Apparently Britons like “dull” colours for their cars.
The idea of getting a nice bright red, blue or green has largely died out in the last decade, statistics show.
Ten years ago 15 per cent of new cars were green but now so few are bought that it registers as less than one per cent in the colour charts.
Both Mrs L’s car and mine are black. The bike is blue, but only because black wasn’t available and the Yamaha before it was silver, the two before that were both black. I like any colour car or bike, so long as it is black. Looks like I’m not alone.
Apologies to Henry Ford.
Mines black too, previous one was dark blue though.
When I moved to London 17 years ago, the most common colour for cars was bright red, but this has definitely gone out of fashion, and the red cars are now in a minority. My own car is ‘midnight blue’ or ‘purple’ as my little girl calls it, but that played little part in my decision to buy it.
You’re not. Last two cars have been black. 🙂
Bangernomics was the game before I was given a company car – whatever came up at the right price regardless of colour.
Now I get hand me downs from my senior colleague – all pale metallic blue as this is his wifes favorite colour.
Given the choice I’d probably go for red or black depending on the style of car.
The car we have is sliver. Our last one was white. The one before that was dark blue.
Navy blue is my favourite.
Blimey, we’re weird, since our last car was green (not really freely chosen) and our current car is red (actively chosen). The driver will be delighted.
And it does make finding it in car parks easier!
When I was growing up in the 70s/80s it seemed like every other car was red, but I’ve no doubt this report is right. Just wandering through my station car park, it’s a mass of black, grey, or dark blue with very little else on show. I could count the number of red cars in single figures, and that’s including the darker burgandy ones.
I think a black car can look stunning, but personally, I’ve chosen to go the opposite route. My last car was a bright green (VW Evergreen to be precise), and I’ve just switched to a bright red one. Partly, it’s probably a liking for being a bit different, but it also makes it a darn sight easier finding the car when you’re parked up in a English Heritage field with hundreds of others!
There are various superstitions against green clothes which oddly carry over to cars. Stupid though it may be I have come across a number of people who would not even consider buying a green car. So it might not be the best colour example.
I had a green car once. Damn dangerous! Out of town they’re invisible to other road users. I’d be on a main road, I’d see a car up ahead waiting to pull out, I’d see the driver look at me, make eye contact, then pull out in front of me. Too many times it happened to be coincidence. Rarely happened when I had a red car.
I had a green car once. Damn dangerous. Out of town it was invisible to other road users, especially those pulling out of T junctions. Rarely a problem when I had a red car.
My first car – a Jaguar Sovereign 3.6 – was green. But British Racing Green gets an exemption, surely?
Darker shades of green are dangerous, supposedly because it’s the last colour of the spectrum that the human eye registers (or so I read once). However, I can happily say that you would never have considered mine invisible. It was very, very bright, glaringly so… 🙂