If used car buyers weren’t so boring, we could all have more colourful cars

Every year, the SMMT (Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders) publishes a list of the most popular car colours on new cars sold in the UK. But it needn’t bother. The list has hardly changed in a decade.

Presumably inspired by the prevailing weather conditions overhead, grey dominates the UK car colour charts and has done for seven years. It’s usually followed by the equally thrilling black and white to complete a monochrome podium.

Red and blue make an appearance, but these cars don’t tend to be in the vibrant shades the more patriotic among you might imagine. They’re more likely to be dull maroons or the dark blues despairing car dealers have christened ‘doom blue’ for their uncanny ability to consume light – and customer enthusiasm – like automotive black holes.

So why are we doing it? What is stopping people from choosing more brightly coloured cars? I think we’re all trapped in a vicious circle that stems from the used car market and spirals inexorably toward ever more gloomy, uninteresting cars.

When private buyers are choosing new cars, they worry that a bright yellow paint scheme will see their prospects of an eventual high selling price darken like an ageing banana. And, of course, the fleet managers, who currently have a deciding say in around 60 per cent of the new cars sold in the UK, aren’t known for their flamboyant, devil-may-care attitude to car specifications. Or anything else for that matter.

Playing it safe with half an eye on residual values is perfectly understandable, but is it really the case that brightly coloured used cars don’t sell? If you’ve got one of the few models in Skoda’s Dragon Green, Nissan’s Monarch Orange, BMW’s Sao Paulo Yellow or even Porsche’s, admittedly questionable, Frozen Berry Metallic, you at least have a car that’s going to stand out a mile from all the other metallic silver used models on sale when the time comes.

Whatever the current used market decrees, if we all started to look on the bright side and became more willing to snap up these life-affirming used car shades, prices would rise anyway. 

Suddenly, specifying a colourful paint job on your new car wouldn’t be such a financial risk, manufacturers might offer broader palettes and we could even see grey knocked off the top of the car colour charts by lime green by 2029. The UK’s roads would be a markedly better and brighter place.  

Would you ever choose a colourful car? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section...