Summary:
A recent study has shown a significant increase in the dominance of grayscale colors in the car market. While driving my bright yellow Renault last week, I noticed that nearly all cars around me were black, white, silver, or gray. This observation aligns with iSeeCars’ findings that 80% of new cars sold in 2023 are grayscale, up from 60.3% in 2004.
The study highlights that white is now the most popular car color, comprising 27.6% of new cars in 2023, a 77.4% increase from 2004. Black follows at 22%, up from 14%, and gray at 21.3%, up from 11.7%. Silver, while still significant at 9.1%, has seen a 52.2% decrease from 2004. Despite an average of 6.7 color options per new car in 2023 (compared to 7.1 in 2004), non-grayscale colors have dramatically decreased in popularity.
For instance, blue, the most popular non-grayscale color, dropped from 10.8% in 2004 to 8.9% in 2023. Red also saw a decline from 11.9% to 7.3%. Green, orange, beige, brown, yellow, gold, and purple all experienced significant reductions in market share, with gold plummeting by 96.8%.
The trend is consistent across various vehicle types. In trucks, the share of grayscale colors increased from 58.4% in 2004 to 79.4% in 2023. For SUVs, the figure rose from 60.4% to 80.2%, and for passenger cars, from 61.9% to 78.5%. Even sports cars, traditionally more colorful, saw grayscale colors rise from 58.1% to 62.4%.
iSeeCars’ executive analyst Karl Brauer notes that colorful cars are becoming rare despite automakers offering diverse palettes. Non-grayscale cars have lost half their market share over the past 20 years, potentially becoming even rarer in the future.
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