I had that blue Scirocco in the front row when I was a student. Loved that car!
Edit: not sure why this is getting so many upvotes but hey cool, just remembered it nearly went on fire from a split fuel line spraying petrol all over the engine one day. Smoke all over the place both inside and outside the car but thank god no flames. Close call I think.
Per Clarkson years ago on Top Gear it’s because it’s difficult to get the colors to match on plastic bumpers and metal fenders/doors, especially as the paint ages. So the cheap option is just various greyscale samples.
From a practical perspective, I ruin almost every shirt I have by spilling food (should probably bib myself) and black (darker colors) hide a lot. I’m sure it’s the same with restaurants who don’t want to constantly be repainting. Also brighter colors fade pretty quick. Although I do enjoy bright colors.
like 80% of cars are boring ass black or white or grey it sucks ass, so cool seeing a neat color car now a days
cars being so similarly colored also makes crime easier
Yes, because colours are harder to sell. Blavknand white are the most effective choice for re selling, not being easily target or recognize and re sell.
I wish cars were colourful still, grey ones are almost invisible in poor weather when the lights aren’t on, a bright yellow or green one is easier to see
I'd rather enjoy driving my car and not feel like I'm on an acid trip or living in some circus world, but I understand completely it was the the style of the time.
All I'll say is this:
A cloudy day, some paint remover, a few cans of spray paint, sandpaper, and a few cans of clear coat, and you can have a cooler car in a day or two.
maybe because those colors look like [cadmium, lead, uranium, chromium, arsenic...](https://www.kremer-pigmente.com/en/information/safety/pigments-with-toxic-heavy-metals/)
I actually listened to a … maybe Freakonomics podcast about this. And we actually have just as many, if not more, color options for cars today then we did in the 70s.
I think the issue boils down to the masses not *wanting* these colors anymore. But the colors are there. We’re given many options to choose from, people just choose against these.
I have a bright green car. I get made fun of for it a lot (not that I care, I picked out the green because I loved it) but worse, it really seems to piss people on the road off. Like drivers around me are just more asshole-ish, driving around me even though I’m more than up to speed, cutting me off, not letting me merge, etc. I know it’s the car and not my terrible driving or something, because everyone who drives my car notices it too. We’ve even tested the speedometer make sure it’s not too slow or something. People just really hate my car.
Looking to buy a car now. Most of my options are black( not really an option as I live in a place that gets to 110) or white. If I want one with color my options are to get one of the higher trims which is extra money I can't really afford.
True. I live in a small apartment block in Sydney - a recent build. With the bare concrete walls and floor and the 15 cars parked there, if I took a picture, you'd swear it was in black and white.
Could it be because insurance companies started to charge more for cars that have bright colors? Like charging more to insure a red car vs. a black car.
Well, when I went to get my last car; grey was free and any other color cost extra. I'm not gonna pay extra money every month just to have a different look in this economy.
We're vehicle shopping, and while doing research, it is frustrating because manufacturers have limited their color stock to black, white, silver/gray, something red (either bright cherry or dark burgundy, but not both) and medium-to-dark blue. Many of these cars are a flat color, no metallic/shimmer, so they look dull and aged.
I remember the old days when they had printed brochures at the dealer, and there were at least 8-10 color swatches in the booklets.
It takes the fun out of vehicle shopping when everything looks the same.
There are actual studies that go into how and why the world is losing it's color. It's about everything wanting to be corporate. Bland colors are the least polarizing and thus sell more than any individual color. It's why agreeable gray is the most popular color.
As an owner of a plum crazy challenger I've seen everything from eggs thrown to gushing compliments. It's crazy.
I've read that cars are more colorful in economic booms, and darker more conservative colors during recessions....So I guess we've got a lot more dark cars to come!
It’s expensive to keep so many colors on hand. Especially when each line had its own colors. Plus, it creates an after market if you only sell black, white and gray.
I love colorful cars, but I’m not willing to pay more for the color. Especially when the car is a company lease, why bother paying extra for a car I have to return to my employer?
And bring back FLAT colors! Stop putting metal flake and pearl into colors, just let the color be a color it doesn’t need to look like sparkly lipstick.
