Car color preferences around the world

Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/04/03/car-color-preferences-around-t.html

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…which seems rather weird given the danger of encounters with American police.

Red wuns go fasta, but they’re also regrettably effective cop-bait. Perhaps there’s safety in numbers.

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Is ‘chrome’ a color?

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I like Silver colors.

Well, I’d love a royal purple, but that rarely comes standard.

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I miss Fiat Green, but I’d prefer it as a flake paint, like the electric blue and burnt orange car coats one occasionally sees on newer models these days.

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brownish-black?

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The India/Pakistan neighborhood is the region that gets it right. I can’t for the life of me understand why the rest of the world prefers their vehicles to look so boring:

Just look at it…

If somebody asks me what color I prefer, the correct answer is “Yes, please!”

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The ideal car color for where I live should be called “metallic pollen”.

I used to work for a car manufacturer, one of the European ones enjoying the non-unionized southern US, and one year they introduced a black color that had a large metallic fleck in it and with an appropriately grand name. The nickname for that color within certain circles in the plant was “Bass Boat Black”, referencing the extra sparkly colors used on bass fishing boats around here. The home office was reportedly NOT amused.

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Janice Joplin had the right idea as well.

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Batman wouldn’t have caught her so often if Catwoman had had that sweet Catmobile!

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This falsely ascribes a “preference” in Africa, where the vast majority of cars are actually sold used from Asia. Thus you’ll see that the African “preference” is essentially the same as the Asian preference, but when you’re looking at the set of used cars in aggregate, although individuals may make color selections from within the set, the color distribution of the set as a whole is fixed. It’s not like new car production, which responds to demand and direct orders.

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Can confirm for Japan there are many white cars here. Maybe less then a few years ago, but still the most popular color is definitely white. It’s weird to occasionally come across by random chance a whole row of white cars in a parking lot.

Much rarer than white, but still seen surprisingly often are pink cars. Enough that I can say I see more pink cars here in Japan in one day than my entire life in 20th century America. (~ 3 decades or so) Although most of them are a kind of muted, or salmon pink than a hot pink you might be imagining.

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Aha, my aubergine-purple car puts me in the top 1% of humankind. Must be the top, because it’s furthest right on the bar.

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Take a look at Africa. The #2 most popular color is silver, but they put a black car over it instead of a silver one. Bad infographic or subtle racism. Just kidding, it’s bad infographic.

Here ya go:

Enjoy!

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Black with the branding chrome removed.

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I’ve had a few black cars, some red ones, lots of blue and several green cars. I have not had a white car…absolute deal-breaker for me, the same with that nasty oatmeal metallic that’s too common. I have a white toilet, a white bathtub, washers and dryers. I’m damned if I’ll drive a car that match’s my deep freeze…no soul no class, hides or obfuscates the styling. I do miss the tu-tone colors of the 50’s & 60’s. On some tu-tones a few cars that were accented white. My favorite was a 54 Caddy painted emerald firemist green

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I have had two cars that may have been green. I can’t really tell. I was basically having to rely on other people to tell me what color my car was.

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My van broke down once while on a trip during the college years. It was doa so I traded it for another vehicle. The only one I could afford was a white… I forget what make and model. Ended up it was a model used as a fleet car and was a few month from exploding. But that white. So terrible. Friends alternated between asking me when I was going to give my mom’s car back to just referring to it as the Great White Sperm. I never hated a car I owned so much. Sure was happy to ditch it a year or so later. Lesson learned.

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i wonder what the list would look like if people could actually choose their color, instead of selecting from the manufacturers available options

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