Henry Ford was claimed to quote: “Any customer can have a car painted any colour he wants so long as it is black.” So do manufacturers actually have a hand in choosing the colour of car we choose to park on our drive? At the turn of the millennium the ‘in’ colour for our beloved motors was silver; good old safe silver. To this day, it’s still a good colour and always will be the colour that your local Hyundai dealer will pre-register 100 i10s in as it’s the safe option. Don’t get me wrong, silver isn’t a bad thing; I’m currently trundling around in a silver Type R, but you all have to admit that there are more exciting colours to choose from.
So, just after the naughties, manufacturers tried to sway people onto different variants of silver. Take Ford; they introduced Vitro Green, Machine Silver and one which actually worked out quite well for them: Tonic Blue. These were all tinges of colours added to silver to end up with light green, dark silver (but not grey) and light blue. Very clever stuff.
All the way through time I’m sure that there will be a mad colour designer in every paint lab across the world who actually gets listened to once, then gets fired for what he’s come up with. Take, for example the Vauxhall Agila. A bad car to start with, but painted in this shade of green? (I would like to tell you the actual name of the colour but everyone I know in the Motor Trade won’t admit to knowing it!) WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?! It’s not just bad cars that got the horrid paint treatment though. Renault are quite well known for jumping in feet first and actually coming out of it pretty well, but again I feel that there is a sad unemployed designer somewhere who came up with Mocha Brown for their pretty good Scenic range. The Greenpeace moss-loving character at Citroën had to be the bravest of them all. To paint the DS4, one of the coolest looking cars around at the moment in ‘Hickory Brown,’ which to be fair isn’t really brown or green, is just….ewwwwww!
Occasionally, the odd mad paint guy having their weird fruit teas would get it right. Ford with Hot Magenta for the Fiesta. Seat Leon in Alor Blue and, dare I say it, Mazda’s metallic Velocity Red for the RX-8.
Not much later, Grey hit the streets and although a bit boring, most of the cars produced looked quite good. Even the old Mazda 2, which doesn’t seem to be available in any other colour!
But now for the biggy: Bright White. Not many people saw this coming. White used to be the colour that only Highway Maintenance cars were in or the only colour that wasn’t a cost option on the price list. It gave the impression that you really couldn’t afford to buy a car if you ordered in solid white! Me, I have been a big fan of white cars since I can remember. (Except the ones with blue flashing lights of course!) Owning a Toyota Starlet SR back in 1998 in white with little Castrol Racing red and green graphics on looked da bomb. Anyway, I’ve digressed, sorry. Every brand produced a white option, from your cheap Kias and Fiats right the way through to Ferraris and Lamborghinis. There’s even a white colour option for the mental Bugatti Veyron!
But is this phase of colour now dying its death and being replaced by another? In my opinion, yes. Look at any decent-sized car dealer’s sold area and you will notice a glut of black cars. Yes, the good old metallic black is back. However, like grey, I feel this won’t last long. The old saying that it “looks great when polished but get 50 yards down the road and it looks shocking,” or “great until it rains” is very true.
So what will replace the current fad?
My money is on Pillar Box Red, DCR in the trade. (If you’re not in the trade I’m NOT going to explain the meaning of DCR!) Not the faded red that Mercedes are trying to push with their sporty C and E Classes; I’m talking full on, in your face, God look at that, RED.
Let’s see if time will back up my theory.
Used Car Salesman 