I have been watching car colors for ever and while driving home tonight all I saw were Lemmings.
Some shade of white/tan.
Some shade of dull red/burgundy.
Some shade of black/dark blue.
Some shade of Silver/metallic.
Blues are rare.
I see one bright yellow mustang every once in awhile.
I drive an Army Green with loud pinstripes FJ Cruiser.
I remember the Hot Colors of the '60s and occasionally see a Dodge with a hot color.
It reminds me of when Ford said you can have any color as long as it is Black.
Dullness just kills me.

In a former life when I worked with computer systems for process control, I spent a year and a half as technical lead, implementing a system in an automobile factory. I learned a quite a bit about the manufacturing / assembly process.

One of the big problem areas was the painting process. Once the paint line was set up for a color, it was best to make the run of vehicles in that color as long as possible, to minimize the percentage of cars that had to be cycled back to the "paint hospital" to correct painting errors. That resulted in a lot of vehicles rolling out of the plant with the same color.

I believe you can still get a safety green Jeep SUV, although I don’t know why you’d want to

Both of mine are white
The Midget is currently red, thinking a bright metallic orange when I get around to aesthetics.
Thinking back, I've mostly had white/silver/gray vehicles.
3 reds, 2 greens, 1 blue & 1 gold
When I was building a Lotus 7 replica, it was planned to be orange with blue trim, not much off from current McLaren F1 colors.

If you go to vehicle manufacturer sites there are a lot more colors there than the local dealers have on their lots.

During COVID car shortages dealerships started ordering colors and packages that they wanted to sell not necessarily what customers want to buy (ie a tough shit approach). Dealer lots are full of black or white exteriors and pretty much black or damn near black (eg charcoal) interiors. Boring!!!

My last purchase, I had 3 requirements:

I specified which trim I wanted (ie the only 1 that came in leather)

Exterior cannot be black or white. Black looks good for about 30 minutes after washing and looks like hell the rest of the week. Very few whites have any pop!

Interior cannot be black. It's Texas and I don't want 165 degree seats and steering wheel 9 months a year.

I wound up with a burnt copper metallic exterior (cool copper hue on sunny days and burgundy on cloudy days) and light/medium gray leather interior. Hardly ever see one like it.

Over the years I've had burgundy metallic, Purdue gold metallic, royal blue metallic, hunter green metallic, pewter metallic, and silver metallic.

As a teen, my snowmobile was royal blue metallic.

My first motorcycle was silver metallic. My current motorcycle is the traditional Indian red. It's the only nonmetallic colored vehicle I've owned.

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Ego is the anesthesia that deadens the pain of stupidity

DISCLAIMER: These are the author's own personal views and do not represent the views of the author's employer.

My last 3 white vehicles were variants of Ford's metallic white.
White Suede on our Flex, White Platinum on my wife's current Expedition & Star White on my Explorer.

A bit more pop than the plain Ford Oxford White.

quote:

Originally posted by P250UA5:
My last 3 white vehicles were variants of Ford's metallic white.
White Suede on our Flex, White Platinum on my wife's current Expedition & Star White on my Explorer.

A bit more pop than the plain Ford Oxford White.

Similarly, my white car is Mazda's metallic white.

It's not just generic "fleet vehicle" boring/dull white.

I currently have a boring blue SUV, a bright red coupe and an agate grey coupe. With more funds I’d have something in Lizard Green.

People are generally boring, practical and for the extreme colors budget limited. Manufacturers meet those needs.

My parents thought white was the bomb diggity for all sorts of sad reasons. I’ve made it through my entire life without owning a white car, and I really hope to play the rest of my time out the same.

In retirement, I may even do my second black car just because they look so hot.

For the past three years or so I’ve noticed the popularity of color-gray autos. I.e., blue-gray, green-gray, yellow-gray, etc.

Just this week have seen 3 Dodge Chargers(hemi/scat cat/performance packages)in very close to US Army Olive Drab color but not a flat finish but a shinny finish.... Still got a "woody". .................. drill sgt.

quote:

Originally posted by drill sgt:
Just this week have seen 3 Dodge Chargers(hemi/scat cat/performance packages)in very close to US Army Olive Drab color but not a flat finish but a shinny finish.... Still got a "woody". .................. drill sgt.

Its called F78

The already funky-looking Jeep Renegade can be had in several funky-looking, but not unpleasant, "pastel" colors. In the 1990s, "teal" was a popular color. As for olive drab/army green, as well as "desert tan" or "flat dark earth," well, let's say those aren't my personal taste. Scratch that, they are hideous.

