Hallelujah! Finally we’ve found something that everyone apparently agrees on. Bland cars.
We might not be able to, as a people, agree on whether abortion should be a woman’s choice or a serious crime, on if marijuana is a fine consumable item, a cash cow to tax or a reason to send people to jail, or if our climate is changing, let alone if people are the cause of it. We can’t quite come to concur on whether Fox News is a sell-out to the liberal Left or a radical arm of the self-righteous Right or whether we should cut off Russian oil or buy more of it because Putin might have a glut of it and it could put the price at the pumps down by a dime. But it seems when it comes to our vehicles, there’s no argument – make it bland, just like our neighbors!
Such is the conclusion one might reach driving around any city or highway these days but it’s confirmed by Autoblog. com which recently noted “despite vibrant choices, people stick with bland” when it comes to car colors. In 2021, 24% of all new cars sold were white. 18% of them were black, and fully 34% were gray or grayish silver. Thus over ¾ of new cars weren’t even what the report classified as “real colors.” By the way, blue was the most popular of those “real” colors, edging out red by 8% to 7%. Both have seen serious declines in popularity recently, but not so much as green. Kermit-kolored kars represented over 7% of sales back in 2004; these days it’s barely 2%…which still heavily outperforms yellow, orange and pink which combined represent about one lone percent. One in a hundred to leave the lot. What’s more, we’re adventurous compared to the rest of the world. In Asia, 40% of all cars hitting the road are white, and 20% black. All this despite what PPG describe as a huge variety of “special colors, tinted clear coats and matte finishes” available to “better reflect vehicle owners individual personalities.” Back in the ’90s, the band Dishwalla had a hit with a song called “Counting Blue Cars”, and a line in it went “we count only blue cars.” It’d be pretty easy to do these days. They might have to re-write the lyric as “we count blue cars. Zero, all white.”
Not that many years ago, I lived close to a GM plant that made Chevy Impalas. They had a huge – football fields galore–sized – parking lot of them sprawling between the factory and the rail yards, waiting hopefully for some dealer somewhere to want them. An island of misfit cars. There’d be a gray one here and there, maybe a black one, but almost all were plain white. At the time, I thought one thing they were doing wrong was having such boring car colors. At that time Ford at least offered a few interesting oranges, and coppers and metallic primary colors. Turns out I was wrong. The uniform, boring look was the one thing they did right, it would seem.
Now, mind you, there are some advantages to having a blend-in, white or gray car (or pickup). If you are an aspiring bank robber, it’s probably much better to make your getaway in one. Good luck to the police looking for the getaway car that was “white. A car, a sedan. Maybe a Toyota. Or a VW. Maybe it was a Chevy. Or a Nissan. They all look alike.” If you are wanting a life in crime, a yellow convertible Tesla or two-tone ’70s Lincoln is probably not the car to have. But for the rest of us… it makes me nostalgic for my childhood with all its lime green Novas, sun yellow VW bugs and orange Dodges lining our street. Cars that had a bit of character and which you could actually find when you got back out into the mall parking lot.
I think the world would be a little bit better place if people would agree for inoffensive, middle-of-the-road choices for things like policing, taxes and immigration and go wild with passion for extreme car looks. And spend time counting… mauve cars!
Everydave Life 
I think the dealers choose those bland colors because they are “safe” and more likely to be chosen than some outlandish color. I have always wanted a black car but usually I end up buying one of the bland ones off the lot.
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that’s probably valid, and most people probably rank color pretty low on their shopping list (my Mom was an exception… first time she bought a new car, as opposed to used, having a small red one was her top priority!) I once dated a girl who had a gray sports car, she didn’t like the color but said they gave her it for something like a $1000 less than any other color at the time.
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Dave, I’m like your mom, color makes a big difference to me. My car is white and I *hate* it! It’s always dirty looking.
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yeah, that is a big drawback (and maybe a selling point for grays and earthy brown tones?). to me, the color of choice depends on the car, but in general I’d probably like something like a metallic teal or turquoise as my top pick for most models.
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I have a solor yellow car! You can see the damn thing in the middle of any parking lot! Only 2500 were made in that color of that model…and I know why!
To me most cars today look the same…they all blend in with each other…same with houses and clothes. You are right…they are boring! Like Lisa I think safe colors are picked to sell…
You DON’T want to see the next paragraph but you got me thinking…I thought I would list the colors of my cars…the colors are purple, red, gold, white, silver, brown, black, red, red, blue, red, orange, black, and YELLOW…I mean bright!
I seem to veer toward red. I’ve had 4 red cars. I do want a green car…any shade of green.
This ties into my Wednesday post…I talk about my first car…and I’ll ask everyone what their first car was…I got that out of our conversation when I posted that Opel GT
I’ve had a purple 66 Mustang, 85 Red Toyota Celica Sport Coupe, a gold 84 Mazda RX7, a white pickup truck, a silver Probe, a brown 85 RX7, black 96 Eclipse, Red Kia Sportage, Red 2000 Jeep Wrangler (still have it), A Dodger Blue Mini Cooper, Red Ford Escort, an orange Chevy Sonic, a black Chevy Aveo, and last but not least my Solor Yellow 2005 Toyota “Toaster” Scion…
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Just call you Rainbow Wheels! The topic reminds me of Henry Ford who said something like ‘you can have my Model T in any color you like…as long as you like black!”. My first cars were a 1973 Pontiac Astre that was beige (much like a Vega as you mentioned yesterday), then another used ’73 Pontiac, I think it was a Pariessiene, it was dark brown. Our minivan here (which blew the transmission a couple of years ago) was white and that was so regular, we did a double-take when we saw one of the same vans in any other color! Now we’re driving a deep blue Saturn … it’s older so I think that was a common color for that make back in the first decade of 2000s.
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That is about right! I never knew I varied on color as much until I went through them.
A Pontiac Pariessiene? I never heard of that until I just looked it up…I like the double headlights in the front!
Our house is blue and it was built in the early 90s…that powder blue look so I know what you mean.
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I think it was that (Parissienne)… some big full size Pontiac. I think the first car I remember , my dad’s when I was really little, was a gold Ponitac Parissienne, from sometime in the 60s. The one I had was comfy, big, I put in a pretty good stereo (actually did that myself believe it or not), put mag wheels on it… but it was a piece of crap mechanically! Lot of electrical problems, leaked oil…mind you it was probably 12 years old by then and that was a long time for cars of that vintage.
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The first car I remember was a red Valiant… my dad had it. The second car was an old early 60s Rambler…it was HUGE inside…especially when you were a kid.
I did install some radios also…but I do remember the first one I did was in my Mustang….I was driving home and smelled something burning. I had to pull over and yank it out. Two wires I didn’t tape well enough…lesson learned.
Yea my sister’s Vega…all sorts of problems…the same you described.
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yep, my Astre, I think the engine went kaput around 60 000 miles, which I was told wasn’t bad for that engine!
My dad’s Olds 88 was huge… I used it some learning to drive, which probably helped…parking it was like parking a van. Made parking the VW Rabbit we drove in Driver’s Ed and took for the drivers test, easy.
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Yea parking those land yachts were a lot of fun lol…everything else was easy. I remember an LTD at one point and it was huge.
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LTDs were about the same size as the 88s, from what I recall. That’s right kiddies, they were the size of an Esplanade or F250 and we didn’t have any back-up cameras, and we liiikkkedd it, LOL
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LOL back up cameras! Yes we did…it was called the rearview mirror and a lot of head turning!
Yes we did! I won’t even go into Parallel parking!
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