Why are our cars painted such boring colors?

April 24, 2016 9:54 AM

They’re all white and silver. Cars used to be poppy red! Tangerine! Pea green! [SLSlate, 2011]
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome (115 comments total)

My parents had a, not to put too fine a point on it, shit-brown Austin Allegro for years. It ultimately had its engine crushed by a tractor, met on a blind bend, while my father was driving down to the village to get me from school. It made the rest of the 5 mile round trip, before being left to rust in the garden for several years, occupied by our cat. And that is my story.
posted by howfar at 10:07 AM on April 24, 2016 [27 favorites]

Ford & Mazda have put out some very nice teal & cerulean blue colors in the past few years, but the selection does seem limited these days. When you live in a hot climate though, a certain practicality informs color choice. When we bought my wife's Volvo V40 about 10 years ago, we were undecided on the color, & there were several on the lay at the exact same price. It was a warm sunny afternoon & I walked up between a silver & a red one & put a hand on each- the surface of the silver one was 20 degrees cooler to the touch & that settled the matter pretty much instantly.
posted by Devils Rancher at 10:09 AM on April 24, 2016 [8 favorites]

Exactly! They're all boring colors --- a few months ago I looked up a model online: it came in a dusty boring blue, a dull wine-ish red, black, white, and three shades of grey..... or as a long-distance trucker I know calls all those greys: asphalt, concrete and overcast-sky. He says they're the worse for visibility.

And some people wonder why I continue to drive my 2003 electric-blue PT Cruiser.... heck, it's because I can find the thing in a parking lot!
posted by easily confused at 10:13 AM on April 24, 2016 [7 favorites]

Why are we so into sparkly, iridescent cars? Michelle Killen, the lead exterior paint designer for GM North America, thinks it’s simple: These effect paints look expensive, and you can get them without paying more. “Especially today,” she says, “with the investment we’re putting into vehicles—less leasing, keeping them five to 10 years—we want a car that maintains a quality that looks expensive.”

The phenomena of something "looking expensive" without actually "costing more" is usually eclipsed by that same thing looking cheap because every cheap thing has it.

My parents had a, not to put too fine a point on it, shit-brown Austin Allegro for years.

That car actually looks Pullman brown to me. I kinda like it.
posted by cosmic.osmo at 10:14 AM on April 24, 2016 [5 favorites]

There are still good colors available, but dealers won't stock them because they won't sell. And if you want to custom order a color then you'll have to wait for it, and you can forget squeezing any savings out of the dealership - if you can get them to do it at all. My dad wanted to order his old Merc in an interesting color and the dealership flatly refused to order it. "That's ugly" the salesman said.
posted by 1adam12 at 10:18 AM on April 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

I think this is part of a larger trend. Take a look at old advertising or catalogs and you'll see amazing colors in home decoration as well. Kitchens, appliances, bathroom tile and fixtures, all came in amazing colors. You'll see occasionally see a time capsule 1950s home come up for sale with a bright pink or mint green bathroom. Now, wander through a home store and you'll see appliances in white, black, or stainless. Toilets and tubs come pretty much exclusively in white. It's a monochromatic world.

Some of it is fashion, I'm sure, but I agree with the author that a great deal of it is concern with resale value. It's become so common as to become a joke, my friends talk about repainting a room as "Real Estate Agent White." This seems to turn down the gain on pretty much everything into a uniform depressing greige.
posted by LastOfHisKind at 10:22 AM on April 24, 2016 [30 favorites]

Surprised nothing about insurance costs is mentioned. I bought a Mazda CX5 in 2013 and the white version was 25 to 50/mo cheaper than the red/dark blue ones on the quotes I got. Not to mention Mazda added "metallic paint" fee for the red and blue.
posted by M Edward at 10:23 AM on April 24, 2016

To save money, car makers pick a very small and boring color palette. Boring is less risk that they will be stuck with millions of units of unsold MountainDewXtreme™-Edition Corollas. The more you pay for a car, the more fun color choices you get, generally, because you want to be their customer.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 10:24 AM on April 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

Older cars tended to burn out much more quickly than modern ones, so having a trendy color wasn't as big of a deal. If you're going ot have a car for 10 years, you might not want to jump in on a color that will look dated in 4.
posted by Ferreous at 10:25 AM on April 24, 2016 [4 favorites]

I walked up between a silver & a red one & put a hand on each- the surface of the silver one was 20 degrees cooler to the touch & that settled the matter pretty much instantly.

I'm having this trouble right now. My wife has a silver car (we live in California) and the only options for the (used) car I want in terms of colour seems to be silver and maybe a couple of black or one blue one (in 2 months of looking). So we may end up with two silver cars because colour can't come into the decision past the obvious mileage/spec/age parameters.

I'm no fan of silver cars, but the hot weather and the sheer availability means I will likely end up with one.
posted by Brockles at 10:26 AM on April 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

I drive a green car because colour-blind police won't be able to tell if I'm speeding when I drive away from them.
posted by nfalkner at 10:30 AM on April 24, 2016 [32 favorites]

I'm happy with white, both for keeping the car a bit cooler, but also for visibility to other vehicles. I've had a darker silver ("Heather Mist" iirc) car and felt that it blended more into the road at dusk.
posted by idb at 10:30 AM on April 24, 2016

Grey is the lightest colour that's not white, and dark colours pretty much turn the Dodge Caravan into a rolling sweatlodge in the summer. Plus there's all the extra exercise you get walking around the grocery store parking lot trying to figure out which of the 9 identical grey minivans is yours.
posted by Mary Ellen Carter at 10:33 AM on April 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

Ford & Mazda have put out some very nice teal & cerulean blue colors in the past few years

Really? I was at a Mazda dealership a month or so ago, and all of the colors looked incredibly dull. Mazda does a really good job on its website representing these cars in red or one of the blues looking really great, but when I saw them in person, I actually tried wiping my finger over them since I figured they were just covered in rail dust from transport. Nope, pretty clean, just naturally dull and washed out.

