Black out on its own as top car colour choice

BLACK has overtaken white as Britain’s favourite car colour because drivers are too busy to wash their vehicles.

More than half a million buyers chose black for their new car in 2017. White fell to into third place after spending four years in the top spot.

“There was a strong trend for white cars in the UK,” said Karim Mussilhy, a sales manager for the Syner Group, Europe’s largest automotive retailer. “You could really see it with sales on the ground – but this has faded away. White cars are perceived as being harder to keep clean and people’s lives are busier than ever. That’s a factor.”

A total of 482,099 white cars were registered with the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) in 2017, down 15 per cent from a peak of 564,393 in 2015. Monochrome colours have occupied the top spot in the DVLA statistics for 18 years and almost 60 per cent of the 2.54 million new cars registered in 2017 were black, grey or white.

Blue is the only primary colour in the top five, with silver fifth. Green, the most popular colour in 1996, has been out of the top five since 2002.

Jim Holder, of What Car? magazine, said: “Plainer, safer colours deliver better resale values.”