In fairness, the saturation in this image has been ramped up so far that even the tarmac is glowing in places.
So yes, things were more colourful, but not really *this* colourful.
I was telling my friends this when we were playing GTA 5 a while ago. Our video game cars, we have a lot of bright colors and in real life everything is black. I read it’s because it’s easier to sale a black, white, silver car instead of a Bright yellow car. Probably other reasons also.
White cars are extremely common in Australia (unsure of other countries) because that's the default and the cheapest.
If you wanted a red or blue one it's probably an extra $500‐1000 and most people aren't too fussed about the colour of their car anyway so they just choose white lol.
This picture looks artificially colourized though. Check the cars in the back, especially the beetle on the right. Even the windows are bright orange.
Cool cars though, love the Sciroccos
It is everything. People have gotten much more conservative about color. Houses are much more likely to be grey or white now too.
Bring back pink and brown houses!
People wish for more color until colorful cars end up being way more expensive and marked up and on a waitlist and impossible to fix if the paint chips or is damaged.
We don't have colorful *anything* anymore. The walls in almost every house are neutral. Shower curtains are neutral. Towels, rugs, furniture. Neutral. Neutral. Neutral. If you do have a more colorful palette in your home, it's deemed 'eccentric'.
My mom was planning on buying a new shower curtain for her new bathroom and when I suggested a light green one with white leaves, she liked it and started looking at matching rugs and towels. I came back later and she ended up with beige everything instead.
Apparently it's so she can add accent colors later. The whole bathroom is neutral. The 'accents' were the shower curtain, rugs, and towels!
I visited my friend in India and her house was so colorful and vibrant. I wish we had more of that here.
I live in the largest gated community in the world, next to one located in China. I straight up walked out of the local Walmart and immediately saw 10 white suvs lined up (mine was in the middle). There were no exclusions in between and plenty more around.
I am car shopping now and the fact that the only fun colors are the highest performance trims on the cars i am considering pisses me off
Bmw offers you to customize the color for a modest price. Wtf don’t the others? I dont want white or off white or grey or dark gray or mat gray or graygreen or black of noir black or blackest black. Phew. Nice selection
Yea they do people Just don’t buy them. Go to any manufacturers website and look at building one custom. Lots of colors to choose from. The dealers only put a few colors on the lot with popular options so that they sell faster.
Cars are big and expensive now, people think of them as an investment and they assume that colorful cars have less resale value. Smaller less expensive cars still come in a variety of colors
This has to be some staged photo. Not a regular parking lot or car sales lot. This can be done today too. I’m looking out my window right now and see 2 blue cars and a red one. But most are silver, gray, black and white.
Greatest portion of car sales are black, white, or grey.
Similar fun fact: disproportionate portion of car thefts are also black, white, or grey for much of the same reason. Carjackers want to be able to flip a vehicle quickly, and bold colors not only draw much attention during the initial theft but also sit around unsold for longer. If you buy a car in a more unique color like like green or bright orange then it’s less likely to be stolen.
Is it because (this is an assumption) less people buy cars to own long term? It reminds me of interior design trends focused more on resale value than personal preference.
There’s probably some business financial component to it though (like streamlining manufacturing), plus following sales trends.
Either way, I’m actually a fan of many of the earth tone colors that a lot of manufacturers are putting out right now
Vw actually offers a shit ton of color options that you can order your car to, although I've heard the wait times are a bit much, but they do offer "such colorful options".
There was a planet money podcast episode that talked about that a while ago.
Previously in bad financial times cars get colorful, in good times they go black or white.
However, that was disrupted by neutral color cars being more widely appealing so manufactures started producing more boring colors. Why make a lime green car when only a small percentage of people want lime green? You limit your colors so you can sell to more people who will begrudgingly accept a boring color while many people would refuse a bright color.
The exception being at the very low end of the market and the very high end.
Super cheap cars come in exciting colors, super expensive cars also come in exciting colors, midrage cars come in a wide variety of greys and blacks.
We don’t want to buy the world a Coke anymore.
We don’t smoke enormous quantities of hash anymore.
We don’t weigh under 120 anymore.
No more fun of any kind
Look at how small those cars are. We aren’t those people anymore.