Other than the '70s muscle car revival models, the only cars I've noticed lately with exciting colors are bargain basement hatchbacks. I guess only "kids" are allowed to have the cool colors.
posted by indubitable at 10:37 AM on April 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

Someone needs to invent a thermochroic auto paint that is white when hot, but can be your choice of other colors when cool. I'd love a deep metallic blue vehicle, but damned they get too hot.
posted by yesster at 10:38 AM on April 24, 2016 [15 favorites]

I've seen quite a few matt black cars around. They look expensive to me, maybe because they're not the normal shiny paint.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 10:38 AM on April 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

I don't understand why matte paint is so expensive on cars. Other than the environmental qualities of dealing with more sunlight and birdshit, how different could it possibly be in formulation from regular old house paint?
posted by oceanjesse at 10:39 AM on April 24, 2016

I was walking in a rich neighborhood a couple days ago and for some reason was noticing what sorts of cars these rich people drove, and even then almost missed the brand new Model X parked outside a modernist palace. It was almost unseeable because it was that standard shade of glossy gray that is everywhere these days. Why would you spend $100K on a new car with gullwing doors, and get it in the only color more boring than brown? Why do people buy millions of cars in this color? It looks like the color they use to illustrate what it's like to see the world without color perception; a dead whale on the beach; clay, when the lake has finally evaporated; fresh zombie. Or is this what people are calling "silver"? In any case, amidst these beautiful houses in the bloom of spring, a spectacularly designed car was rendered almost invisible by its color. Cars are so fundamentally ugly to begin with, it's a shame that dealers and buyers are so eager to amplify the nothingness.
posted by chortly at 10:40 AM on April 24, 2016 [15 favorites]

In my neighborhood, about a month ago, I noticed a new-to-the-hood car parked in the area - I'd say it was a 70s model something, but SUPER bright blue, with white trim. It even had tinted blue windows. It's not for sale, and I'm not shopping, but you have NO IDEA how much I want this car - because after seeing it a couple times, I realized "holy shit it looks like a Tardis".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:41 AM on April 24, 2016 [7 favorites]

The more you pay for a car, the more fun color choices you get, generally, because you want to be their customer.

Oh yeah, you can get a Porsche in just about any color you want from the factory if you're willing to pay out the nose for it. Metallic brown Boxster? Check.
posted by indubitable at 10:41 AM on April 24, 2016

Possible answers: A car is a tool? I don't really look for hammers in fashionable colors either.

Or, black/white/grey go with any outfit?
posted by ctmf at 10:53 AM on April 24, 2016 [10 favorites]

White, silver, grey and black account for three-quarters of all cars sold. So only one in four bought is blue, green, red, yellow, brown, etc. Why are cars boring colours today? Because most people are boring. Why the hell would a car manufacturer mass produce a purple & orange striped car if there's only one person in the world who would buy it? We don't want colourful cars, so they don't make them.

(When you're talking about Porsche and other high end cars, you can get them custom built any damned way you want. Not just the overall colour and interior, but different colours on different exterior elements like side mirrors, rims, and spoilers, and different materials on different interior elements like vent surrounds, headrests, and steering wheel. But you'll pay for it in advance because there's no damned way that'll sell to anyone else on the lot.)

I'm surprised someone mentioned insurance... there's absolutely no reason colour should result in different insurance rates, and I've been told that directly from insurance companies. Red cars aren't more expensive to insure than black ones, period. Red cars tend to be more expensive to insure, because they tend to be sportier cars, but a red Ford Focus should have the exact same rate as a grey Ford Focus.
posted by GhostintheMachine at 10:56 AM on April 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

My car is largely white, but with a fetching green accent panel. It's a very nice green, if only we'd gotten in more accidents.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 11:05 AM on April 24, 2016 [14 favorites]

"Plus there's all the extra exercise you get walking around the grocery store parking lot trying to figure out which of the 9 identical grey minivans is yours."

I take pictures of this all the time, when I go to preschool dropoff and there are 11 silver minivans parked in a neat row. Or the zoo. Or the children's museum. It never ceases to amuse me. (Mine is also silver, I bought it used, and that was basically the only color available. I do keep thinking about having purple flames put on the side but I never quite get around to it.)

I heard an interview on NPR a few years back with a car painting shop owner, and he said that while he does all these crazy, fancy custom paint jobs, all his own cars are silver/grey because it's the easiest to maintain, lasts the longest, and hides damage the best.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 11:08 AM on April 24, 2016 [4 favorites]

I want avocado and sea foam green to be car color options.
posted by vuron at 11:09 AM on April 24, 2016 [10 favorites]

This is the same reason I like boring-colored handbags and colorful tops. Cheap colorful tops I can get sick of and get new ones relatively quickly. I pay some money for an outlandish handbag with bright colors and patterns, no mattter how charming it seemed at the time, it's going to start looking and feeling like a garish mistake to me long before it gets worn out. Same thing with a car. If I'm going to be stuck with something for a long time I don't want to possibly make a choice I will regret. If a certain color was in high vogue 5 years ago (like say the way mint, coral & gold are everywhere right now) it's just going to make me remember how old my car is every time I look at it.
posted by bleep at 11:20 AM on April 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

Well lately I've been seeing a lot of hideous dull orange cars on the road. A hue not seen since the 90s.
posted by fshgrl at 11:21 AM on April 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

There are still good colors available, but dealers won't stock them because they won't sell. And if you want to custom order a color then you'll have to wait for it, and you can forget squeezing any savings out of the dealership - if you can get them to do it at all. My dad wanted to order his old Merc in an interesting color and the dealership flatly refused to order it. "That's ugly" the salesman said.

My dad just bought a graphite gray Tacoma, after spending two years researching models. The available paints were super boring and he was told by several dealers that there was no way to order one in another Toyota paint color (there was a nice olive green in production on the Tundra line). It was black, white, silver, grey, a kind of pyrite color, flat beige, flat red, and a truly hideous light royal blue metallic. Nevermind that Toyota offers some really gorgeous deep jewel tones on other models, trucks are allowed only to be utilitarian. Not only that but the dealerships were only allocated a couple of the red/blue/grey/beige and could not order more - they made what they made, take it or leave it.
posted by ApathyGirl at 11:22 AM on April 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

The little Fiat Cinquecentos seem to have the best colors these days. Kia's colors aren't boring but are often ugly.
posted by Bee'sWing at 11:23 AM on April 24, 2016 [4 favorites]

I would definitely buy a car that changed color based on temperature.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 11:25 AM on April 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

Licensed insurance agent here confirming that color does not affect rates. Aftermarket paint jobs, like any customization, can affect rates. If you are being charged more due to color, you're getting ripped off and should switch companies/report to state dept of insurance.
posted by Hiding From Goro at 11:26 AM on April 24, 2016 [10 favorites]

Metallic brown Boxster?

