What colour is your investment?

Yellow, they reckon. Strewth.

In these strange times, when late model pre-loved 4WDs sell for more than new but unobtainable ones, many are investing in new vehicles.

But someone who buys a new 4WD intending to sell it in three years has more motivation than ever to want to invest wisely.

Shockingly, the colour of the vehicle can affect its value – upward or downward.

Research in the USA reveals that the vehicle least likely to shed value over that first term of ownership is a yellow one.

For years we have been told that yellow is the safest hue for a vehicle, because they were less likely to pop up in crash statistics. Now it turns out these eyesearing colours also preserve value.

The research points out that yellow may not be for everyone (especially introverts) but people are ordering them because they are more desirable on the used vehicle market.

It’s also a colour associated with performance and sport.

Once, the “safest” car colour for depreciation was white.

Not now. The Americans say white ends up ninth on the list, out of a total of 13.

The numbers don’t lie: they come from a list of 1.5 million new cars and 700,000 used cars bought, sold or traded between 2017 and 2020.

Yellow colours led the pack, averaging only 20 per cent depreciation. Second best was beige. That’s right, cars in the colour also associated with boring nothingness depreciated only 22 per cent.

‘Gold’ was the worst depreciator, falling 45 per cent over three years.

Ouch.

This means black, white, and silver are safe colours to buy if average value retention is okay, because there are so many of them on the market or the road.

More to the point, yellow is also rated the best colour for SUVs, sedans and coupes (think of Toyota’s chrome yellow for the CH-R or even the ‘primrose’ of the original Crump Hilux) while beige is best for utes and pickups. Perhaps that is where New Zealand goes its own way on colour choice. The industry analysts at JD Power do point out that buyers should look for a vehicle that best suits their needs and planned use. Hence, a ute or SUV fits most Kiwi lifestyles. And yet how many times have we heard someone exclaim over the colour of a friend’s new car?

It’s not “Oooh, I love that front diff” or “Wow that sailplane’s awesome’. It’s “Mate, that is an awesome colour.”

All the analysts agree: a vehicle’s colour is one of the primary considerations after shoppers have decided on a make and model, with resale value being the single biggest factor in how much a new vehicle ‘costs’ over the course of ownership, consumers should carefully consider their colour choice.

Mainstream colours, including white, black, and silver, are popular because they are seen as the safest colours with the widest appeal. Being ‘seen as’ and actually being safest, however, are two different things.

There’s a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy going on here, with many consumers picking mainstream colours not because they like them, but because they assume everyone else does.

Buyers should maybe think twice about going for bold choices – they do risk a dealer then low-balling the price at tradein time.

“Oooh mate, there’s not a lot of demand for fluoro colours.”