I have purchased several company cars. The company doesn’t care what color they are. The quotes always say something like “any standard color.” White and black are always standard colors. What other colors are standard varies by manufacturer. Standard colors are less expensive than non-standard colors.
Speaking as a small business owner (and there are millions of us in the United States), I very much prefer white vehicles because it gives the most options for putting on company graphics. With a blue car, you can go with orange or yellow letters. With a green car, you can go with red or purple letters. But with a white car, you can use any color letters you want (except white, of course).
This explains why most full-sized vans are white. But plenty of small business owners use smaller vehicles too. We currently have two minivans and a 4-door hatchback. Two of the three are white and I wish that all three of them were white. The next time I go shopping for a company vehicle, I will insist on white and won’t even bother looking at other colors.
I guess the difference is rather more obvious to someone who experiences nearly year-round, daily car saunas, but it’s certainly significant.
That matches up perfectly with my parking lot observation. My “various shades of silver” probably included some gray vehicles.
I personally don’t like white vehicles, because my area gets a lot of snow in the winter. I currently live on a major street, and I have to park on the street. Combine snow, white cars, and the number of drivers to whom it never occurs to turn on their headlights if the sun is up, it can be very difficult to pull out into traffic. And trust me, in the winter, a white car can look just as dirty as any other.
Given the question’s been thoroughly answered by now, I hope it’s not too off-topic to lament this sad state of affairs.
It is an endless source of frustration to me how difficult it is to find a used car in an actual COLOR, instead of some drab shade of “meh” from the monochrome spectrum.
And even more puzzlingly, this is still prevalent in the flagrantly exhibitionist hey-look-at-me-everybody 2-door high performance sports car segment, which is doubly a shame. I mean C’MON!
Yeah, I know, I know. Buy new and eat the depreciation. Or pay 5 grand for a custom paint job. But seriously, I can’t be the only one out there who would actually PREFER a car in a real color - somebody needs to make a website for us!
I would prefer a car in a fake color, like love or thunder. Now that would be pretty cool.
it’s simply because the car companies’ customers are the dealers, not the consumers. cars in black, white, and silver/gray are far easier to move.
Who’s the customer when I order a car to my specifications, including color?
Preach. When I see a car go by in an actual nice color, I just happily watch it down the street, enjoying the break from the usual tedium of white, black, and various metal-and-dirt shades.
an outlier. most people buy off the lot.
I wonder if these would still be described in typical automotive paint terms? You would end up with something like Red Rock Crystal Love or Pearl Grey Thunder.
In my experience, silver (metal flake, not flat) is excellent at hiding road dirt. Salt spray/winter road grime still shows though, especially in direct sunlight.
The last time I bought a vehicle, I was offered a much lower price for the same model in white or black. It was also the end of the model year though, so that could have affected what colors the dealership was pushing. (I ended up with a nice deep red, by the way.)
I just bought a white car.
2016 Kia Rio Hatchback.
Dealer show model, for less than $17K.
To be delivered Monday or Tuesday.
Hey, our Ford Edge is Earth Metallic Bronze, and it hides dirt very well but the gold shimmer when it’s clean looks great! Thankfully there are a few cars out there with something more in the colour department, like this liquid blue from Ford, and one of my favourites, BMW’s Valencia Orange. Of course, you can always order a nice subtle yellow like this Dodge as well.
So, I have one of those sorts of cars, after a fashion, as noted upthread (a Ford Mustang). When I decided to buy a Mustang, I wanted it in a bright color, either yellow or red. But, the “yellow” which Ford was offering that year wasn’t a bright yellow, it was a “gold” that was closer to the color of butterscotch pudding. Ugh.
Anyway, they offered two shades of red: one was a bright red, but more of an enamel finish; the other was the candy red metallic, which I preferred. I also wanted the car with a V6, and a manual transmission.
In order to test-drive a V6 with a stick, I had to do some serious hunting for a dealer who even had one on the lot (and I live in suburban Chicago, with at least a half-dozen Ford dealers within 10 miles of me). I finally found one, took it for a test drive, and that sealed the deal. But…it was black. I didn’t want a black car, I wanted the red one!
The salesman checked on his computer, to see if he could find the car I wanted at another dealer. There was exactly one such car (V6, stick, candy red) in the entire eastern half of the United States! The salesman wanted to sell me the black one that he had on the lot, and he and his manager offered me a series of bigger and bigger discounts to take it, but I had my heart set on the red one. The salesman was surprised that I was that stubborn, but he arranged with the other dealer to get the red car for me.
When it arrived, 3 days later, I went to pick it up at the dealer. The salesman took me aside, and said, “I gave you a lot of grief over not taking the black car. But, when I saw what your car looks like, with that red finish, I realized why you wanted it.”
This is very much the case.
As I understand it, it used to be (though decades ago, now) that dealerships tended to carry a fairly small inventory of new cars – a few of each current model, to show prospective buyers, and for test drives. A buyer would decide what options they wanted on their car (including color), and the dealer would place an order with the factory. A few weeks (to months) later, depending on the backlog at the plant, the buyer’s car would be delivered.
Somewhere along the line, the business model changed, and dealerships started carrying big inventories of cars. It allowed the buyer to drive off the lot with a car immediately, but it also has the side effect of encouraging buyers to compromise on what options they get on their car (being limited by what the dealer has in inventory). Some buyers still seek a particular set of options, which leads them to either have the dealer transfer the car from another dealer (as I had done with my Mustang), or order one from the factory, but those buyers are in a distinct minority.
Wait until you go house shopping. Hope you like beige. Walls, siding, carpet, trim, all beige, with perhaps an “eggshell” or dull gray mixed in for variety. It is to puke.
that’s what repainting is for.
Conventional wisdom among real estate agents is that unusual colors are a turn-off to many home buyers, who can’t see past a bright color that they don’t like. Even though people know that repainting is a fairly straightforward thing, it doesn’t stop them from having that visceral reaction.
And, so, real estate agents counsel clients who are getting ready to put their houses on the market to pre-emptively replace bright colors with those neutrals.
Oh, I know the reasoning. It’s the same reasoning with cars. Beige and cream and gray are “safe”, while actual colors are considered “unusual”.
I know plenty of people who would prefer colors but still paint their house eggshell because they’ve heard the advice against it so many times. I wonder if the tail is wagging the dog at this point. I have green and orange and yellow and blue and red rooms in my house and everyone who comes over says “I love the colors in here but I’d never be brave enough to paint my house like that”.
Which is fine, whatever, paint your bedroom however you want. Where I really got annoyed was when we redid our siding and there were no colors available besides a very dirt-colored puke green or a very gray, dull bluish hue. So we went with white. Now I’m wondering if it’s possible (or wise) to paint vinyl siding. (Okay, I’m not wondering that much, I’m actually pretty lazy.)
Strangely, not only was it not always this way, but favored colors varied over time, which at least kept it interesting, even if it gave us various vile shades of snot green and bile yellow in the 70s. A couple decades ago, marketing data would show you that certain colors were “in” for a while, then other colors became more popular. It seems to me that sometime after silver cars, which hadn’t been that common, became all the rage (in the 80s, I think), we got stuck in the present situation. White is the most popular color, and we also have a lot of black, gray, silver and beige cars. The roads look like a parade of major appliances rolling down the highway, especially with all the boxy SUV variants. Which I admit, are practical. I now own one, but it’s a dark “british racing green” shade.