Ford of Europe has just invested many millions launching their top-end trim level called 'Vignale', and the only colour available other than black and white is 'Nocciola.' Which is indeed metallic brown.
posted by colie at 11:28 AM on April 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

A friend of mine says he had red car as a teenager that the police would constantly stop him in for no particular reason. He got tired of that, so he painted it black. He says that fixed his police problem.

My daughter has some cars that change colour based on temperature, but they're a bit small. Heat-sensitive paint jobs have been done on real cars, but don't be surprised if they look shitty because of the patchiness of hot and cold spots on the surface of the car. Be ready for a constant blotch of the high-temperature colour above your engine, for example.
posted by clawsoon at 11:30 AM on April 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

I would definitely buy a car that changed color based on temperature.

I want one that turns from white to fluorescent orange when it rains.
posted by Devils Rancher at 11:32 AM on April 24, 2016 [11 favorites]

I think the concern for resale is mostly just an excuse to be boring, or fear of making a decision. If you buy a used car, or a used house, sure, you get what you can take in car colour and countertops, but then people redo a kitchen in grey or beige and paint everything white, and I am convinced that most of the time it's because they can't go wrong with white, not because in a nebulous future resale value will be slashed if they have a red kitchen counter.

(Not YOUR house, yours is decorated impeccably!)
posted by jeather at 11:37 AM on April 24, 2016 [4 favorites]

I laugh whenever I see an H2 or similar large, boxy truckmobile painted bright yellow, because I assume that the owner has had a lifelong desire to drive a school bus.

Anyway, temperature aside, black is the best color. Black goes with everything... sooner or later.
posted by Faint of Butt at 11:45 AM on April 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

Yeah, when we moved into our house, it was a rainbow of horrendous shades. Ketchup red dining room, mustard yellow living room (with light yellow ceiling!), different shade of yellow in the hallway, two! shades of dark blue in the master, brown paneling with blue carpet in one bedroom, and a bright green accent wall in the guest bedroom. That green wall is the only one that remains. I'll happily take my pale greige walls now; the pictures and furniture are the accents that stand out, not the hideously mismatched paint colors.
posted by Existential Dread at 11:51 AM on April 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

I would never buy a new car, and color hasn't been on my list of priorities, but to be honest, I wish I had the baby blue version of my car...
posted by mumimor at 11:51 AM on April 24, 2016

I laugh whenever I see an H2 or similar large, boxy truckmobile painted bright yellow, because I assume that the owner has had a lifelong desire to drive a school bus.

There was a Jeep commercial a while back that said, "Know why all those SUVs come in yellow? So they're easy to spot when they get stuck and Jeeps have to rescue them."
posted by ejs at 11:56 AM on April 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

Anyway, temperature aside, black is the best color. Black goes with everything... sooner or later.

It's also like buying yourself a part time job if you're into maintaining the finish. Scratches and swirls show up instantly under sunlight.
posted by indubitable at 11:57 AM on April 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

Why not just paint your car the colour you want? Lennon's psychedelic Roller wasn't a factory option, I'm sure.
posted by Devonian at 12:06 PM on April 24, 2016

To save money, car makers pick a very small and boring color palette. Boring is less risk that they will be stuck with millions of units of unsold MountainDewXtreme™-Edition Corollas. The more you pay for a car, the more fun color choices you get, generally, because you want to be their customer.

For a few years now, Jeep has been doing very well by each year having new colors available for the Wrangler, some of them quite vivid. And since each color is only used for a short time, people seem to like the cachet of driving a vehicle where very few were made in that color.

Well lately I've been seeing a lot of hideous dull orange cars on the road. A hue not seen since the 90s.

I see a lot of Subaru Crosstreks in that color, along with some Honda Fits and some Mazdas (and the aforementioned Wranglers), but not at all in some kinds of vehicles like minivans.
posted by Dip Flash at 12:07 PM on April 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

Back in the 70s, my folks bought a bright orange Chevy Vega station wagon.

That Chevy Vega may be why bright orange became an extinct automobile color.

I have seen a couple new American muscle cars in some very attractive colors.

But I find many of the more utilitarian (and not so utilitarian) cars these days not only come in boring colors, they are boring overall and tend to all look the same to me. SUVs, minivans, sedans I find nearly indistinguishable regardless of brand and pretty boring to look at.

Someone in the neighborhood has what I think is a Trans Am with what might be a wrap in a silver/mirror color. I can't imagine someone stripped the paint and totally buffed out the bare steel to mirror finish and finished in clear coating. Kind of looks like s cylon from the 70s Battlestar Galactica. Around the block from my house is a Morgan dealership with a three wheeler using a similar buffed metal color. I should go ask if it's buffed metal or some kind of plastic wrap- type adhesive cover.

For a pretty long stretch, we were a one car family, a blue Caravan that was a pretty decent utilitarian getabout. Until someone stole it, 170k miles, salvage title and all. Through weird circumstance, we've now ended up a four car family. My usual ride, a former CHP Crown Vic, with 160k, really needs a paint job. Upon decommission, CHP does a quick and dirty black or white paint job. This post is making me think I should go with orange or pink. Something bright and unique. There was a web site of a guy documenting his Rustoleum car job that turned out decent. Hmmm...
posted by 2N2222 at 12:16 PM on April 24, 2016

> Why not just paint your car the colour you want? Lennon's psychedelic Roller wasn't a factory option, I'm sure.

When you're buying a Rolls Royce from the factory, anything you can afford is an option.
posted by ardgedee at 12:24 PM on April 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

I learned I have mild red/green colorblindness when I discovered that the car I'd bought (used) is a shade of green. I can kind of see it now, but only because I know. I see most greens just fine, but something about that muted dark car paint does not read as green to me, but instead more a kind of grey. greyn.

And so despite having a green car, it still blends in with all the greys in parking lots.
posted by joeyh at 12:31 PM on April 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

I hate silver cars because so many people drive in rain or snow without headlights and they become practically invisible. My current car is red, my last car (RIP) was red and I like being able to find it quickly in a parking lot.
posted by AFABulous at 12:32 PM on April 24, 2016 [5 favorites]

Silver and white cars show a lot less dirt. I hate washing my car. So it's silver.

There are millions of shops to get your car customized in any color if that's something you care about.
posted by emjaybee at 12:35 PM on April 24, 2016

I *love* my yellow Focus; always easy to find in a parking lot.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 12:41 PM on April 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

I remember seeing Smart Cars in England in 2001 or so, and they came in a variety of cool colors and patterns. But every single one I see over here is either white/blue or grey.