Theory. Homes in coastal fishing communities were often brightly colored because they used the marine paint used on the boats.
Could it be that cars were so bright then because marine paint made sense to use back then for longevity? Entirely a made up theory I’ve not done a second of digging to back up lol.
Lack of car colors is the consumers fault. It's been proven time and time again people just prefer a generic color. They only make the colors that sell. I get annoyed at PEOPLE when I see the parking lot full of black and white and grey cars. For the record I have never owned a white car or silver car. I do have a black car but it has bright red stripes that go across the roofline from the tip of the front bumper to bottom of the rear bumper. And that was because the dealer lot DIDNT HAVE a red one, so I had then put stripes on it.
I am old but you kids don’t know that black cars used to be more expensive. You literally paid a premium for black and grey wasn’t an option. Silver was also a premium. Hence unless you wanted flat white the colors were the way to go.
This tide of grey, is a fashion started by Volvo who only offered greys first. Hopefully it will die soon.
Not a very popular take I know, but I prefer monochrome cars. For myself at least. They are neutral, smart and feel more professional. Judging by the amount of these cars on the road I guess my take is not as unpopular as I initially thought - just on Reddit as I see this a lot on here.
The modern color palette for vehicles helps them to blend into the road, scenery, and sky whenever its stormy or overcast, so that you can't see them.
I'm also somewhat certain that white and grey cars specifically have a sensor that renders the headlights inoperable on such days so that they're especially invisible to other drivers.
I had to go car shopping a couple years ago. Apparently after covid, manufacturers were just cranking out the most popular colors: white, black, and *maybe* grey. Getting a blue or red was luck. Dealerships didn't want to trade with eachother even though they could have.
So now it's even less colorful.
In the mid-90s there was a big explosion in the number of red cars on the road. This was because there was a newly created red pigment that didn't fade in the sun. For a while it was very popular. I suspect that a lot of the cars in this photo would have faded badly after only a few years.
Bonus observation is that there are a number of ISO tests for the ability for pigments to resist fading etc, but my favourite test is the one that checks how resistant a paint formulation is to bird poo. The test involves creating a test plate with the coating on it, and then applying a synthetic poo mix on the plate and placing the unit in an exposed location. The standard gives a recipe for the synthetic poo so that you can use a mix which is of the same caustic nature for each test.
I sometimes wonder, when there is a sudden increase in the number of cars of a particular colour, whether a new pigment has been discovered. As others have observed there are quite a lot of monochromatic cars at the moment, so maybe we are overdue another new pigment...
Source: I used to work for the coatings division of an international chemicals company, and did testing of this type for customers.
We have a bright green car and a yellow truck. We love them! I refuse to ever have a plain looking car again. It’s so easy to find our cars in the parking lot.
I legit think modern design colors feed into depression as well. Study after study talks about how color can alter our moods. Well what’s happening to our moods when all we see are shades of gray everywhere?
Embrace the colors, people. For your own and everyone else’s mental health.
TBF the majority of cars has always been black/grey/silver, even back then. Because those have the highest resale value. People can always compromise with “boring” colors but if you wanna sell, you don’t want to hear “it’s a nice car but I can’t stand red”.
Everything nowadays is so sterile. Businesses are sterile, houses are sterile, car colors are sterile, it’s like a new kind of brutalism.
I hope it’s a fad that goes away.
Car colour is decided at the factory trying to maximize profit. To stock different colours is more expensive that just to have 2 or 3. So, everybody gets the same tones of grey because it is the only thing easily available.
What about competition? Shouldn't other brands offer more colour? There is not much of that. There is just a few conglomerates that own a lot of brands, and a few funds that own all the conglomerates. Competing just raises cost and reduces profit.
Mega-corporation capitalism is the new communism.
„Back in the days“ the only black cars where taxis. Why? Because they where parked on the outside the whole night while not driving around.
And they where black so they could not be seen and broken in that easily during nights.
Nowadays it’s because black looks more fancy and elegant but is also not so prone to dirt and therefore they have a higher reselling value.
Btw, this is in Wolfsburg Germany, which is where Volkswagen are based. Which also explains why 90% of the cars in the pic are VW's.
