Hottest car colors
Sunday, September 23rd, 2007In the car color popularity contest, silver continues its reign.
Nearly 20 percent of all 2006 vehicles (the latest year for which figures are available) were silver — the seventh consecutive year that the color has taken the top spot.
There’s good reason for that, says Chris Webb, the exterior color and trend designer for GM North America. “There’s no question that silver on a vehicle looks incredible,” he says. “When the light hits it and refracts, it shows off the vehicle’s architectural form beautifully.”
The color has other advantages, too: It hides dirt, it’s an enduring favorite and it’s easier to resell than other colors. (In the United Kingdom, many police agencies have switched from white to silver, because the silver cars fetch a higher resale price — up to 10 percent higher than white cars — after they’ve been pulled from the fleet.
Silver got a bump in the late 1990s as a result of a growing interest in technology, the future and Y2K, says Karen Surcina, color marketing and technology manager at DuPont. “Metallic finishes — whether on cars, cell phones or stainless steel kitchens — really took off,” she says. “And now that it’s stayed a top color for so long, it’s become a safe color.”