I've had a cream, grey, and blue cars in the past—my current vehicle is a dusty purple, and I still feel invisible. Our next car shoud be painted the yellow/green of the fire engines from Emergency instead, I think.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 12:45 PM on April 24, 2016

I got my car in this nice purplish-blue that Mazda called Stormy Blue, which was objectively the best color available for it. Of course, that meant that the dealership spent hours with me waiting there, claiming they couldn't find one while searching wider and wider distances and asking if I wouldn't mind a different color. Finally, I decided that I really wasn't in a hurry to buy a car (and actually had only been planning to test drive that day anyway) and started to get up to leave. They then quickly found one in Stormy Blue and had it shipped over from some dealership elsewhere in the state where it had been sitting.

Luckily I got some special deal through work where I was guaranteed to only pay invoice, because otherwise I'm sure they would have screwed me over to get the color I wanted
posted by ckape at 1:07 PM on April 24, 2016

A glance at the power spectrum of sunlight, suggests that the part of the visible spectrum you could get away with absorbing with the least consequence of heating up would be blue/violet with a wavelength below ~450 nm, but it's not clear to me what color car you'd have if your paint absorbed that and reflected the rest -- a kind of silvery-orange? I've seen cars that color, and they had novelty appeal, but I think that would have palled pretty fast.

And though I've looked at that spectrum a fair amount, I don't remember noticing so much power in the 750-1750 nm infrared band; it would be very interesting to know how reflective the silvery paint jobs are in that range. I'd guess pretty reflective, but I think it might be worth making sure.

Black objects turn out to be more efficient at emitting radiant energy too, so ideal cooling capacity, all other things being equal, would be something like whiteness at all wavelengths where a significant amount of energy is coming in, coupled with blackness at the strongest wavelengths associated with your own black body temperature, insofar as that would be achievable.
posted by jamjam at 1:11 PM on April 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

I bought a Saab in a flat gray heritage color they called "Dolphin Grey" in 2003, the one year they shipped it on the model I own. It's a really cool color, sort of a bluish-gray. There was evidently little demand in the marketplace for cars painted this color, so they abandoned it for subsequent model years.
posted by killdevil at 1:16 PM on April 24, 2016

I laugh whenever I see an H2 or similar large, boxy truckmobile painted bright yellow, because I assume that the owner has had a lifelong desire to drive a school bus.

My giant ford van that was converted into an 4x4 RV by Sportsmobile is bright yellow, and I love it.

The official name for the color is "school bus yellow".

No I cannot afford a new Sportsmobile; the used market is great because people way overbuy and it's hard to get financing for them
posted by flaterik at 1:17 PM on April 24, 2016

I once did some gardening for an old German lady who told me she'd made the decision to move to America while she was still on the boat. As soon as she could see the cars on the shoreline, and that they were all different colours (in Germany they'd been all black), she decided to stay.

When I was living in L.A. I wanted to get a Toyota Tacoma. I'd settled on white because that's what gardeners and construction workers drive and I thought the resale would be lower. Girlfriend vetoed that. Hello metallic black!
posted by klanawa at 1:19 PM on April 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

I have a Kiwi green ('slime green,' according to my husband) Honda Element that gets a lot of ' love it' comments all the time, as well as notes left on the windshield about buying it. While it not the only one around, it has a Read sticker on the back. One does need to be a courteous driver in the neighborhood when everyone recognizes your car. I tend to be early at work events, and get, "I knew I was in the right place; I saw your car."

St Paul Police have a metallic orange muscle car as one of their unmarked cars. Sneaky & unexpected. I see it often with cars pulled over.
posted by Nosey Mrs. Rat at 1:19 PM on April 24, 2016 [10 favorites]

Boring appeal to the middle car design is the norm, and it sucks. Fortunately there are aftermarket options that are becoming cheaper and more fun all the time.

Vinyl wraps are expensive when done right, but you can get any color, cool effects like sparkles and pearl, and they also protect the original paint, helping with resale. You can get any xustom graphics too, Just Google purrarry or nyan cat lambo.

Plastidip is also an interesting option. Cheaper than vinyl, and you can diy or pay a pro.

I have a basic model Fiat 500 in white. These are quite popular in San Francisco. Pink plastidip on the antenna and diy vinyl on the fenders was under $50 and now it takes 10 seconds to find my car.
posted by Doroteo Arango II at 1:30 PM on April 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

Five years ago I would have been really scornful of people who couldn't remember where they parked. This was before I walked out of the grocery store and got in somebody else's burgundy Subaru and wondered, "Who moved my seat? Who moved my kleenexes?"

Seriously. Maroon Subarus with gray underbody. They're ubiquitous in Boulder.
posted by Bruce H. at 1:30 PM on April 24, 2016 [6 favorites]

Actually, I thought this was a gendered phenomenon. When I was selecting my first (and so far my only) car, it was put to me this way. If you have an extremely basic car color, no one can pick out your car as being feminine. That way, you will be less likely to be singled out for crime in a parking lot, and down the line a buyer of either gender will be willing to consider your car. (Male buyers may not want to buy a car of a color so bright it gets coded as "gay." The entire Miata was coded gay at one point -- is that still true?)

I was discouraged from getting girlish, cartoony accessories for the car for this reason. Also from getting a Darwin fish, in case somebody got angry and keyed the car.

In summary: my home state has some weird and bad ideas about car culture and now I have them too.
posted by Countess Elena at 1:32 PM on April 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

I wonder what the law-enforcement take on color-changing paint might be. Seems like that could be a complicating factor in spotting fugitives or tracking down stolen vehicles.
posted by Strange Interlude at 1:51 PM on April 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

And auto registrations record the car's color as well; would I need to re-register my car as "polychromic" if I got a chameleon paint-job?
posted by Strange Interlude at 1:53 PM on April 24, 2016

The most interestingly colored car I ever owned was the first car I ever bought for myself (after a white Chevy Vega my parents gave me as a 'good student reward' - and to avoid me borrowing THEIR cars). I was working for a radio station where one of the perks for the ad salesmen was a 'company car', which they would get from local dealers in exchange for one commercial per day on the station. Anyway, the Sales Manager, who drove a Datsun (pre-Nissan) 240Z from such a deal pointed me to his dealer who gave me a deal on a subcompact B210 in the "Honey Bee" style, a very bright yellow with decals of a 'racing stripe' and a cartoon bee. A much more relevant deal was a car loan with a local bank/sponsor at a rate I otherwise wouldn't have qualified for.