I had that blue Scirocco in the front row when I was a student. Loved that car! Edit: not sure why this is getting so many upvotes but hey cool, just remembered it nearly went on fire from a split fuel line spraying petrol all over the engine one day. Smoke all over the place both inside and outside the car but thank god no flames. Close call I think.
My wife just bought a VW. The only colors they had were black, white, gray and blue. To get a tan interior, you have to settle for white or black.
I've got a beautiful orange car and I'm proud of it ! So easy to find where I parked
Per Clarkson years ago on Top Gear it’s because it’s difficult to get the colors to match on plastic bumpers and metal fenders/doors, especially as the paint ages. So the cheap option is just various greyscale samples.
I have a brightly colored car and I love it
Mine is pink 🩷
Not just cars, either. Restaurants and fashion have lost a lot of color too.
From a practical perspective, I ruin almost every shirt I have by spilling food (should probably bib myself) and black (darker colors) hide a lot. I’m sure it’s the same with restaurants who don’t want to constantly be repainting. Also brighter colors fade pretty quick. Although I do enjoy bright colors.
like 80% of cars are boring ass black or white or grey it sucks ass, so cool seeing a neat color car now a days cars being so similarly colored also makes crime easier
How did "battleship grey" become a car color?!
[Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KchX52bIZSg) is a fun video on it
70s were a great decade, but I happy with the one I live in
Due to people saying white reflects the sun which is a lie lol
No, because coloured cars sell slower and harder.
White does not reflect the sunlight more than dark colors? Sir Isaac Newton was wrong! You heard it here first.
Yes, because colours are harder to sell. Blavknand white are the most effective choice for re selling, not being easily target or recognize and re sell.
Looks like a car park of skittles.
Why not!!??
Start your own company of colourful cars. Problem solved.
Is it just me or do they all look like model cars?
I wish cars were colourful still, grey ones are almost invisible in poor weather when the lights aren’t on, a bright yellow or green one is easier to see
I'd rather enjoy driving my car and not feel like I'm on an acid trip or living in some circus world, but I understand completely it was the the style of the time.
Now I want skittles for some reason.
White/black/silver cheaper, and extra colors more money!
In India - white,white,white 🥲
If cars were ice cream flavors, '70s cars would be rainbow sherbet. Today’s cars? Vanilla.
Because of trends
It’s cool to be dark nowadays.. Imagine if all flowers were black.. yuck
Makes me love my blue veloster n that much more. People compliment the color of my car more than anything
We do. People just don't buy them anymore. For some reason base-layer grey is now popular on Porsche, Kia and BMW. I love my Estoril Blue BMW!
All I'll say is this: A cloudy day, some paint remover, a few cans of spray paint, sandpaper, and a few cans of clear coat, and you can have a cooler car in a day or two.
I'm kind of OK with that. Base on this picture. Looks like a circus. I'm all for color and vibrance, but this picture steers me away lol
Might have been all that lead in the paint. It made colors more vibrant.
Damn, it almost looks like an autumn camouflage.
https://www.dicklovett.co.uk/bmw/news/what-is-bmw-individual
There are only five colors, maybe 6.
maybe because those colors look like [cadmium, lead, uranium, chromium, arsenic...](https://www.kremer-pigmente.com/en/information/safety/pigments-with-toxic-heavy-metals/)
This looks like the Tijuana border checkpoint.
I actually listened to a … maybe Freakonomics podcast about this. And we actually have just as many, if not more, color options for cars today then we did in the 70s. I think the issue boils down to the masses not *wanting* these colors anymore. But the colors are there. We’re given many options to choose from, people just choose against these.
I have a bright green car. I get made fun of for it a lot (not that I care, I picked out the green because I loved it) but worse, it really seems to piss people on the road off. Like drivers around me are just more asshole-ish, driving around me even though I’m more than up to speed, cutting me off, not letting me merge, etc. I know it’s the car and not my terrible driving or something, because everyone who drives my car notices it too. We’ve even tested the speedometer make sure it’s not too slow or something. People just really hate my car.
That's the color from the film camera
At some point cars had to be business appropriate so now they're mostly black, grey, white.
