Time to paint cars in bolder, brighter colours
You would be surprised, a car dealer recently said to me, how much time and effort people spend on picking colours for their cars, more than they spend on the insides.
But colours are a language that can speak eloquently. Think of the black paint job on the Batmobile. That’s a colour that almost defines the vehicle.
But colours are like words — they acquire meaning in context with other hues. “Not one colour is beautiful, none ugly, but any colour can be either at a given moment or in a given place,” writes psychologist Martin Lindauer in his book The Expressiveness of Perceptual Experience.
“No colour is invariably or unconditionally pleasant or unpleasant, exciting or soothing, dignified or tawdry.”
That is why car buyers sometimes consider the colour of their house or even their own skin tones in choosing colours.
This is why the blackness that Henry Ford had in mind when he famously said, “You can have a car any colour you like so long as it is black” is different from the blackness of the Batmobile.
One gains associations of mystery and the sinister from prowling the streets at night; the other seems to assert frugality, assertiveness, no nonsense.
There are still certain universal associations, of course. Lindauer lists some of them: Reds give the feeling of power; blue is a colour of relative dignity and profundity; green is unexciting, associative of calm and rest; a saturated, pure yellow is "intrinsically gay." (Lindauer clearly came up with that phraseology a few decades ago.)
Lindauer hazards more specific associations. “High achievers prefer ‘cool’ blues and greens,” he writes, “while low achievers choose ‘warm’ colours, yellow and red.”
According to my car dealer friend, white is the most popular colour for cars these days. But what does the whiteness signify? It can be as utilitarian as Henry Ford’s blackness, but in a different context can communicate something more — like the white Ford Thunderbird belonging to the mysterious blond in the movie American Graffiti. The clear association here is “blond.”
According to the Internet, the most favoured colours today are shades of grey — white, black, grey and silver, amounting to more than 70 per cent of the total world car production. Silver is a special case.
“It looks cleaner,” says my cardealer friend. Indeed, it seems to be the case that the sun reflects more of the silver surface of a car, therefore concealing more dirt.
Perhaps because of this, silver is considered to hold its value better than other colours.
In general, these “shades of grey” mentioned on the Internet are seen as more tasteful and dignified than other hues, and less liable to clash with surrounding colours.
Of course, different kinds of cars call for certain kinds of colour. Wikipedia points out, for example, that sports cars favour three colours associated with males: red, orange and black.
Minivans and SUVs, on the other hand, often considered to be family cars, attract silver, gold and orange.
It may be time, however, for cars in general to shed boring colours.
There is no reason we can’t have more shades of tangerine, apple green and sky blue in our vehicles. Freelancer writer Philip Marchand is a former Toronto Star books columnist and a frequent contributor to Toronto Star Wheels. To reach him, email wheels@thestar.ca and put his name in the subject line.