I’m sure we’ve all noticed the lack of attractive car colors these days. Too many grays, including cars that are truly ugly in battleship gray. So, I ask:
Where have all the car colors gone? Is it a matter of economics?
Many cars of especially the 1960s had a very sharp or crisp sheen in an array of colors. And, I’m not talking great wax jobs. This is perhaps most prominent on muscle cars from that era. Is that stunning or vibrant appearance attributed to the lead in paint back then? (If not, maybe it is a lost art by paint chemists. An old neighbor and friend was a paint chemist, but he passed away maybe 8 years now. Too bad I never thought to ask during his lifetime.)
We do seem to be awash in greys/silvers/grayish silvers, don’t we?
I hear you about that non-metallic battleship gray thing too. UGH! Seems to be one of those “it’s popular because it’s popular, but don’t ask why it’s popular” cases, much like the “in thing” of all-black wheels all the time thing.
I know this is no longer the 70s and all, but it’s very infrequent for me to spot a late-model green car of any shade of green, unless it’s a custom paint job or a wrap treatment.
I think you’re mistaken. I see a substantial rainbow of colors available in vehicles on the road with multiple shades of red, blue, orange, green, etc. It wouldn’t be cost effective for every car to come in every color, so of course the choice may be limited for any one particular vehicle, but even then, the selection often changes from year to year. Of course, you also see some flashier colors more often available for sportier vehicles, because yeah, no one wants to drive a yellow Camry or minivan.
I had to wait several months to get the car I wanted in blue with a brown leather interior. I asked the dealer not to but they tried to sell me a black on black version of the same car.
Yes, cars were more colorful in the earlier decades. As a baby, my parents drove me about in a Chevy with a white and aqua color scheme. I thought I heard somewhere that the duller car tints of today were due to better aerodynamics (and why would that be??). Maybe those colors of paint are specially designed in some way so that air goes smoother around the vehicle, improving gas mileage? Yes, I am totally ignorant on this subject, forgive me.
However, I live near a dealership specializing in over the road tractor trailers. Outside, where you can easily see them, there is a display grouping of very colorful cabs. Yellow, blue, green, purple…all very kicky and bright. Obviously, it can’t be that paint colors for vehicles must be so banal. I would surmise you can order your car in a pretty color, but perhaps the price is just too prohibitive for most people.
It’s become the norm to buy a car “off the lot” as opposed to making a custom order*. Decades ago when you bought a new car, you went to the dealer and put in an order specifying the specific options and colors you wanted, the dealer ordered it from the factory, and you took delivery weeks later. Now the dealer just orders a bunch of cars with popular options, and sells from their own inventory. They pretty much only do custom orders if the buyer insists on something really specific, and many seem to actively discourage them. With that sort of sales model, the dealers probably purposely mostly order cars in “neutral” colors that they think will be easier to sell, as opposed to flashy colors that may only appeal to a small subset of buyers.
Sort of related to the above, some buyers are more concerned about resale value** than in past years. Following the same idea as above, they think it will be easier to resell the car down the road if it’s a neutral color.
*The currant shortages notwithstanding.
**Perhaps a side effect of the fact that cars last so much longer than they used to.
I think there is a lot of variation as well, at least when I look online. A lot of places have interesting light blues, oranges, etc.
Oh… and I will disagree on that non-metallic battleship grey… first time I saw it, I thought that looks incredible! I wonder if that non-metallic color will come to other colors as well.
I live across the street from an elementary school, and since I’m still working from home I took a look out the window, which has a good view of the parking lot. From there I can see two blue cars (a bright blue Mazda crossover and a light blue Chrysler minivan). Everything else in the parking lot visible from my vantage point is some variation on white/silver/grey. If I crane my head and look down the street I can see a red first generation Miata parked in front of a neighbor’s house.
'70’s BMWs had a truly astounding array of color options. Of course, I ended up with a Sahara (boring-ass Tan) one and a Polaris (boring-ass Silver) one.
Older paint jobs were just the paint. Today they all use clear coats. Solid paint could be buffed to a high gloss and car enthusiasts would often have the paint color-sanded, “rubbed out” and buffed. This provides the very best shine on a near mirror surface by leveling out any unevenness (orange peel) of the paint.
