If you are old enough to remember the 1970’s, you may recall some car manufacturers being really rather adventurous and zealous with their factory colour options. Who can forget the racy Ford RS range of Escorts coming in Java Green or bright Orange? The same manufacturer successfully sold tens of thousands of their Mk3 Cortina in Sahara beige too, and trust us when we say it really wasn’t boring! Hillman sold their Tiger Avenger during the same decade in Sundance Yellow and we can’t mention 1970’s car colours without mentioning the Bond Bug in bright orange (it wasn’t just the colour though that made this vehicle stand out).
But these brave colours were a long way from the time of Henry Ford’s alleged famous saying of ‘any colour the customer wants, as long as it is black’. The 1980’s, and the hot hatch era, saw manufacturers turn more to car design and performance than options of lairy colours with the popular hot hatches of the time, the Golf GTI, Renault 5 Turbo, Peugeot 205 GTI, Ford XR2/3i and RS Turbo, (which were all highly sought after), no longer sold en-masse in the bright paints of the decade prior. The 80’s, despite the ‘yuppies’ and their flamboyance, was actually possibly the tamest of modern time for car colour choices. Maybe that is with the exception of the Mazda MX-5 ‘Le Mans’ BBR model which was painted in the multi colour endurance race winning design livery.
In the 1990’s vehicle manufacturers also generally went through a relative boring era when it came to colour colours, but brands like Porsche kept their faith, and ours, by offering colours like mint green and indeed, even now the 911 GT RS range of colours are amongst the most daring and evocative available. Though it could be said that manufacturers including McClaren and TVR really did nudge the bar with the chameleon colour in later years.
Special edition models, often some of the French brands, have used specific and unique colours to identify their top models, and these editions have generally held their values really well including the Renault ‘Williams’ Clio in it’s stunning blue paint matched to special gold wheels and the far more recent Megane RS 265 Trophy Edition in model specific ‘Jaune Sirius’.
But car colour choices are sometimes chosen for reasons other than personal preference. For example, many Police forces in the ‘noughties’ bought their patrol cars in a default colour of silver because the resale value of silver cars when they were decommissioned from Police active service was said to be higher than other colours. And talking of Police, it’s said that you are statistically more likely to be stopped by the constabulary if you are driving a white car, than you are any other, though this is explained away because of the sheer volume of white cars on our roads. In Germany though, white cars were, and perhaps still are considered a ‘premium colour’.
We have so far discussed factory colours but if you have/had enough cash, and possibly influence, you could actually have specified a custom colour with some manufacturers ‘pre-build’ and obviously for 2nd hand vehicles you could have your car resprayed in any colour you want (remember to advise DVLA so your vehicle is updated on their records else you may find yourself stopped by the Police, whether you are driving a white car or not).
In this modern age, a more modern take on changing a car’s colour is a wrap. These are layers of film that are (normally) professionally applied over existing paint, and they can be removed at a later date. In addition to the standard and some rather vivid choices, you can even choose patterns like carbon fibre, metallic gold chrome and even ‘rust’ (for those who perhaps like the patina!)
