Why colorful cars are becoming increasingly rare

Flensburg. It is becoming increasingly colorless on German roads. In the first half of the year, the so-called achromatic colors white, black and gray – including silver – accounted for almost four fifths of new German car registrations. This is evident from an analysis of figures from the Federal Motor Transport Authority by dpa. The trend has been going on for a long time: in 2019, the colorless share amounted to just over three quarters in the first half of the year, and has increased every year since then.

The dominant color is gray, which also includes silver in the statistics, with 33.1 percent. Since 2019, its share has increased by almost three percentage points, and since 2014 by as much as six percentage points. Black follows with 26.5 percent. Although it has been able to increase recently, it has fallen by almost two percentage points compared to 2014, when black was still number one. White is in third place with 20.1 percent, with fluctuations over the years being quite small.

Blue and red are far behind

Classic bright colours follow at a great distance. Nobody achieves double-digit percentages anymore. 8.7 percent of new registrations in the first half of the year were blue; three years ago that was 10.6 percent. Red is good for 4.8 percent – ​​​​here too it has fallen sharply recently. Green – currently in sixth place with 2.9 percent – ​​​​on the other hand, ​​can improve considerably. Five years ago that was only 1 percent. The color brown, on the other hand, has largely disappeared. Ten years ago that was still 6 percent of new registrations, now it is only 0.5 percent.

If you look at the car brands with at least one percent new registrations, Seat is the least colorful. 89.5 percent of all new registrations of the Spanish VW subsidiary in the first half of the year were black, gray/silver or white. Mercedes and VW itself follow with 86.8 and 84.5 percent. The grayest – including silver – is Nissan with 43.4 percent of cars in this color, the blackest is Mercedes with 37.8 percent – ​​​​just a hair ahead of Volvo. White is the current trend color at Tesla, good for 46.5 percent of the brand’s new registrations.

Dacia is the greenest

However, there is no clear answer to the question of who is the most colorful. Although Fiat has the lowest share of achromatic colors with 54.2 percent, the Italian brand has a share of almost 27 percent of the new registrations where the color falls under ‘other’ and therefore does not fall under the heading. So no reliable statement can be made here. If you leave Fiat out of the equation, Mazda and Mitsubishi are the most colorful, but even with them the achromatic colors dominate with more than 60 percent.

But they are at least the two most common red brands – with 19.6 (Mitsubishi) and 18.8 percent (Mazda). When it comes to blue, Hyundai and Peugeot share the lead with 14.1 percent and the greenest brand in terms of color is Dacia with 14.2 percent.

Even for brands that you clearly associate with certain colours, the registration statistics sometimes tell a different story. Ferrari red may be a fixed expression, but black is now the most common colour for new registrations of the sports car brand.

RND/dpa