I 'could' be wrong (I don't think so, but it's possible), but has anyone else come to the conclusion that metallic paint seems to fare FAR better over time that non-metallic paint. Every used car I've ever seen with faded and/or deteriorated paint has been a pastel/enamel color! Obviously this excludes all cars with a flawed/failing clear coat, but it seems to me that metallic paint stands the 'test of time' while enamel colors generally do not. Perhaps it's got something to do with the metallic content/additive and it's potential ability to reflect UV sunlight...I'm not 100% sure, but it make sense to me so that's what I'm going with.

We've currently got three cars w/ metallic paint (2009 Volvo S60, 2010 Audi S5, and a 2013 Volvo XC70) that are daily driven and have been parked outside in the sun every single day since day one, and the paint looks absolutely fantastic on all of them! As an example to the performance of metallic paint over time, we put a RS5 conversion bumper on the S5 about two years ago. I decided to do the work/labor of grafting it onto the car myself, partially because of the HUGE cost savings, but just as importantly, because I wanted it to turn out right! As such, I just had the body shop paint the bumper w/ the factory color and clear coat. NO blending or anything, I just bolted it on, and you absolutely cannot tell ANY difference in the paint on the bumper vs ANY of the adjacent panels at all. It's like it came from the factory that way. I'll never own a car that doesn't have metallic paint...EVER! Just sayin'

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:

quote:

Originally posted by P250UA5:
My last 3 white vehicles were variants of Ford's metallic white.
White Suede on our Flex, White Platinum on my wife's current Expedition & Star White on my Explorer.

A bit more pop than the plain Ford Oxford White.

Similarly, my white car is Mazda's metallic white.

It's not just generic "fleet vehicle" boring/dull white.

Mazda's Snowflake White & Soul Red look amazing in the sun, lots of metallic in them & I think a bit more of a process to paint than 'normal' paints.

I do the ordering for our dealership, it's fun to play with the non standard colors. I can get orange, yellow, forest green Silverado's, red Tahoes and Suburbans without special allocation. There are other colors available but mostly for fleet orders

There are some fun standard colors on the smaller SUV's, bright greens and yellows too

Saw a newish BMW M5 sedan the other day that was in a very garish lime green. Stood out like the proverbial sore thumb; jokingly felt like one had to wear sunglasses to take it all in. Anyways, I had to look up the color on BMW's website...no dice. No such shade, at least for 2024. But since this was the first time I'd seen any BMW in that eye-popping shade, all of this lead me to believe either of two conclusions: a complete repaint (seems unlikely) or a body wrap (very likely).

So if Plum Crazy or Sassy Grass is your thing, thanks to today's materials and technology it's totally achievable. For an extra cost of course.

quote:

Originally posted by BigSwede:
I do the ordering for our dealership, it's fun to play with the non standard colors. I can get orange, yellow, forest green Silverado's, red Tahoes and Suburbans without special allocation. There are other colors available but mostly for fleet orders

There are some fun standard colors on the smaller SUV's, bright greens and yellows too

I've seen quite a few pastels in the smaller cars, Sonic, Aveo, Spark & such.

I used to give our inventory mgr a hard time for ordering bland colors [which are easier to sell]
I was at a Chevrolet dealer when the C6 ZR1 came out & was on him all the time to order one in Supersonic Blue, as it [IMO] looks so much better than Jetstream Blue.
But, folks buying a ZR1 preferred the brighter colors, so we never got one.

Parked behind me this AM at the Yooper grocery was a Kia with an odd greenish yellow paint job. I imagine they were at the dealership and said "we really like this model, is it available in a hideous color"?
One of my buddies would always buy his cars in odd garish colors in the belief they were more visible in traffic and thus safer to drive.

I'm really partial to bright colors on most cars. That said our 4Runner is a gray/green Lunar Rock, not bright. My Jeep is bright red, would have bought orange or bright green if it was available. Looking at the 2025 4Runner, just announced, colors do not excite me. I want orange, bright red, bright yellow etc.

I recall BMW had a special/odd color for the M3/4
The running name for it on another forum I'm on was: Duckshit Yellow

Looking at our security cameras at work right now.
All shades of silver/gray/black/white, 1 dark red Sierra, and 2 dark blues a Camry & BMW 5er.
24 cars here & only 3 not in those 4 colors.