Would you like something to take your mind off of politics? I've got just the thing.
You've probably noticed that lots and lots of cars are white today. But how many? And has it really increased lately? Here's my best guess at an answer for North America:
The '70s were an era of colorful cars, but white started to take over toward the end of the decade. Green and silver had brief flings in the '90s and noughts, and finally in 2010 white surged into the lead permanently.
Taken as a whole, color has gone the way of the dinosaur in the car world. Neutral tones—white, black, gray, and silver—now account for 78% of all sales in North America. Blue is the only actual color that breaks single digits at 11% of sales.
Around the world, white, black, and gray/silver hold the top three spots in every single region. White is the most popular color in every region except Europe, where gray holds the #1 spot.
I expect that migrations to the sun belt and the searing sun in a globally warmed earth have something to do with the popularity of white cars.
Not sure where I heard it, but a suggestion was made that interior color is just as important as exterior when it comes to vehicle heating.
Certainly dark interiors are less comfortable for the occupants, but black car interiors are totally dominant right now. I think white is second only to yellow in terms of being visible in different lighting/weather conditions, which might make it marginally safer from collisions.
Personally, I prefer white cars with beige (light) interiors. They’re getting harder to find, though, to the point that if I could buy any car I wanted I’d still have to compromise on something, even if it’s just committing to buying premium gas (which I hate).
Our current car is a silver Tesla Model 3. We bought it used. Price, range, and model were our considerations, not color. The first car that passed our filter was silver, so we bought it.
The interior is black, which makes for a very painful seat in the summer with full sun. We carry a tattered white beach towel which we stretch over the seats when we get out.
Somehow, I very much doubt that the motivation of 78% of new car buyers is global warming….
Of course not. The motivation of a great many buyers of white cars and trucks is *personal* warming.
It’s about resale value - bright colours have less appeal and therefore have less buyers to drive up price. I suspect this is mostly driven by fleet purchasers rather than individuals but it’s self reinforcing given fleets buy so much cars there is less of a market for colour cars and in turn less motivation to offer them and therefor less demand. Also based on my recent car purchase there is no mark up on white and a mark up on every other colour.
Neutral tones—white, black, gray, and silver—now account for 78% of all sales in North America.
I've got no problem with gray and silver cars. White is pretty (as is black), but just so damned hard to keep clean.
On a recent visit I concluded that having a black vehicle in TX was a Very Important Political Statement. Y'all enjoy, down there. 108 degrees is just a walk in the park, amirite?
It’s not just the heat, it’s the humidity. Lived in Dallas 12 years and the humidity produced fleas on our pets big enough to start a flea rodeo. Haven’t seen one yet in Denver, although the flood of newcomers have brought in several other bugs that were not here when I arrived. (I could have been the guy bringing in the fleas.)
In Greg Abott's Texas, it's not the heat, it's the stupidity.
I’ve always wanted a copper-color car. Red cars should pretty much have graffiti on the sides that reads “steal me.”
My car is red, I bought it new in 2008, and it hasn't been stolen. Of course, the clutch may have something to do with it too.
Me too: red car, stick shift, never stolen for the whole ten years I've owned it. My first car was red, too. Also a stick shift and never stolen during the 15 years I owned it.
Come to think of it, all the cars my wife and I have owned have been stick shifts and none were stolen. Hmm.
I've had a lot of red cars, including my current one, both stick and automatic (the last car had paddle shifters, which were like those pretend steering wheels on Mom's shopping cart). None has ever been stolen.
I do know that a stick shift will deter theft: my nephew was held up at gunpoint for his classic Firebird, but the thief couldn't take it because he couldn't drive a stick.
I've almost always had red cars. I have several (now retired) police officers in the family, and they said that the idea that red cars get stolen more is completely false. Same for the idea that red cars are targeted for speeding tickets.
I couldn’t even sell my old manual-shift Honda Civic to an auto-shop employee, because they couldn’t or wouldn’t drive a stick. I miss that car.
Very few people order a car from a dealer, they buy one already in the country or already built for domestic made cars. The dealers only order the most inoffensive colors to avoid losing a sale or moving a unit. Plus those cars made with actual color can be sold at a premium to buyers who are willing to wait a week or two for that car to be shipped in from another dealer.
I live across the street from a college sorority, and can see its entire parking lot from my kitchen window. For the past five years, every vehicle that has parked there regularly, with at most one exception per year, has been a gray-scale SUV (i.e., white, silver, gray, or black.) One year one resident had a red sedan, which really ruined the tonal balance. 🙂
That would be Gray, Polar Gray, Arctic Gray and Midnight Gray.