My "last car", acquired after bankruptcy for cash from a private seller was a dark green Ford Taurus which was already ten years old and survived another eight with benign neglect. I considered it a rather plain vehicle until Conan O'Brien made a running joke after moving his talk show from New York, where he said he never drove, to L.A., where he 'got his old car out of mothballs' ... and it was essentially the same car as mine.

Since becoming comfortably dependent on the local bus district's "Runabout" service, I noticed the Mini-Buses (with seating for 12 and wheelchair lifts) were all an almost-school-bus yellow (I called them Big Bees) until they recently upgraded the fleet with plain white units, plus, for the times they were only carrying one or two passengers (which for my trips was often), plain white minivans with the "RTA Runabout" logo on the side. Waiting for one of those to pick me up from a shopping trip I realized how many white minivans there are on the road. The drivers tell me they much prefer the ubiquitous/inconspicuous look.
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:59 PM on April 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

Cars only come in two colors: black or lame.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 2:01 PM on April 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

A glance at the power spectrum of sunlight, suggests that the part of the visible spectrum you could get away with absorbing with the least consequence of heating up would be blue/violet with a wavelength below ~450 nm

Related, if you look at the power spectrum of sodium vapor street lighting, there's a certain shade of green that would render a car basically invisible in the dark.

I have a Kiwi green ('slime green,' according to my husband) Honda Element that gets a lot of ' love it' comments all the time, as well as notes left on the windshield about buying it.

right? it's the one area in my life where i seem to have a sense of style and it's so awesome to get compliments.

Vinyl wraps are expensive when done right, but you can get any color, cool effects like sparkles and pearl, and they also protect the original paint, helping with resale. You can get any xustom graphics too, Just Google purrarry or nyan cat lambo.

Or automaker preproduction prototype camouflage. McLaren had a really cool one that was black and white outlines of different race tracks around the world.
posted by indubitable at 2:04 PM on April 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

aggressive/angry looking light kits and body shape designs for sports cars, SUVs,

What I hate most about SUVs is that their lights are very high for a car, which means they are right smack in the middle of my rear window, which means I am blinded a LOT at night and sometimes on cloudy days. I don't really know what the regulations are, but I wish they would prevent this.
posted by jeather at 2:09 PM on April 24, 2016 [15 favorites]

Flat black or nothing, please.
posted by furnace.heart at 2:30 PM on April 24, 2016

What I hate most about SUVs is that their lights are very high for a car

I hate that drive through ATMs and fast food windows are accommodating SUV heights, so they're uncomfortable in a regular car.
posted by AFABulous at 2:36 PM on April 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

If you can't commit to painting the whole car a fun color, how about just the convertible top?
posted by killy willy at 2:55 PM on April 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

> Pink plastidip on the antenna

what

damn...

brb, going to hardware store.
posted by ardgedee at 2:55 PM on April 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

My dad just bought a graphite gray Tacoma, after spending two years researching models. The available paints were super boring and he was told by several dealers that there was no way to order one in another Toyota paint color (there was a nice olive green in production on the Tundra line). It was black, white, silver, grey, a kind of pyrite color, flat beige, flat red, and a truly hideous light royal blue metallic.

ApathyGirl you're incorrect. A Tacoma in Blazing Blue Pearl is by far the best (I just got one).
posted by Consult The Oracle at 2:56 PM on April 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

oceanjesse, factory car paint is a LOT different from "regular old house paint". Cars are painted with an enamel, which is then treated with high heat to literally bake it onto the metal. If you used plain latex or oil paint, like you do for your walls, it would flake off or just plain melt at extreme temperatures and moisture conditions, and once you got a single missing spot, the rest of the paint would just deteriorate around it and fall off too.
posted by adrienneleigh at 3:49 PM on April 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

Why are our cars painted such boring colors?

Same reason so many houses are painted in neutrals and earth tones. It makes them easier to sell.

Most cars look good in silvers or greys. Other colors are either too bold or too hard to keep clean (black and white).

Some people want something that looks good and doesn't stick out too much, some might like a bright, bold color but are afraid it will get old or that it will make it harder to sell when they trade it in.

When I sold new cars for a living, people were usually looking for a specific model, with a specific set of options. Factory orders take a long time and therefore give the buyer a lot of time to change their mind so there is a lot of benefit to selling a car from stock. Failing that, we could do a dealer trade where we trade similar models. The customer gets their car faster so they have a preference for what we have in-stock or can trade for too.

Since changing the color usually doesn't change the price, we end up looking for cars by model and options/trim level with a list of three or four acceptable colors. Silver or grey is almost always on that list (usually both) and dealers know that those colors are easier to sell. It's not always a person's 1st choice, but it's almost always in their top three.


We usually called paint colors by their official, marketing approved names, "Emerald Mist", "Slate Metallic", etc. But browns were often called, "Stay-around-brown" because very few people like the color so they tend to become a fixture on the lot.
posted by VTX at 3:52 PM on April 24, 2016

But sometimes the dealer's kid convinces him to "spice up" a car on the lot with the promise that it will "totally sell quick, Dad."

Six months later, when a 40 year old librarian asks to see what manual transmissions you have on the lot and you show her the only one. After you watch her eyes light up and hear the giggle when she takes it for a test drive, you finally sell the thing.

I never lose Fritz in the parking lot and even though I drive it like a red car should be driven, the cops have paid me no attention thus far. However I do have a number of teenage boys that tell me my car is "sweet" and last weekend a little girl on the grocery store parking lot said she didn't know girls could drive fast cars. I smiled and told her she could drive whatever she wanted.

