Red cars accounted for only 10%.
According to this column by John Kelly in The Washington
Post, DuPont has been tracking color popularity since 1953. Historically, “the
1970s saw the rise of brown, yellow and orange as top colors. The 1980s added
beige to the mix, along with blue. White started its ascendancy in the 1990s.
(Red was popular for a while, too, and green had a brief run at the charts.) In
the 2000s, white and silver started their domination.”
Our home is no exception to this trend. Out of four cars,
three are white, one is red.
Could it be a reflection of the economy?
Nancy Lockhart, the color marketing manager for DuPont
thinks “the austerity of the last few years has been reflected in the somber
palettes.”
“Also, since luxury models typically come in black and
silver, people associate those colors with quality, even in lower-priced
vehicles. I suppose manufacturers have been making a lot of white/black/gray
because that’s what they think consumers want. And it’s certainly what
consumers have been buying.”
In other words, if I can’t be in the one percent, at least I
can drive the same color car…or something like that.
This dull car color phenomenon is global too. The DuPont website
includes color popularity charts for twelve areas of the world and the
deviations between them are minor. Red, for instance, appears to be most popular in Brazil , but
still it is only 11%.