Mama don’t take my Kodachrome
I've owned 5 classic vws. This is so triggering. I want them all...
we're also not using NTSC or "never the same color" with its overdriven reds as a result of black & white compatibility
That VW Beetle 😍
It’s like how McDonalds got more depressing with age.
Looking to buy a car now. Most of my options are black( not really an option as I live in a place that gets to 110) or white. If I want one with color my options are to get one of the higher trims which is extra money I can't really afford.
My wife and I been looking at Jeep grand Cherokee’s and I believe if you get anything other than white or black it’s an additional $500 minimum
I've been wondering this for so long. They were so cool ETA you can see them on the roads if you visit Cuba
2nd row, blue wagon... looks suspiciously like a datsun sunny wagon. My first car was a 79 dato sunny wagon lol
Does putty color count?
Amd also these shapes and forms. Why do cars today look so ugly?
We do, but it will cost premium.
We do have colorful cars like that, they just aren’t as popular as black, sliver, and white
I don't know, I see plenty of orange / copper, yellow, bright green cars nowadays. Metallic paints, obviously
nor carpets or couches or dresses. Everything has been GAP'ified
Nardo grey somehow became the cool color in this weird timeline
True. I live in a small apartment block in Sydney - a recent build. With the bare concrete walls and floor and the 15 cars parked there, if I took a picture, you'd swear it was in black and white.
100% agree
I want a pink car so badly, but I know my car (2015 Nissan Note) won't look good with a pink wrap/paint job.
Could it be because insurance companies started to charge more for cars that have bright colors? Like charging more to insure a red car vs. a black car.
Well, when I went to get my last car; grey was free and any other color cost extra. I'm not gonna pay extra money every month just to have a different look in this economy.
We're vehicle shopping, and while doing research, it is frustrating because manufacturers have limited their color stock to black, white, silver/gray, something red (either bright cherry or dark burgundy, but not both) and medium-to-dark blue. Many of these cars are a flat color, no metallic/shimmer, so they look dull and aged. I remember the old days when they had printed brochures at the dealer, and there were at least 8-10 color swatches in the booklets. It takes the fun out of vehicle shopping when everything looks the same.
There are actual studies that go into how and why the world is losing it's color. It's about everything wanting to be corporate. Bland colors are the least polarizing and thus sell more than any individual color. It's why agreeable gray is the most popular color. As an owner of a plum crazy challenger I've seen everything from eggs thrown to gushing compliments. It's crazy.
I've read that cars are more colorful in economic booms, and darker more conservative colors during recessions....So I guess we've got a lot more dark cars to come!
It’s expensive to keep so many colors on hand. Especially when each line had its own colors. Plus, it creates an after market if you only sell black, white and gray.
I love colorful cars, but I’m not willing to pay more for the color. Especially when the car is a company lease, why bother paying extra for a car I have to return to my employer?
WOB-WOB-WOB-WOB-WOB....
And bring back FLAT colors! Stop putting metal flake and pearl into colors, just let the color be a color it doesn’t need to look like sparkly lipstick.
Nope. I can’t even find my car in a shopping parking lot. All the cars look alike and are the same color.
Germany i see.
Colour trends for cars seem to go in cycles. Give it ten years and we’ll all be driving brightly coloured cars again.
In fairness, the saturation in this image has been ramped up so far that even the tarmac is glowing in places. So yes, things were more colourful, but not really *this* colourful.
My wife’s Ford fiesta is pistachio green . It’s so visible in traffic i like it
But we do have photo editing software that will bump up color saturation to ridiculous levels like this.
We would have more colorful cars if people actually bought colorful cars. But most people don’t and just want something neutral.
Love a colorful car! I used to drive a bright orange car from the 70s, ‘twas a dream. Easy to see in traffic too!
The saturation of this photo is wild especially in the context OP is trying to convey.
Rather 1976. There are 1st generation VW Scirocco
I was telling my friends this when we were playing GTA 5 a while ago. Our video game cars, we have a lot of bright colors and in real life everything is black. I read it’s because it’s easier to sale a black, white, silver car instead of a Bright yellow car. Probably other reasons also.
The freakonomics podcast “economics of everyday things” had an episode on exactly this subject not too long ago. Super interesting s
Production cost
Nothing has any character anymore. No design or artistic approach to anything, everything is standardized and streamlined.