I'll never go back to silver.
posted by teleri025 at 4:02 PM on April 24, 2016 [23 favorites]

Metallic brown Boxster

That's not even a stretch. Porsche color 492:Nutmeg Brown Metallic.
posted by hwyengr at 4:09 PM on April 24, 2016

Now I want to know if anybody has tried to study whether people drive more cautiously near cars painted school bus yellow. I have heard more than one person tell me that a yellow car is the safest color to have but they both said it was because of visibility.
posted by bukvich at 4:13 PM on April 24, 2016

We rented a black car once. That interior really baked in the mall parking lot during a heat wave. Black looks nice, but gimme any colour except black. White looks nice new, but after a few years they start to look kinda scuffy, and flaws pop out. Silver/grey is boring, and mostly what is on offer these days.
posted by ovvl at 4:50 PM on April 24, 2016

I have a brown car, and I waited in order to get the brown because the only cars that were coming in were white, grey and black. I keep my cars 10 years, at which point the resale value is not going to be significantly affected by the colour. (There are a LOT of cars in this colour around, interestingly enough.)
posted by jeather at 4:57 PM on April 24, 2016

I'm still hoping the new Tesla comes in squant.
posted by Kabanos at 4:58 PM on April 24, 2016 [5 favorites]

This monotone cars are even worse in Japan, but the trend seems to be slowly improving here. I guess it reflects the more conservative business style and the resale value also makes more sense since Japanese people rarely keep cars longer than 10 years. The mandatory inspections/repairs make old cars much more costly, so a lot of used Japanese cars begin a second life in developing countries.
posted by p3t3 at 5:03 PM on April 24, 2016

Grey cars are the worst. On an overcast day, in that twilight grey where some drivers neglect to turn on their lights, these cars are the same colour as the road, the sky. Changing lanes on the motorway I've come close to a few scrapes by these low visibility cars. It made me think that cars ought to come with a strip of high vis reflectors on either side, the same way that guard rails do. You can't always trust drivers to turn on their lights to be more visible.
posted by robotot at 5:03 PM on April 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

If you're going ot have a car for 10 years, you might not want to jump in on a color that will look dated in 4.

There was a big trend toward teal cars in the 90s, often with purple accents. I always hated it. Haaated it. I don't know why – I've just always thought that teal (and especially teal-with-purple) looks cheap and trashy. Maybe it just reminded me of these disposable cups.

But, yeah – as much as I disliked those cars when they were new, they looked even worse once the trend had waned. You don't see many left on the road these days, which I'm fine with.

One of my favorite old-car colors is a shade of not-quite-red, not-quite-orange that always makes me think of tomato soup, often with a matte or semi-gloss finish. This isn't a perfect example – the gloss kind of ruins it – but it's close.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 5:03 PM on April 24, 2016 [4 favorites]

Speaking of heat retention and the 90s: if they can get a Hypercolor coating to last for longer than 20 minutes, I'd totally buy a Hypercolor car.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 5:04 PM on April 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

'Psychochromic' paint.
1982 article claiming correlation between bright car colors and poor economic performance.
2009 press release from Du Pont about car color and market mood.
Excerpt from "Mood Matters" (2008) about car colors.
posted by jet_silver at 5:05 PM on April 24, 2016

So am I the only person who has liked the same colours, overall, for 25+ years? I like teal, I liked teal 10 years ago and I'll bet in 10 years I will still like teal. I'm not worried about getting bored of colours I have liked since I was a pre-teen.
posted by jeather at 5:07 PM on April 24, 2016 [4 favorites]

I've been driving red cars since about 1980. Clearly, red goes faster. It's just science, people.

But to the trend of boring damn colors, I spent the afternoon looking at carpet swatches. They were universally hideous, and so much beige. Oh my god, so much yellow tinted beige. Also, I clearly need a decorator, for I cannot be trusted to pick colors.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 5:17 PM on April 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

You can't imagine how thrilled I was (really!) when my dark green ("British Racing Green") mid-50's current restoration turned out to have been painted a super-bright "apple green" when new. It's going to be returned the original color, and I'm so looking forward to that day.

I have a black convertible I bought to fix and resell, and while black cars (especially with a medium tan interior and top like this one has) can look nice, my god, what a huge pain to keep shiny.

And I'm done with silver. At one point I had four cars/motorcycles here that were all variations on that color (including mrs. maxwelton's car) and while it is a pleasant shade in moderation, enough is enough.

There is an ancient British make called Austin Healey, and a friend owns one in my favorite scheme (this is not his car, just a representative image): Pacific Green over Florida Green, with a "beige" interior (which is kind of a whitish color) with green piping on the seats. Gold instruments! Why would you buy a white or black car instead?
posted by maxwelton at 5:47 PM on April 24, 2016 [9 favorites]

When was a kid, my two favorite Matchbox cars were silver. I loved the look of the silver color. Now I have a silver Honda and I love it and don't care one bit that every parking lot has dozens of cars that look just like it.
posted by straight at 5:56 PM on April 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

Clearly, red goes faster. It's just science, people.

Tell that to my 2.5L 4 cylinder Ranger.

Red truck, navy motorcycle, black/white/purple frame* motorcycle, orange motorcycle.

The only one I had any say in was the orange motorcycle--I built that bike & picked that paint.

Motorcycles seem to come in a much wider selection of colors. Except dirt bikes. There you get red Hondas, yellow Suzukis, green Kawasakis, blue Yamahas, orange KTMs, & navy/yellow Husquvarnas, pretty much always as far as I can tell.

*sung to the tune of Purple Rain: puuuuuuuuuuurrrple frame
posted by mollymayhem at 6:57 PM on April 24, 2016

I came really close to owning a sort of metallic-burnt-orange Honda Fit, but it got sold before I could get back to the dealership. Still regret that a little. Oh, and also I regret not getting one of the very rare Golf Harlequins back in the mid-nineties when I saw one of those at a dealer in Memphis.
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:59 PM on April 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

Cars are appliances and should be painted white, or Harvest Gold.
posted by sneebler at 7:03 PM on April 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

Also, for my favorite terrible motorcycle color scheme, I present the 1994 KLR 650. AKA the Body Glove color scheme.
posted by mollymayhem at 7:04 PM on April 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

I'm surprised no one has brought up the Kia Soul's Alien Green option. Which is not the color of Soul I have. Mine is, if I remember, "Latte." Which is really closer to mocha, because it was the only Basic on the lot. It's fine. I love the car. The color is a little meh, but there aren't many around like it.

Our 2009 Prius is the sea foam/mist/whatever blue... Rather like the Metafilter color on my monitor. Not the deep blue I really wanted, but of course there weren't any in stock. It's fine as well, and I don't really like the overall design changes in Prius in 2010. But that's my wife's car, mostly.
posted by lhauser at 7:10 PM on April 24, 2016

One of the cars I'm driving (bonus points to anyone who can identify it) comes in a glorious metallic gold. We joke that the Chinese market loves its gaudy metallic gold color - rumor has it that the gold iPhones were designed specifically for the Chinese market - and most Caucasians we spoke to were pretty disgusted by this color, which somehow makes me even happier it exists.
posted by xdvesper at 7:38 PM on April 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

I had my car painted a shade of infrared. I can never find it in the parking lot, but at least I never get pulled over
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 7:41 PM on April 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

I don't understand why matte paint is so expensive on cars. Other than the environmental qualities of dealing with more sunlight and birdshit, how different could it possibly be in formulation from regular old house paint?

