia, or chartreuse*, but do you want to be the guy who's stuck with it at the end of the model year?
*I know those are all names of colors, but that's as far as my supply of information goes.
It's always been like that. White has been the most popular "color" for a long time. Matter of fact, most cars look real good in white.
Yep, I just finished building a car, and could have painted it any color. I chose Wimbledon White, looks clean, and it holds up better in the hot Florida sun.......cooler inside too.
Last year we bought a new Honda CRV. I bought a blue one. I think it might have been the only blue one they had out of about 30 that were on their lot.
For the most part, Honda doesn't allow you to special order anything. You get the choice of 4 or 5 trim levels and you get whatever options go with that particular trim level. After you pick the trim level the only choices they give you is the color and weather you want 2 or all wheel drive.
For example, on the CRV that I got, the base model has a 2.4L 4 cylinder engine, no sunroof, 17" wheels and a normal keyed ignition. All other trim levels force you to take a 1.5L turbo, a sunroof, 18" wheels and push button start, then they start adding more options from there for each jump in trim level.
Say you'd like a higher trim level but you don't want the sunroof. Too bad. Or perhaps you'd rather have the larger non-turbo engine paired up with their adaptive cruise control and leather seats. Too bad, you can't. It's a little frustrating, but it's probably the direction all makes are going.
"Why?"
if we are only considering cars (not trucks/suvs/vans/etc.).....
fleets/governments/rentals are mostly white and the percentage vs. all cars
on the road is increasing since SUV's have taken most of the private "car" sales.
our local sheriff's department just switched from brown to white vehicles.
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