It’s a lesser drum roll and much more of the sad trombone. Data for most popular car color in the world has been crunched and the winner is, once more, white. Not only that, but it’s the 10th consecutive year that white has topped the worldwide list. It’s been ten years of white.
More than a single in three cars built in 2021 was white, running from the remaining field at 38%. It’s the 35th month consecutively that white has held steady at this percentage. Black came in second at 19%, followed by gray at 15% and silver at 9%. That means over four out of five cars made in 2021 are black, white, or somewhere in between. Grayscale is really a worse pandemic among cars than it was in Game of Thrones.
The report was put together by Axalta, a commercial coating company, to assist automakers predict trends (and presumably money paint). Said an Axalta spokesperson, “We’re pleased to share this data … to utilize our customers to bring dynamic colors to life.” Except, these aren’t really dynamic colors, are they?
Compared to a U.S. survey released in October, America might be more colorful compared to global average. The black-white-gray-silver spectrum comprised slightly less of the general global total, at 77%. Our next most popular colors are blue and red, which comports with the rest of the world, though in Europe, Japan and South Korea, blue ranks a bit higher in fourth place. India may be the only region by which brown and beige climbed in to the top four. Greens, yellows, and the remainders are extremely rare they get grouped into an “others” category that hovers around 1-3%.
The news isn’t all bleak, though. Axalta says blue is trending, while silver is decreasing. And Axalta’s own Color of the entire year is Sea Glass, a green-blue shade inspired by bodies water.
Still, those are relatively small fractions compared to the monochrome juggernauts. For the time being, expect the local parking lots to continue to become a formation of Star Wars Stormtroopers.
