Autoblog

White beats Silver again as most popular car color

John Neff — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 16:33:00 EST

Click above for full results from North America and other regions

DuPont knows a thing or two about car colors, being a leading supplier of paint and coatings to the global auto industry since Fuscia was officially recognized as a legitimate hue. The company has just released its 2008 Automotive Color Popularity Report and White has retained its crown as this continent's most popular car color, though not without qualification. White scored 16 percent on the report while Silver, which ran the tables on every other color for six years prior to 2007, scored 17 percent. However, if you add the 4 percent score of White Effect, or White Pearl, to just plain old White's score, you get a winning score of 20%.

The "Effect" in White Effect refers to special pigments added to paint that gives it a pearl or iridescent quality. This allows some differentiation between your white BMW and your neighbor's white Lexus. Black and Black Effect scored 11 and 6 percent, respectively, which means that U.S. citizens have pretty boring tastes when it comes to the color palette of their cars. Not to worry though, as DuPont suggests that White winning two years in a row suggests a "palette cleansing" that may precede a new color trend, one that is hopefully a little more exciting than the monochromatic machines we favor today.

Check out the gallery below for full results from North America as well as other regions around the world.

Gallery: DuPont 2008 Automotive Color Popularity Report

[Source: DuPont]

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DuPont reports most popular color on earth

Jonathon Ramsey — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 15:28:00 EST

Filed under: Etc., Lifestyle

For seven long years, silver has reigned as the overall number one choice worldwide for car color. DuPont reports that those days are over, and the new color of choice is -- gasp -- white/white metallic. That means more people prefer white cars than silver or black cars, with white taking a decisive lead in countries like Mexico and Japan. A study done earlier this year found that 62-percent of cars sold over six months were white. Hmmm.

In North America, white/white pearl covered 19-percent of the overall vehicle market, 26-percent of the truck/SUV market, and tied with black for the luxury market. We don't know where the "luxury" segment begins, but we've never seen a white A8, and we already know who orders the tiny number of white XJ's, so who's ordering all the white S-Classes and 7-Series'? Come on. Show yourselves.

It's spun a number of different ways: white is an "agent of change" that will open the doors to new colors; white is the new trendy color following fashion and furniture trends; and white provides a nice palette for customization. Sure, this is about as subjective as you can get, and we're not totally against white cars -- Aston Martin gave us a pearl metallic Vantage to roll around in, and we didn't mind. But we wouldn't buy a pearl metallic Vantage. And our first request when renting a car is "Don't give us a white one." Ah well. Hit the jump for the full press release, and follow the link for the color charts to see what flake flavor your country is.

[Source: DuPont]

Continue reading DuPont reports most popular color on earth

DuPont reports most popular color on earth originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 04 Dec 2007 15:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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