At least "champagne" has fallen out of fashion.
Wolfsburg
We shouldn’t even have surface parking lots At least not in urban areas
this makes me so sad - though now there are some lovely blues out there (Toyota and Chevy) 💙 not to mention the purple jeep and camaro! 💜💜
Only Nardo now
White cars are extremely common in Australia (unsure of other countries) because that's the default and the cheapest. If you wanted a red or blue one it's probably an extra $500‐1000 and most people aren't too fussed about the colour of their car anyway so they just choose white lol.
I mean I own a bright ass color truck... I'm more pissed about damn near all interiors being only black options. They're fucking annoying.
Yes, these days they are all grey, silver or black. Just like all the home interiors that seem to be in fashion.
High Contrast pic for the win!!!
I have a pearl blue Jeep. I like the orange ones. My wife decided to go for black and I said I was not washing it. I am now washing it.
There is a push by big industry to make everything, cars, clothing, items, etc., bland, asexual colors. The homogenousing of everything.
LSD became a schedule one substance right around that time, all the best body shapes and colors were no longer made after this
Those orange and greens are great.
The cars in the states back then were much larger and not quite this colorful.
We own one blue car and one red car - we do not like grayscale cars.
Thank the chicken tax
It would be too woke.
Makes my car standout that much more with todays color schemes so I’m fine with it haha
This picture looks artificially colourized though. Check the cars in the back, especially the beetle on the right. Even the windows are bright orange. Cool cars though, love the Sciroccos
Thank god
I think cars now too are like an extra 4,500% larger too just cause.
We DO have cars those colors, they are just MUCH more rare.
It is everything. People have gotten much more conservative about color. Houses are much more likely to be grey or white now too. Bring back pink and brown houses!
This, in my experience, is an anomalous collection; I was in a city in 1970, and nowhere were there this many bright colors in one lot.
Tiny ass cars and no parking lines on the sides yet half these people still parked like total shit
I love my pearl white car, I used to like the blue from Ford, but it’s changed now.
People wish for more color until colorful cars end up being way more expensive and marked up and on a waitlist and impossible to fix if the paint chips or is damaged.
Which is why I opted for a red car.
I have a green car (lunar rock rav4!)
We don't have colorful *anything* anymore. The walls in almost every house are neutral. Shower curtains are neutral. Towels, rugs, furniture. Neutral. Neutral. Neutral. If you do have a more colorful palette in your home, it's deemed 'eccentric'. My mom was planning on buying a new shower curtain for her new bathroom and when I suggested a light green one with white leaves, she liked it and started looking at matching rugs and towels. I came back later and she ended up with beige everything instead. Apparently it's so she can add accent colors later. The whole bathroom is neutral. The 'accents' were the shower curtain, rugs, and towels! I visited my friend in India and her house was so colorful and vibrant. I wish we had more of that here.
I live in the largest gated community in the world, next to one located in China. I straight up walked out of the local Walmart and immediately saw 10 white suvs lined up (mine was in the middle). There were no exclusions in between and plenty more around.
That blue wagon VW on the 2nd row to the right got my hear melted, not sure if its a 1st or 2nd gen passat or maybe other model
Dubstep parking lot... wob wob wob
I am car shopping now and the fact that the only fun colors are the highest performance trims on the cars i am considering pisses me off Bmw offers you to customize the color for a modest price. Wtf don’t the others? I dont want white or off white or grey or dark gray or mat gray or graygreen or black of noir black or blackest black. Phew. Nice selection
Must be at least 1974, the year the Golf 1 was introduced.
Yea they do people Just don’t buy them. Go to any manufacturers website and look at building one custom. Lots of colors to choose from. The dealers only put a few colors on the lot with popular options so that they sell faster.
Cars are big and expensive now, people think of them as an investment and they assume that colorful cars have less resale value. Smaller less expensive cars still come in a variety of colors
We do, you just have to spend well over $100k for them now… and that’s the entry point.
Here's the lowdown: https://youtu.be/tXHHffIIrfs?si=G4iWx06PrA9jiidb
I’d say it varies by manufacturer. I’ve seen many brightly colored Subaru crosstreks and many bright colored wraps on chargers and lambos.
