white because I got a great deal on it. I would have taken any color but black.
As demonstrated in many previous threads on this board about cars, for an awful lot of people, a car is a functional utility – they need it to get to work, to school, to the store, etc. They aren’t looking for performance, or fun, or cool, or for something that reflects their personality or self-image; they just need reliability and affordability. And, so, for them, as long as the car isn’t a hideous color, or a color that they feel causes a functional issue (e.g., black cars in hot climates), any color will do. If they can get a discount on a car because it’s a certain color (and, thus, because it’s been sitting on the dealer’s lot for a while), even better.
Oh, I understand… it just seems so foreign to me. It would be like saying I’ll take whatever you have to eat because I need sustenance… and I’ll continue to eat it for the next five years even though I don’t really like it, but it was a good deal.
People are different. I just have a strong passion for cars and wouldn’t invest my money on something I’m not happy to spend many hours a week using.
And, yes, there are people who view food in exactly the way you describe, too. 
FWIW, I’ve been a lifelong car buff, I love driving, and I love my red Mustang. 
First vehicle I ever purchased was a dark red Saturn. When it finally bit the dust, I was in the market for a minivan. I found the exact same make an model of vehicle with roughly the same mileage. The red one was $2500 more than the bronze one. Since color was the last thing I cared about, I’m still rocking the Bronze Beast 8 1/2 years later. Next time we buy a van, we’ll have a little bigger budget so I’m hoping I can get a color I like. But if there’s a big price gap like before, I’m guessing I’ll do the same thing.
OTOH, other than “four doors,” the color was my husband’s primary criterion when purchasing his last car.
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I came very close to buying a red one (also a convertible GT). It was beautiful and had everything I wanted… except I really wanted a blue one to match the one I knew as a kid. I waited 9 months before I found one that fit the bill. Again, I guess that is why I have problems understanding that someone has to take whatever is there that day. I guess if it was a matter of “I need a car to get to work tomorrow” it would be different.
The thing with cars are that they are not an investment, they are a depreciating asset. Every penny spent is a penny straight down the drain. If you’re well-off, spending 'whatever" on “toys” is fine, but if you are on any kind of budget, a compromise on preferred colour to save money is perfectly reasonable.
My view is if they are all the same price, pick colour. If a colour is cheaper and it’s acceptable, accept it and save the money. If a hideous colour is so cheap as to be ridiculous, suck it up and take the absolute bargain. Once you’re inside and driving around, it’s other people who have to see the colour
I’ve bought plenty of used cars and color was a consideration for each one. I had a stint where every used car I bought was a color I didn’t care for but felt kinda neutral about at the time, but gradually I grew to hate; that soured the ownership experience for me and since then I’ve only bought cars in colors I like.
And there are some car colors I just loathe, like the tan metallic you see on so many Japanese sedans. My brother drive’s a Camry that shade, one of my aunts has a Mazda the exact same color. The color is pitched by salespeople as “it won’t show dirt” but why don’t people get that this is because it always looks dirty? It’s like buying a cologne that smells like BO so people can’t tell if you’ve showered or not.
I don’t know about you but I’d consider buying something for $18,000 and selling it for $48,400,000 a decent investment.
So the original owner knew that that one car would be in demand after 50 years? That’s not investing, that’s luck.
I never picked a color for a new car; I went in, told them what I wanted in terms of model and equipment, they had one and met my price, and I bought it. It could have been Whorehouse Purple with Puddy Pink trim and I wouldn’t have cared. On older (classic and/or antique) cars when I decide to repaint them I keep going back to 1970s Lincoln-Mercury Saddle Bronze and 1960s Cadillac Gold if I decide to skip what the original colors were.
My current vehicle is blue, only because they were having a sale and I had a choice between blue or white. Since the last truck was white, which wasn’t bad, but I wanted something different from what I had.
My truck is grey, because that’s what dad bought before he died.
I’ve mostly bought blue. Black and white are too hard to keep clean, grey and beige are drab and boring. I had a red Mustang back in the day, because it was so damn pretty, and a red truck. My next will likely be blue, maybe red, depending on the exact shades available.
Who chooses a car for its color? Nobody I know. Once you’ve got the price and the characteristics you need, you take whatever color they’ve got.
most models don’t come in a lot of colors other than black, white, and various shades of gray/silver. 
My current car is red because that’s the color I want my car to be.
Exactly, and that car is not (and very likely never was) anything remotely resembling someone’s “daily driver” car – that Ferrari was specifically built as a race car, and part of the reason that it appreciated in value was its rarity (only 36 were made), and the fact that that particular car was a champion.
Yes, highly collectible cars can and do increase in value, but (a) it can be very difficult to predict, when new, which cars are going to – eventually – become collectible, and (b) while there are a few cars which, when new, one can predict with a reasonable degree of certainty will become collectible, that’s going to be entirely due to the brand and the rarity (like Ferraris built for racing), and those cars will be priced far above what any normal consumer would be able to buy.
The vast majority of cars made – particularly the cars that you or I are likely to own and drive – will never be collectible. Toyota makes millions of Camrys, Ford makes millions of F-150s and Mustangs, and unless you happen to have a model / drivetrain / trim package that wound up being terribly uncommon, and which collectors decide, years later, to be interesting or noteworthy, it’s just another one of thousands (if not millions) of similar cars.
Plus, the vast majority of us buy cars in order to drive them. Unless you’re someone who is absolutely scrupulous about maintenance and care for your car, it’s going to deteriorate.
The fact is that, while you might consider a car an “investment” from the standpoint of “I spend a lot of money on it, and it’s important to me,” unless you are specifically a car collector, and are buying (and treating) cars as valuable collectibles, cars really are not investments in the traditional sense (of being a place in which you put money, with the intent that it will produce more money). They’re assets that will depreciate.
I had six choices: black, white, light silver, dark silver, blue, and red. The silvers are out because I goddamned hate them and for some reason they’re the most popular colors on the road. My last car was black and this wasn’t a particular compelling shade, so that’s out. I had a white car once and while it wasn’t bad, it just didn’t strike my fancy. Blue vs. red was a nearly tossup but the red won me over in the end.
Before the white 911SC, I had a Rally Yellow Porsche 924. Although I never got a ticket in that car, I did notice that the yellow was more visible and attracted more attention than red cars.
There was a time in 1979 that I almost bought a custom van. Shag carpets, captains chairs, mirrored glass, stereo, tv, the works.
Gorgeous paint with mural.
Something like this.
https://goo.gl/images/I3sRcd
I almost swung the financing. Bank wanted another thousand down to get my payments affordable with my income.
I guess you gotta be in your twenties to appreciate something like this.
I can’t see myself driving it now. I still think they are very nice.