From TFA:

Modern technology uses a base coat, which carries all the pigments, and a clear coat, which adds a deeply glossy layer on top. It creates an effect a bit like looking at a bright color underwater—the experience of the color is interrupted, and sometimes dulled, by the reflection off the surface of the paint ...
Even that ubiquitous high-gloss finish we’re so used to may one day lose its luster. Recent developments in clear coat technology allow for a clear-coat layer with a matte finish. “I can take any paint color I have,” says Killen, “and turn it low gloss with the clear coat. We’ve seen paints in high gloss for so long, the market wants something new.” The matte look, which you can see on this Mercedes Benz S Class, has become popular in the luxury market in Europe, and may eventually gain traction in North America. Let’s hope it does soon.

The reason a car needs a topcoat is that, unlike a house, it routinely travels through grit, sand, and rocks moving at gale speeds.
posted by gingerest at 7:43 PM on April 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

And note that Dorothy Gale's house was conpletely monochrome. It all fits.
posted by No-sword at 8:46 PM on April 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

I used to drive a '73 Volvo 142 - meyer-lemon yellow. I wish they'd bring back that color line.

My great-aunt liked to yell "who ordered a taxi?" when I pulled in the driveway.
posted by gyusan at 9:04 PM on April 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

I've been driving red cars since about 1980. Clearly, red goes faster. It's just science, people.

It used to be. Then it was chrome for a while, but McLaren pretty much pooched that whole deal. I think it is either matt black or black again this year. Red may make a comeback next year unless Metallic Beige* is the winner.

You need to keep up with the time.

*Yes, I actually rented a metallic (seriously) beige car (Hyundai something - small ish. Maybe a few weeks ago. I was coaching at a race track and needed to do some demonstrations of racing line and rhythm of the track so used the RACING BEIGE rental car because it amuses me. It was spanking new when I picked it up (less than 30 miles on the clock) and I did more miles on the track at as close to warp speed as I could manage than it had on it when I picked it up. It was very entertaining, if horrific, dynamically.

So, the moral is, I guess, don't buy a rental car, even if you will get a METALLIC BEIGE paint scheme of much 'awesomeness'.
posted by Brockles at 9:54 PM on April 24, 2016 [6 favorites]

I don't own a car, but if I did, and had a choice in the color, I'd almost certainly get red. Because red looks fucking cool. To me there is nothing so anodyne, so uninspired, so boring, so thundering dull as a white car. Silver or grey are only slightly less dull. If I look at a white car on the street I might just have a narcoleptic episode and collapse to the ground it a fit of uncontrollable indifference.

That said, when I was a kid the family vehicle was a powder blue Chevy Suburban, which oddly, wasn't terribly embarrassing, but in hindsight I wonder what mom and dad were thinking.
posted by zardoz at 12:05 AM on April 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

First, why hasn't flaterik posted a picture of his bright yellow Sportsmobile yet? I'd counter with a picture of my 4WD VW T4 Multivan with a poptop roof, but it's black so it's symbolic of all that's wrong with current car colours.

Secondly, when you buy a new car in the US, do you buy it from the dealer's stock? The European way to do it is that you drive the dealer's one demo vehicle, and then you sit down with the option list and specify everything you want, including colours, and when the dealer press "submit" on the form an order is placed and wheels begin to turn in the factory in Wolfsburg or Stuttgart or Turin or wherever, and by the magic of modern-day logistics and production systems your particular car is manufactured and shipped to you (eventually). There's no question of what configuration of car the dealer wants on his lot, only what you want to take home.
posted by Harald74 at 12:18 AM on April 25, 2016

And BTW, car colours in Europe are horribly boring as well. Shades of metallic grey account for most cars on the road. As others have mentioned upthread though, small cars and sports cars are usually offered in bolder colours.
posted by Harald74 at 12:22 AM on April 25, 2016

Sadly this from Saturday evening is the most recent picture I have.

That tire blew while I was towing a 20' trailer at 60mph; it jackknifed as far as possible as I finally came to a stop and crunched the side. I find out in the morning if it's going to be drivable with a new tire - the trailer also sheared off a grey water tank, and everyone including me thought it was a gas leak until the van was on a flatbed so I didn't try to start it again.

Mildly more on topic, the giantness of my van + trailer combined with the van being school bus yellow didn't make people drive more reasonably around me, but the extra visibility might have contributed to the fact that despite swerving across all lanes while trying desperately to keep the combination which was down to 5 of 8 tires from rolling before coming to a stop more than 180 degrees rotated there wasn't a collision.
posted by flaterik at 1:00 AM on April 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

I don't understand why matte paint is so expensive on cars.

It's because people will pay more for it. That is basically the explanation for price on everything. Matte paint is so expensive because people will pay that price for it. The cost has almost nothing to do with it. In marco-econ terms, the cost determines the level of production and the demand determines the price at that level of supply.

So, the moral is, I guess, don't buy a rental car

This is bad advice. Rental cars take a bit of a beating cosmetically, but mechanically, they're one of the best values when buying a car. The rental companies maintain those car very well because it keeps costs down so even if they've been to a few track days, they tend to be more reliable, for less money, than a non-rental return used car.

My dad, who has been selling cars for over 25 years, routinely sells friends and family rental returns (including my own first car). When someone asks my dad for help buying a car, it's like he makes it his mission to make sure you get a great value so that he can take pleasure every time he sees you in asking, "So, how is the [car I sold you] running?" knowing that your response is going to be, "It's great, I love it, every time." Well, I think he feels that way about every customer, that's probably what makes him so good at it, but when it's someone he knows, he steps it up to an 11. So if my dad thinks it's a good idea to sell his friends a rental return, that's all the endorsement anyone should need.

It will be easier for him to find you a deal if you want, or are at least okay with silver or grey though.
posted by VTX at 5:17 AM on April 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

Rental cars take a bit of a beating cosmetically, but mechanically, they're one of the best values when buying a car.

Almost every car that I've rented, I have driven carefully and gently. But there were a couple of rentals that I took offroad and beat on like a rented mule, and I pity the person who eventually bought them from the rental fleet. I'm sure 99.99 percent of rental cars are great and I have known people who had great luck buying them, but I'd still be a little cautious just based on my own experience of mistreating them.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:46 AM on April 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

Really? I was at a Mazda dealership a month or so ago, and all of the colors looked incredibly dull.