I honestly love yellow cars. Yeah, it makes it look like a taxi. Yeah, it's not **bold** like darker colors. It's just a nice color to look at.
What a great pic, I bought an orange mustang, never lost it in a parking lot sea of white, gray and black
….and we definitely don’t have as many volkswagens anymore
This has to be some staged photo. Not a regular parking lot or car sales lot. This can be done today too. I’m looking out my window right now and see 2 blue cars and a red one. But most are silver, gray, black and white.
Wow
Greatest portion of car sales are black, white, or grey. Similar fun fact: disproportionate portion of car thefts are also black, white, or grey for much of the same reason. Carjackers want to be able to flip a vehicle quickly, and bold colors not only draw much attention during the initial theft but also sit around unsold for longer. If you buy a car in a more unique color like like green or bright orange then it’s less likely to be stolen.
Is it because (this is an assumption) less people buy cars to own long term? It reminds me of interior design trends focused more on resale value than personal preference. There’s probably some business financial component to it though (like streamlining manufacturing), plus following sales trends. Either way, I’m actually a fan of many of the earth tone colors that a lot of manufacturers are putting out right now
We don't have such colorful anything anymore.
I have a bright purple BMW My only wish is that it was brighter
Yellow is the highest resell color. Which is strange.
The comment about colorful cars may be true, but this picture is extremely fake
Same reason we don't have cars with spaceship design elements.... Everyone has turned into a boring consumerist blob with no hope for the future.
Climate change
Just get most of the country back on hallucinogens and coke and all the cars will look wonderful again!
Mmm, I can practically *smell* the blue smoke, lead, and lack of catalyst.
Let’s agree that the colors are exaggerated but yeah I agree nowadays it is white n grey
Vw actually offers a shit ton of color options that you can order your car to, although I've heard the wait times are a bit much, but they do offer "such colorful options".
Somewhere in the eastern bloc?
We do, but people buy the less extrovert colors, because black, white, grey are simply selling higher when selling your car.
Yeah, because we don't wanna be pulled over by the cops. We all know they hate colors
And not a single lifted Ford F-250, or any huge SUVs. Amazing. I wish I could experience that.
Beacuse they charge for anything other then a couple basic colors.
There was a planet money podcast episode that talked about that a while ago. Previously in bad financial times cars get colorful, in good times they go black or white. However, that was disrupted by neutral color cars being more widely appealing so manufactures started producing more boring colors. Why make a lime green car when only a small percentage of people want lime green? You limit your colors so you can sell to more people who will begrudgingly accept a boring color while many people would refuse a bright color. The exception being at the very low end of the market and the very high end. Super cheap cars come in exciting colors, super expensive cars also come in exciting colors, midrage cars come in a wide variety of greys and blacks.
But guys modern is good. McDonald’s looks like a dystopian version of itself so why not cars too! Why would I want color or personality?
Pastel eyesore.
They like to make cars the same color as the road, these days.
We don’t want to buy the world a Coke anymore. We don’t smoke enormous quantities of hash anymore. We don’t weigh under 120 anymore. No more fun of any kind Look at how small those cars are. We aren’t those people anymore.
Theory. Homes in coastal fishing communities were often brightly colored because they used the marine paint used on the boats. Could it be that cars were so bright then because marine paint made sense to use back then for longevity? Entirely a made up theory I’ve not done a second of digging to back up lol.
So. Many. Beetles. I love it.
Car color's are also a higher quality of paint, nowadays more high end paints than back in the day.
Lack of car colors is the consumers fault. It's been proven time and time again people just prefer a generic color. They only make the colors that sell. I get annoyed at PEOPLE when I see the parking lot full of black and white and grey cars. For the record I have never owned a white car or silver car. I do have a black car but it has bright red stripes that go across the roofline from the tip of the front bumper to bottom of the rear bumper. And that was because the dealer lot DIDNT HAVE a red one, so I had then put stripes on it.
So much lead
I am old but you kids don’t know that black cars used to be more expensive. You literally paid a premium for black and grey wasn’t an option. Silver was also a premium. Hence unless you wanted flat white the colors were the way to go. This tide of grey, is a fashion started by Volvo who only offered greys first. Hopefully it will die soon.
