New car buyers driven to white or grey, with bright colours rarer than ever, data shows
New car buyers driven to white or grey, with bright colours rarer than ever, data shows
An aerial photograph of new cars at Fremantle Port tells the story of modern car colours — a sea of white, dotted with some grey/silver and black, with only occasional splashes of red or blue.
One reason why I was aiming for a white car for my most recent purchase didn’t even get a mention; heat.
My family has always primarily owned coloured cars, dark blue and maroon, but I went from owning a black car to a white one and the cabin temp difference on a 30+°C day was staggering with the white car being much more tolerable.
I think that they mean “Silver” rather than grey, but the dealers may be registering them as grey.
My Tan Jimny is in VicRoads as “White” because someone interpreted “Ivory Chiffon” as being ivory, or white.
As owner of dark green car I can say, do not buy this color, it is bloody stealth car. No one see you on the road. Have to drive with light on all the time. I guess only grey is worse that it.
Never buy a grey car. We had one during our childhood, it got hit four times by idiot drivers not watching the road. Most were distracted by phones, food, etc. Silver blends into the road fairly well.
It's a common colour here in the UK too which is terrible because it's basically invisible in the frequent rain we get here. People will drive down the motorway in heavy spray and not put their lights on just because it's daylight and don't realise that they are really hard to spot.
I remember seeing studies from years ago that statistically yellow and red cars had less accidents.
They put it down to the fact that humans see red and yellow as 'danger'. Like if you see red or yellow on snakes or spiders or wasps etc, you shouldn't mess with it
Nowadays, Spotto to 10 could take weeks lol
I use to have a yellow car. I think the less accidents is because drivers of yellow cars have to be more vigilant. The number of people who would just pull out in front of me when driving the yellow car as opposed to the other car I had, which was white, was ridiculous.
A van owner once mentioned that no matter how fast they drove, people acted like it was moving slowly. It looks slow.
I'll bet red and yellow cars get a safety boost the same way: humans are morons and assume they're hauling ass.
Boomers and GenXers used to love red cars because anyone driving a pov-pack Hyundai Excel in red thought they were driving a Ferrari.
There used to be a meme (idea) that red cars were cop-magnets because people in red cars would drive like dickheads.
All those Boomers grew old and started buying Maroon cars because they were technically red, but wouldn’t be cop-magnets. These colours are colloquially called “Old-Man Burgundy” or “Haemorrhoid Brown”.
In the UK, the fronts of most/all trains are painted yellow for this reason. Given that cars are more abundant and less predictable than trains, perhaps making them (or just the bumpers/trim) yellow/orange would have safety benefits.
That's interesting. I'm also remembering an I don't know how old study that indicated that red cars were ticketed for speeding the most amongst all colors.
Don't buy blue in the aussie sun, it cracks and weathers faster than even black.
Now why we have so many dark coloured colourbond roofs for the crazy heat is beyond me.
When we built our house, we specifically ordered SurfMist Blue (which is a very white colour with a hint of powder blue). The stupid fucking builder installed WoodLand Grey. They had to tear the whole roof off our two storey and re-clad it in the correct colour.
The rents needed a new roof lately, I showed them the stats for surfmist compared to dark colourbond (which they wanted initially)
But they settled on zinc-alum which is not quite as good as surf mist for the heat, but much cheaper and still good. They're in North West Victoria, hits 45 all the time in summer and weeks of 35+ easy.
Recent ex-Floridian asking - do you also have chrome shit all over the back ends? Like designers only live in dreary overcast places?
Not that I can think of...
Whichever colour is cheaper, that's the one I'll get...
That's pretty much it. Charge extra for anything over white, grey or black and have the cops / govt snag most black models and no shit this happens
in the us car companies have some thing that tells them the hot color for this year is X then folks like I buy the tons of them sitting around the lot from two years previous.
I’m just a casual observer, but do white cats get visible scratches more easily? And are they easier fix up?
Some car models look fantastic in white, sort of going for that mid-2000s futurism feel.
do white cats get visible scratches more easily? And are they easier fix up?
If the scratch breaks the skin of the cat, the blood is more visible on a white cat.
But idk what the hell this has to do with the article.
🙈
Shallow scratches tend to be more visible on darker cars, deeper scratches are more visible on white cars
I like white cars because they reflect more heat away from the car in hot, sunny days.
It depends if it is Flat, Metallic or Pearl.
Flat White is easier to touch up and maintain. Metallic hides scratches but Pearl is impossible to colour match and any defects are very visible.
I’d argue new car designs are not very inspiring, so naturally people are choosing the colours that compliment the feeling they get from the car. No sense putting lipstick on a pig. Also the resale argument is a factor that wasn’t apparent in the past. You’d buy a car for keeps and it would be your car, these days hanging onto a car more than a few years is a huge liability when it comes to maintenance costs.
Someone is suckered by the car industry.
Warranties are long and your insane if you think spending $40k or more on another car every few years is better than servicing a warranted car for 7 years...
Used car market is much more favourable than it used to be for sellers so it’s a no brainer for people that like the latest of everything and always want new tech. Cars aren’t machines any more and have electronics, batteries and subscriptions, it’s shit and I don’t buy into it but you can see how little people will care about personality of the vehicle vs the status it provides as-is
I remember a study that linked car colors with people's perception of the economy or something. When people were optimistic, they bought brighter colors.
But all I want is fun brought back to cars. Give me neon, pastels, or bright colors. I'm sick of the monotony on the road of white, gray, and black. Even the reds and blues are darker and deeper. Give me a nice surf green or candy apple red.