To wonder when all the cars on our roads turned monochrome?!

[GinDaddyRedux]

I was recently flamed by some colleagues for considering buying a red car. I was told "you won't get let out at junctions", "people will automatically think you're having a mid-life crisis", "you'll get gobbed on by passers-by" etc ...

It got me thinking - when did we drain the colour out of car choices? Is this an envy thing, a "tall poppy" cut-down?

For reference yes, it is a 4-seater sports coupe, but there aren't many of the type I want to buy, and especially fewer with a manual gearbox. The one I found is in post-box colour red.

My point is, literally every single person in that group chat, male and female, has a monochrome car. Three "gunmetal grey", two black, one white.

My neighbours all to a fault seem to have grey or black. One has a blue people carrier and I love them for it, it's so good to see some actual colour on the street.

Yes this is trivial, yes I'm sure someone will be along to tell me about their yellow Cinquecento they once owned, or their current forest green Discovery or whatever. If so, you're of my thinking and this post is not to you.

I'm just curious - is it a PCP thing, as in, if you have to hand it back, does resale count in terms of having business grey colours?

I go to supermarket car parks in my bright blue estate car and I notice the stares, it's quite amusing - its as if people take umbrage to the existence of the thing. Everywhere else? Is a sea of grey, silver, black, more black, and a few white Kias or whatever was in vogue a few years back.

AIBU to wonder why people don't buy colourful cars any more? Would you automatically think "knob" if you saw a person in a red coupe?

DH gets a company car every three years, and without fail, nearly all the available colours the model comes in are some variety of grey or silver. It’s depressing. Once I convinced him to select a lovely shiny metallic blue but he got cold feet at the last moment and changed the order to dark grey.

I always go for blue if I can (no company car so mine are always secondhand, so obv you don’t have as much choice). My current car is silvery blue but my last one was a gorgeous metallic aqua.

Previously we had a lovely metallic red people-carrier but when we downsized the only available option was silver. I can never find the damn thing in car parks because almost every other car is the same shape and colour. So boring too.

Mines red and i love it, on our street are white, black and shades of grey/silver....one blue.

It’s funny what people are saying about white and black being cheapest - my mum used to have a motability car, and the very first one she got, in about 1990, you could have white, non-metallic red or non-metallic blue without paying extra, but black and the metallic colours cost more.

With racing stripes... Which seemed quite unnecessary for the shitty 1 litre engine.

Oh come on. You know they make it go faster. 😂

I think some cars don’t suit their colour. My car is white with black wing mirrors, alloys and pan roof. It looks awful in red. Actually, it looks awful in silver and blue.

Go for whatever colour you like I say!

I have a white car for the first time ever. My choice was a bit limited as I bought a pre-reg car as it was many thousands cheaper that the equivalent brand new even though it had done only 10 miles. My friend bought exactly the same make and model but brand new and she had to pay £700 extra for it in white. It’s a very lovely pearlised white though so the specialist finish obviously accounts for the cost. And the most bizarre thing is, it doesn’t show the dirt that my previous black car did. Who’d have thought it?

I’ve notices this for ages! Car parks are a sea of a silver, it’s sad. I love seeing footage of car parks from the 70s, so much colour! I read an article about this a while ago and apparently it people’s car colour choice can be linked to what’s going on in society at the time. Recessions can trigger lots of muted tones and in peace time prosperity people feel safe enough to get colourful.

My car is white and my husband's car is black. They were on a PCP offer and at the advertised price the colour choices were black, white, silver or red. Didn't want red or silver and didn't want to have the same colour which is how we ended up with black and white. I would have loved it in blue but they wanted an extra £50 a month for that

The Fiat 500 comes in a disgusting colour that I can only describe as baby shit. I do wonder why anyone in their right mind would choose that to drive around in.

I would love a car in racing green, but seems to be very unfashionable.

My parents had a lovely beige Mercedes
when I was a kid, it was a very elegant colour (and hid the rust well...)

I find it annoying, and really hard to find my car some days (gunmetal grey)
I wanted the car in green, but the only green one we could find to the spec dh wanted was in Glasgow and were South East, he wasn't willing to go that far for a private seller, so we ended up buying the one we have because it ticked all the boxes... It does have red interior lights, trim and seatbelts though haha

Mine is orange, megane new model I love it
Had a blue qashqai blue Chrysler voyager
But silver and black Peugeot and Clio
Def like some colour but haven’t noticed other people’s cars
Boyfriends is black and a terrible car too

Mine is mint green, and at the time I was buying there was the exact same age, model and even very similar mileage in another garage for £1000 less, it was white.

I'd already fallen for the green one by then though, so I negotiated another £250 off the price of mine and bought it anyway

I have a red Golf. When I bought it six years ago, the only colours available were ordinary red, darker metallic red (mine) and dark blue.

If I wanted to buy a Golf today, the only colour options are dark blue or "lime yellow metallic." There are seven monochrome options though.

I actually would have preferred purple, yellow or turquoise. Looks like I shouldn't hold my breath. Or maybe I should move to Germany, I believe there you specify a custom colour from the same palette that is available only on Audis in the UK. There are about 100 different colours. (Last time I looked, a custom colour was a 2K option. I'd pay it.)

Having said that, grey can be a good colour for a car, although silver (that used to be the most common colour a decade or two back) is now hardly seen on new cars, and is probably the best monochrome option in the UK. (In a sunny and drier country, white can look good.)

always wonder who buys cars in “poo brown

I think I've seen a Citroen DS5 in bronze that looked really, really nice.

When we got our last car you could have silver, white or black without paying extra. I'd love a bright purple or green car but not enough to fork out 1k for it that could be spent on a holiday.

We have a black car and a grey car because they hide the dirt

A red car would be lovely!

Unscientific survey from my front window, residential street, London:

10 silver
11 black
8 white
5 blue
1 red

You’re absolutely right but I’d never noticed!

It definitely goes in fashions. 20 years ago silver was smart but then metallic grey came along and overtook that in popularity.

Price is a factor both in terms of original cost and resale factor. Matt paint has always been cheapest but white (normally one of the few matt choices) only became fashionable about 12 years ago for cars; it was always one of the cheap options but went quite quickly from being unpopular to ubiquitous.

Metallic Poo brown and Matt greige are actually the next big thing I think. Honestly.

YABVU to refer to black, grey and white as monochrome. Monochrome literally means one single colour, so unless you have a fondness for old school two tone like the early beige fiesta with a brown roof, pretty much all cars have been monochrome for 40 years. I think fashion magazines started the annoying trend for using monochrome as a synonym for black and white.

Totally agree about boring car colours, but from this thread it seems largely driven by manufacturers and pricing. The other thing that gets me is why about 70% of people seem to have black winter coats and another 20% grey or navy? Just makes those gloomy winter days that bit more depressing.

Rayna37

Maybe bland would be the better choice of Phase

I have just bought a brand new car and it is grey. I didn't particularly WANT grey but every other colour was an extra £600. DH bought a brand new car a few years back and the only 'free' colour was red, so he has a red one. I reckon that some bright spark buys a cheap job lot of paint and that is the 'free' colour that year.

I’d quite like a new VW Golf - on the back of this thread, I’ve just checked what colour I could get and these are the options: piss yellow, mid blue, grey, grey, grey, silver, black, white, white. Two different whites and three greys, ffs. No red, nothing exciting at all.