Infragray.
I miss British Racing Green.
+1
And McQueen's Mustang.
my favorite.
Can we really call it the most popular color when most of the time it is the only (or one of two) colors that you can get at no additional cost? For all other colors there is an added cost to the car, so people might be prioritizing their pocket even if they would otherwise prefer a different one.
Was going to say the same thing, but first I had to go check on a few vehicles to see how prevalent the practice was, and sure enough, white is the least likely color to have an upcharge, followed by grey and black.
Yeah, this.
My last two cars I had very little choice in color. This was the one with the transmission I wanted.
I've owned a lot of cars, and none of them were white*, until the latest one. I really wasn't enthralled with white, but the dealer had the car that I wanted, and it was white, and my sister told me that white cars don't show dirt.
Since my car gets washed when it rains, that had a lot of appeal, and she was right.
I used to look at cars as the aspirational me, but now I look at them as toasters, and I think that white appliances are fine.
*My first car was turquoise, then the next one was metallic blue, followed by pale green, then dark green, then dark blue, then orange, then black, then yellow, then blue again, then blue, then midnight black, and finally white.
Leasing
I'm not surprised at all. For several years The Official Colors of Everything You Can Buy have been white, beige, four million shades of gray, stone, wheat, champagne, taupe, almond, and black. Monochrome leaning on browns & grays. Sorry if I missed anyone. Interior/exterior/inboard/outboard/land-based/marine... So embarassed to own an older wine-colored truck!
No, wait, I'm not. I can spot the MF in a parking lot!
I miss the days of the 60s and 70s when cars came in bright colors with whimsical names like old yeller, slime green, or statutory grape.
Years ago I took a defensive driver course to lower my car insurance premiums and they stated during the course that car accidents are directly related with car color. The darker the car, the higher accident rate. I never checked to verify, but seems logical. As I've gotten older and seen the number of people who either forgot or don't ever turn on their headlights at night stands to reason a darker car will be harder to spot.
It's a visibility thing, too. Here in the country, it can be much harder to see a gray or dark car on the road, especially in shade or rain. Given a choice between white & gray & flat blue (yes, choices are def limited), we picked white. Which means I'm constantly walking to the wrong car in a parking lot.
I could use a laugh this morning...what a creative group....and fun. Thank you all. Let me return the favor.
https://balloon-juice.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/JD-Vance.jpg
Happy Thursday, Traveller
When I leased my Tesla 3 four years ago, any color other than white was a thousand dollars extra. I just checked and gray is now the baseline color and all the others are more money. Not sure there are enough Teslas to bend the curve, but I imagine cost is part of this.
Itused to be that white vehicles wereunpolular in Canada because they disappear in winter with snow covered roads. Now we have mandatory daytime running lights and less snow so they are becoming more popular. I currently have two metalic grey cars. My favorite car colour was the Subaru blue STI I had in New Zealand.
I suspect these numbers actually understate the matter. A lot of car "colors" other than white, gray, silver, and black are pretty desaturated. My current car is a metallic "green" that in low light (or at a distance) reads as silver or gray. And I've had a couple of "blue" cars in recent years that were almost black.
Funny, I was just looking at recently used cars (2023-24) and noticed that black cars run about 8-10% cheaper than just about any other car. There are very few white cars for sale.
Being in the south, and having a car with a black top, I know why (as mentioned by others). It's too damn hot inside the car.
Next they need to redesign interiors so that they are not black.
My guess is that these are the cheapest paint colors, so the colors that manufacturers make in vast amounts knowing they will sell to folk who don't want to pay the premium price of a more colorful and more expensive pigment.
I've avoided grayscale cars. If, in darkness, rain, snow, or fog, you wished to camouflage a car, what color would you paint it?
That said, the last car I bought was white. When we're still coming off COVID, supply chains hadn't reestablished, and it was one of the two they had on the lot or nothing. However, here in FL, white does have an advantage as noted by many above.
What about those weird new colors, something mixed with grey? Mauve and the green, blue, and white equivalents of mauve? I see a ton of those around here.
It's like in Thoroughly Modern Millie: "Cars, like gloves, should come in black or white."
To be honest though, I can't remember ever having a choice of car color and I've been buying new cars since the 1970s. I buy the model I want with the options I want, and that usually means I get whatever the factory ships next that meets my criterion.