Soul Red is really not "incredibly dull" in person, whatever else it might be (cop magnet). Reviewers and Mazda buffs have mostly adored it since it was introduced as their new flagship color in 2014. (Video is an amateur effort so it's not dolled up by Mazda. )

It will run you an extra $400 however. Maybe this dealer had shitty prep or it was an overcast day? Soul Red (especially on a Mazda 6) is a beautiful combination. I see people double-take on one that lives near me quite frequently, it looks expensive AF even though it isn't. Mazda metallic finishes tend to look best in bright light. My own (Meteor Gray Mica) is just back from the detail shop. It looks good parked between to Beamers.

I love the matte primer finish the high end performance brands are using these days. And oh yeah, it's way more complicated than house paint. Painting cars is a whole other level of science involving bonded lacquers and enamels and clearcoating. It's why you could spend $400 fixing a little scratch if it's deep enough.
posted by spitbull at 5:48 AM on April 25, 2016

But there were a couple of rentals that I took offroad and beat on like a rented mule,

Ha. And rented mules can still fight back.
posted by spitbull at 5:54 AM on April 25, 2016

But there were a couple of rentals that I took off-road and beat on like a rented mule

What I'm telling you is that the cars are so well maintained that the occasional customer who rents a car and beats the hell out of makes no material difference to the overall reliability of the car.

Race cars are usually very delicate machines pushed to the very edge of it's ability. They take more abuse in a shorter period of time than any other automobile. But "to finish the race first, you must first finish" and in most cases you need to get through the whole season with one car. So you keep the car running by inspecting the hell out of it and maintaining constantly.

As long as it's properly maintained, a bit of abuse doesn't hurt it. It might have more scratches than another car with the same mileage but even the car you took off-roading was maintained to a higher standard than the non-rental car next to it.
posted by VTX at 5:58 AM on April 25, 2016

I just read the care instructions for the $3500-extra matte "frozen" finishes you can get on BMW 6 and 7 series cars. Holy cow. They are way more work than glossy finishes to maintain. Who woulda thunk it?
posted by spitbull at 6:01 AM on April 25, 2016

I would totally go for Thermo-Tect Lime Green rather than the Absolutely Red Prius C that I have. I kind of wish I'd gone for Habanero orange when that was available -- it's much more fun than the current orange which looks like it was made for the Yellow Cab Company, but that meant going to a different dealership and paying $1000 more.

My previous car was a "Lightning Yellow" Mitsubishi Lancer, extremely easy to find in parking lots. I'm told in Japan they called it "Sunflower Yellow" but renamed it to something less girly and more nonsensical in the US.
posted by Foosnark at 6:08 AM on April 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

When I bought my last new motorcycle, the dealer said "What color do you want?" and I said "Yellow." He said "I'm sorry, it only comes in blue and black." I said, "I know that, but you asked me what color I wanted!"

It's yellow now. :-)
posted by elizilla at 7:48 AM on April 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

Chose silver for my car because of temperature, dirt, and damages reasons mentioned above. Given how often I've had people try to turn right into me, I wish I had gone for bright yellow, orange, or red.
posted by entropicamericana at 8:21 AM on April 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

I think there's a certain amount of self-fulfilling with the dealerships. The dealerships only stock the "safe" colors, so anyone who buys off the lot is stuck with one of those. And then the sales records back them up - customers only buy the safe colors, so that proves they don't want color. I've been giving a look around for a new vehicle (mine is developing... issues) and every search turns up black and silver, black and silver, black and silver, even though my search specs are always for blue. I can live with black, I guess, but I really don't want a car that's the color of pavement and fog.
posted by Karmakaze at 10:02 AM on April 25, 2016 [3 favorites]

So, it's been 5 years since I looked for a new car. We discovered today that the glass embedded in our workhorse truck could not be removed without replacing so many parts it would cost more than the car was worth. Holy mother of pearl, all the things have 4 shades of grey. And like Mazda, they all have one or two actual pigmented cars, but it's a steep upgrade cost, which is just stupid. Its not any more expensive to paint a car blue or red than it is silver, certainly not the half grand they want for it.

Hey, vtx, your dad doesn't happen to be in Texas, does he? I'd love to find a good salesman.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 2:20 PM on April 25, 2016

I've been shopping for CJ/YJ jeep and I'm leaning pretty hard towards painting it panther pink. It's such a gorgeous colour. Maybe go all out and have a bikini top sewed up out of burgundy paisley vinyl roof material Imperial made available in 71.

emjaybee: "There are millions of shops to get your car customized in any color if that's something you care about."

Not only is that a significant cost over getting something you'd like from the factory a respray will never be as good as a factory paint job.

Strange Interlude: "I wonder what the law-enforcement take on color-changing paint might be. Seems like that could be a complicating factor in spotting fugitives or tracking down stolen vehicles."

Polychromatic paints already exist but they change on incident light angle rather than temperature.

AFABulous: "I hate that drive through ATMs and fast food windows are accommodating SUV heights, so they're uncomfortable in a regular car."

Try in something where you are sitting a foot off the ground. A lot of drive thrus are difficult in a Fiero and drive up ATMs are basically impossible.
posted by Mitheral at 2:57 PM on April 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

I want avocado and sea foam green to be car color options.

My first car was a seafoam greem 1978 Buick LeSabre. When you're a teen, that's both a blessing and a curse -- it was easy for my parents' friends to spot me and report back on my whereabouts.

But the Beast made me love green cars for life. My subsequent cars have been forest green (1996 Saturn SC2) and now "Cypress Green Pearl" (2012 Subaru Outback).
posted by sobell at 3:00 PM on April 25, 2016

On behalf of the unjustly maligned, I feel honor-bound to update my previous post, despite the fact that absolutely no one gives a damn. I walked past the same fancy house today, and noticed that instead of the catfish-gray Model X, they had a cherry-red Model S in their driveway. Which, I must admit, is truly a great looking car -- and I say this as a hater of everything cars stand for, curmudgeon that I am. So anyway, I can only presume that Tesla gives out loaners to prospective buyers? And these rich folks are deciding just what kind of rich folks they want to be: zombie-colored gullwing SUV, or rocket-red sports sedan. It's a tough life, the 1%.
posted by chortly at 10:17 PM on April 25, 2016 [2 favorites]