THERE. ARE. NO MORE. GOOD. PAINT. JOBS.
I live around the corner from numerous high-end auto dealers from Porsche to Aston Martin. You have to get pretty high up to find a really good paint job. Here is how you tell:
Look at the car next to you in such a way as to reflect overhead power lines in the paint. How does the reflection look? Chances are it appears jagged from the uneven paint surface. A well rubbed out and buffed paint job will reflect lines like a mirror. Good luck finding one.
Even S Klasse Mercedes have orange peel. The AMGs are generally much better. Aston Martin - good. Porsche - bad. Chevy pickup? Disgusting.
The formulation of auto paints has vastly changed in the last 20+ years to comply with air pollution rules about VOCs = Volatile Organic Compounds.
At first the only durable paints they could make that were low-VOC were beige, white, and light gray. Any more vibrant color failed quickly, getting dull or “sunburned” looking.
The chemists kept working and they can now make low-VOC vibrant reds, blues, greens, etc. But along the way senior management discovered that the public is happy buying almost entirely beige, white, black, and gray cars. Which are cheaper to make and as mentioned above much “safer” for dealers to pre-order for sale off the lot.
So here we sit with a giant fleet of mostly boring-colored cars.
You do see high end cars and custom paint jobs in some amazing deep satin finishes, dichroic finishes, and other stuff that would make a 1960s paint chemist lose his (yes, his) mind. Those are cool. Now we just need more manufacturers to offer them.
Fifteen years ago, my wife and I were in the market for a new car for her, to replace the Subaru Outback which she’d loved, but which was showing its age. We went to a Subaru dealer, which also handled Mazdas; while there, we discovered that we didn’t like the then-current generation of the Outback (which was our initial choice).
The dealer had a new Mazda CX-7 SUV on the lot – they’d had it for nearly a year, and hadn’t been able to sell it, specifically because it was a fairly vibrant shade of blue. They’d sold a lot of black and silver CX-7s in that time, but no one wanted the blue one, and by the time we saw it, it was a year “out of date” (it was a 2007, when the 2008s were now available). They offered us a great deal on it, we bought it (we liked the color), and it’s been a reliable car for us.
I hate this trend. When I went car shopping I didn’t want a black/silver/gray/white car, but that narrowed my options considerably. I ended up with a silver car, which is really too bad because it’s boring looking in silver and surprisingly good looking in red or blue. Sometimes I consider having it repainted but it feels a bit silly paying that much to have it done when it’s not really that important.
My theory is that people find boring colors “inoffensive”, no one really likes them, but not many people hate them either, so it’s safer to play for non-dislike rather than playing for “might really like it” or “might hate it”
I could kind of understand the logic if they avoided unusual colors like pink or neon green or something, but do people really not like red or blue cars?
It just makes cars feel like they have no personality, like we’re all drab drones on a highway.
Actually, the OP isn’t really mistaken. More than 3 out of 4 cars on the road in the U.S. are some form of “grayscale” – white, gray, silver, or black. Blue is at 10%, red is at 9%, and no other color is at more than 1%.
While droning along on the freeway in semi-thick traffic I love imaging that suddenly all the white cars were Raptured and just disappeared. Try it yourself; you’ll be amazed at how empty the roads would suddenly be. Try the same thing for tan/beige or black or gray.
It’s also fun to imagine all the non-company pickup trucks disappearing. Suddenly you can see more than 100 feet in front of you.
When I bought my new car back in 2018, I insisted on a blue car. I found one, finally, at a dealer across the city from me. And even then, it’s a very dark blue — almost navy.
When I bought my Mustang in 2011, I wanted a particular set of equipment (V6, standard transmission, premium stereo), and I wanted it in “red candy metallic.” My local dealer did a search of other dealers, and found exactly one Mustang with that combination of features in the entire eastern half of the U.S. They shipped it in for me from another dealer (from New Jersey, I think).
The salesman had given me some good-natured grief about holding out for the red – they had a car on their lot with the other specs I wanted, but it was black. But, when I came in to pick it up, he took me aside, and said, “I know I bugged you about insisting on the red, but once I saw that color, cleaned up and shiny, I could see why you wanted it.”