Here’s the vintage version. And there’s also the current one, below.
I probably have more somewhere…but I’ll never find them now.
CC Outtake: Color Coordinated
– Posted on January 29, 2018
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Curbside Classics Archives
Here’s the vintage version. And there’s also the current one, below.
I probably have more somewhere…but I’ll never find them now.
Ouch! That second picture brings up the unanswerable question, do other people see the same colors I do? I hope this owner somehow sees a different, more pleasant shade of green there. Maybe they even find the first picture unpleasant. Who can say?
That reminds me of a former coworker who was colorblind. He’d always pick what to the rest of us looked like the most bizarre color combinations for the charts in his PowerPoint slides and whatnot. To him they just looked like nice, contrasting colors.
The green Spark, though, I suspect has more to do with the owner’s personality type. This person doesn’t want just another boring grey or silver car that blends in with everything else on the road. They want to stand out from the crowd. Like a middle aged woman with short, spikey hair dyed purple. I actually know a woman like that. This totally looks like something she would drive.
There is actually a legitimate purpose for high-visibility (or “High Impact”, as they were known at Chrysler during the early seventies) colors, and that’s the safety aspect. Unlike colors which blend in with the urban surroundings (grey, silver, et al), a vehicle is much more visible when painted an unnatural, bright color. It would seem even more critical with the tiniest cars which could easily be squashed like a grape by a hulking behemoth SUV or, worse, an 18-wheeler.
Good point. I once picked “Bright Yellow” for a new Pinto, partly because I liked it and partly for visibility.
On the other hand, I picked metallic grey for my Fiat 500e last year simply because I liked it best. So far it seems to be visible enough, but a bright color would be safer.
Some emergency vehicles are painted a shade of yellow-green that’s similar to this Chevy’s, because it’s been proven the most visible color night and day.
But I don’t see the value of a high-visibility house. 😉
The Bricklin SV-1 was sold in several bright colors also for the supposed safety benefit (has any research shown that bright-colored cars get in fewer or less harmful collisions?) Also for safety, it didn’t include a cigarette lighter or ashtray, which would prove prescient.
The first year Dodge/Plymouth Neon had that awful lime-green color available almost the same shade as the Spark. It was by far the least popular color apparently.
Which Spark would you rather have? Green or pink?
Blue looks good.
At least they come in a range of colours, not just greyscale or red.
These are like pictures of people who look like their dogs.
Thinking about it, my family was once like these people. The Maroon 74 Luxury LeMans and the white 59 Plymouth perfectly matched our white house with the deep red brick on the front.
The last house my parents bought they had painted a medium shade of yellow, with white and medium green trim. My siblings all thought this house looked like the equivalent of a “clown car”, and we could never figure out why my mother insisted it be painted that way. A car painted to coordinate would have been a disaster.
BTW, I actually like that green Spark and it’s matching house.
Ironically for such a “green” car, the closest thing to green Toyota offers for the Prius is “Sea Glass Pearl.” They must think Prius buyers don’t care about color, considering how bland its palette of choices is.
Same goes for the Honda Clarity. Playing it safe?
My sister is currently on her third Prius. Her first Prius (a 2nd generation model) was blue, a color it seems most 2nd generation Priuses were painted. When it came time to buy her 2nd Prius, a 3rd generation model, she went shopping for a car with a certain group of options and wound up with a wine red car. She decided with that car she would never again own a red car.
Her current Prius, a 4th generation model, is a light green metallic. One of the biggest reasons why she bought it was that it didn’t show dirt/road salt all that much so it would not need near constant cleaning to look presentable. (She considered a silver colored car, too.)
She has had her car about a year, and looks forward to buying another Prius, the 5th generation, in about a year or two…or whenever it hits showrooms.
The most common color of the first-gen US Prius was a nice aqua green, which I chose for mine. The 2010 Prius I drive now is bright red, which looks great to me.
When ‘green’ is such a popular philosophy/lifestyle/whatever, I’ve never figured out why it’s just not available on so many modern cars.
I guess it’s just that styles and tastes change with the times. It seems like green was a reasonably popular car color in the 1990s — my old Saturn was green and it seemed like a fair number of other cars from that era were available in green as well. Nowadays it seems like most mainstream cars are offered in some variation of white, silver, grey, and black, and maybe they’ll offer some sort of red and blue option.
We had that exact same car. 1980 Honda Accord 4 Door Sedan. I can’t see whether this one has the 5 speed badge below the right rear taillight so this one might be an automatic. When we went to go pick out the car, it was my mom, my dad, and me. My sister must have been at a friend’s house. Back then, Honda’s were in such hot demand that we had to order it and wait for a few months for it to come in. My mom voted for the maroon color and my dad wanted the green, so they let me be the tiebreaker and I went for the green as well. Felt pretty cool as an 8 year old to have that kind of power!
I remember that new-for-1980 color – it was green inside as well. If I recall correctly, the 1979 Accord sedan was only available in two colors – silver and red – both with burgundy velour inside. I wish Honda would put red or green color-keyed interiors in their new cars.
1980 was also the first year that automatic would be a 3 speed instead of a 2 speed
All four of the windows on the side of the Accord house look like afterthoughts
You sound like you might want to do a COAL series MikePDX.
A pinto, a fiat and a couple of Priuses. Sounds like there has been some interesting small car choices in there.
Thanks, Bill. Thing is, a proper COAL series includes all one’s cars, good and bad. There’s a couple of Peugeots and a Think City that I’d just as soon leave in the dustbin of history.
” There’s a couple of Peugeots and a Think City that I’d just as soon leave in the dustbin of history”
C’mon, Mike, we all know it’s cars like those that make the best stories!
I miss the days when Accords were so sensibly-sized and nicely styled like the first pic.
In 1985 my grandmother had us repaint her house to match her new Crown Victoria like this one.
When I bought my 2012 Ford Fiesta, I wanted the Lime Green version as I thought it would stand out and be easier to find in the parking lot. I even had a lime green Ipod that matched.
However most Fiestas I saw on the road in Maryland were also lime green.
I tend to like lime green in theory. It was my favorite color for the Honda Element and I rather like it on the Kia Soul, too. As to whether I’d actually buy a car that color? Hmm. Maybe on the Element, it suited it.
Love that color green and what a nicely preserved 1st-gen Accord. A professor at the university where I used to work drove one that same generation and color until the mid ’00s, though his was a little worse for the wear. I’ve not seen a sedan since….maybe since his. The odd 1st-gen hatchback can still be found puttering around (I spotted a rather nice one in downtown Richmond last year, wearing what appeared to be BMW alloys) but it’s been a minute since I’ve seen a 1st-gen sedan. Guess they all rusted away on this side of the country.