Monday, July 13, 2009

Why are car colors so boring today?

When you look at a car park today you will probably see 70-80% of all cars being painted in either black, grey, silver or some variant of these. How different it was in the past! I don't talk about the beginning of the industrially built car, the Ford T. As we all know you could order the Ford T in any color as long as it was black. No, I am talking about the 60ies to the 80ies. The first picture on the left shows the colors listed in the VW Scirocco brochure of the early 80ies. That's only twenty years ago. You can see yellow, three flavors of red, blue, turquoise, green and yes, there was white and silver too.
Twenty years later the color portfolio has become absolutely boring. Look at what the colors are in which you can order the new Volkswagen Scirocco. Three, maybe four real colors, all the rest are variants of grey and black. And most people will pick either silver or black anyway. Only the really brave ones will order the greenish color. Picking a color is very important of course, because the value of the used car will be heavily influenced by the color choice you made at the begin.
Two more remarks: Color preferences depend of course on the geography, Japanese car buyers have prefered white long before the North Europeans have started to rediscover this color. And there's also a interdepence between the shape and design of a car and the color. No surprise that most Aston Martins are showing some tone of silver, it just looks grey.

2 comments:

andiheer said...

I completely agree. Maybe it's because boring colors are the best fit for the boring design of today's cars?
That's why I love my blue Opel :)

Anonymous said...

And why I can't let go of my aquamarine 1994 Saturn. (http://www.pinkair.com/2008/08/you-dont-win-si.html)