Living in AZ where people choose light colored cars more often, it's very extreme. White and silver everywhere.
Not a very popular take I know, but I prefer monochrome cars. For myself at least. They are neutral, smart and feel more professional. Judging by the amount of these cars on the road I guess my take is not as unpopular as I initially thought - just on Reddit as I see this a lot on here.
They looks like Netherlands houses, are they?
Show this at a convention or something in Europe with a text that says “find all the yellow cars” it will be brutal
The modern color palette for vehicles helps them to blend into the road, scenery, and sky whenever its stormy or overcast, so that you can't see them. I'm also somewhat certain that white and grey cars specifically have a sensor that renders the headlights inoperable on such days so that they're especially invisible to other drivers.
I hate modern car colours now. I buy from who ever has the brightest colour.
My white car was 4k cheaper than the blue one. That's why my car is white.
I’ll take the two scirrocos in the front.
I had to go car shopping a couple years ago. Apparently after covid, manufacturers were just cranking out the most popular colors: white, black, and *maybe* grey. Getting a blue or red was luck. Dealerships didn't want to trade with eachother even though they could have. So now it's even less colorful.
No but the cars these days have way more curves. Causing more lines get/sun reflection. Causing eye cancer, now
In the mid-90s there was a big explosion in the number of red cars on the road. This was because there was a newly created red pigment that didn't fade in the sun. For a while it was very popular. I suspect that a lot of the cars in this photo would have faded badly after only a few years. Bonus observation is that there are a number of ISO tests for the ability for pigments to resist fading etc, but my favourite test is the one that checks how resistant a paint formulation is to bird poo. The test involves creating a test plate with the coating on it, and then applying a synthetic poo mix on the plate and placing the unit in an exposed location. The standard gives a recipe for the synthetic poo so that you can use a mix which is of the same caustic nature for each test. I sometimes wonder, when there is a sudden increase in the number of cars of a particular colour, whether a new pigment has been discovered. As others have observed there are quite a lot of monochromatic cars at the moment, so maybe we are overdue another new pigment... Source: I used to work for the coatings division of an international chemicals company, and did testing of this type for customers.
Look at those beautiful Bugs! I can hear their b-b-b-b engine just looking at this!
There was a lot of brown, beige, olive and rust orange colored cars back then too
Many car manufacturers charge extra for cars that are not white or grey etc.
Tell me this is Mexico without telling me…
We have a bright green car and a yellow truck. We love them! I refuse to ever have a plain looking car again. It’s so easy to find our cars in the parking lot. I legit think modern design colors feed into depression as well. Study after study talks about how color can alter our moods. Well what’s happening to our moods when all we see are shades of gray everywhere? Embrace the colors, people. For your own and everyone else’s mental health.
This is a repost from r/70s
look at all those Volkswagens
Shit half the new cars I see these days diddnt even get their colour coat the just slapped a clear over the primer and called it a colour.
Mr Bean’s in there somewhere
TBF the majority of cars has always been black/grey/silver, even back then. Because those have the highest resale value. People can always compromise with “boring” colors but if you wanna sell, you don’t want to hear “it’s a nice car but I can’t stand red”.
Everything nowadays is so sterile. Businesses are sterile, houses are sterile, car colors are sterile, it’s like a new kind of brutalism. I hope it’s a fad that goes away.
We may not have those bright cars these days, but, we also dont have people that can park like that these days either...
Car colour is decided at the factory trying to maximize profit. To stock different colours is more expensive that just to have 2 or 3. So, everybody gets the same tones of grey because it is the only thing easily available. What about competition? Shouldn't other brands offer more colour? There is not much of that. There is just a few conglomerates that own a lot of brands, and a few funds that own all the conglomerates. Competing just raises cost and reduces profit. Mega-corporation capitalism is the new communism.
„Back in the days“ the only black cars where taxis. Why? Because they where parked on the outside the whole night while not driving around. And they where black so they could not be seen and broken in that easily during nights. Nowadays it’s because black looks more fancy and elegant but is also not so prone to dirt and therefore they have a higher reselling value.
Clown car era
Yes, but we have paint.