Roshake caught a very colorful assemblage of cars parked at this shopping area in Budapest. Maybe the Hungarians like a bit more color in their cars?
Cohort Pic(k) of the Day: Who Says Cars Are All Shades Of Gray?
– Posted on October 28, 2022
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Curbside Classics Archives
Alternatively, Hungarian car dealers are less shackled by convention, or more cars are ordered by the customer rather than sold from stock. Several articles about US car colors mention that most cars are bought from stock rather than ordered and dealers believe that non-colors like silver, beige and 50 shades of grey are “safe” so that’s what they order. Colors are mostly signature things like Mazda Soul Red, Kia Alien Green or the metalllic blue associated with several performance models. Lately a variation of Toyota’s battleship grey is common on trucks, since it seems like every other Ford Maverick is gloss grey.
This is a scene you’re much more likely to come across in Europe than in North America, as the dealers are more likely to have small lots and special orders are more common, allowing for numerous a la carte options and color choices. In the U.S., special orders are discouraged by offering almost no extra-cost options except a few packaged trim levels, and most dealers have huge lots of cars available for immediate purchase. Dealerships consider less-popular colors to be “lot poison” that many people won’t buy, so they stock the most inoffensive colors, so the manufacturers usually don’t even offer colors that dealers don’t want to buy. You can’t buy a new Golf (or other mainstream VWs) in yellow, green, or orange in America, although I see red and blue are still offered.
A year ago I drove past a BMW dealer with about 50 cars parked out front with every single one a greyscale color; I have a video of it but couldn’t get a good still photo with all of them in single file.
Cars mostly are the boring grayscale colors here in Hungary too unfortunately, these ones i caught are just an unusually colorful set, hence why i shot them. Wish a bigger part of traffic could be like this though. Also the green Audi A3 in the shot used to be my first car, and i used it for pizza delivery at the pizzeria which its in front of here. I loved having such an unusual color of car in these times of grayness 🙂
Yes colours do exist my Blue/white Hillman lives betweeen a blue VW wagon and a bright yellow Holden Commodore which hasnt moved since petrol prices went thru the roof,
The roadgrime grey my Citroen is painted is an excellent colour it doesnt show the dirt, its coming near to its annual wash so 5 minutes in the wash bay at work will transform it, I just fitted Meyle rotors and pads all round so it will be interesting to see if those German after market brake pad blacken the alloy rims or not,
We have some lethal to grime chemicals for internal washes on tankers I want to try on baked on brake dust.
I could probably better tolerate the unfavorable changing shape of the automobile if they were actually this colorful. Not one of these cars as cars appeal to me, but they’re all so much better to look at
Some of the cars are on the more mature side, so it perhaps shows how cars were more colourful 10 or 20 years ago.
The yellow car (Volkswagen Lupo) was made from 1998 to 2005; I saw one recently in the UK, funnily enough – they’re lovely little cars. The green Audi A3 is from 1996 to 2003. I think it’s a lovely colour.
The orange car is a Seat Ibiza from 2008 to 2012 and the red car is an Opel Astra from, I believe, 2012 to 2015. The silver-beige car at the end is a Citroen C3 Pluriel, made from 2003 to 2010. Finally, the blue car is a Ford Focus estate and is much newer.
There are signs that brighter colours are becoming available, again – especially among the new EVs (e.g. MG4), which is encouraging.
Aw thanks, I loved that color on the A3 too. Its a 1998 btw 🙂
Reminds me a lot of the marketing sensation around the colours offered on the early Apple iMacs.
Nice decor and branding on the pizza shop. We can’t do many road surfaces here in Canada with interlocking brick, as winter freezing and thaws, causes those surfaces to heave immensely.
“Think Different”
(no…even Apple wouldn’t agree with that now)
Love the original iMac. I have one of each of those original colors except Ruby. Never did manage to snag one of those. Yet.
Ha! Back in about 2000 I worked for an office that switched to iMacs. We could all pick out a color – I was really annoyed that they didn’t offer a bland color like gray for my office. I found the vivid colors way too garish for my conservative tastes (I eventually requested blue since it was the least offensive of the lot.)
And here I am two decades later complaining that everything is gray these days. Too much of a good thing, I suppose…
I worked as a graphic designer back then, and the dedication of designers to the Apple brand was fanatical. The first G3s and G4s, were all the rage. Even though PCs were often much cheaper. Problem with PCs, were some brands and their chips, were not reliable. Slick marketing by Apple, creating a buzz with the various colours. The blue version being the first colour marketed. By today’s standards, the built in memory was laughable. If desktop personal computers were cars, Apples would be Toyotas then.
Even though the entire Canadian federal government used PCs, internal marketing departments had enough sway, they’d get G3s, G4s, or G5s for their whole departments.
Defunct Canadian electronics stores, like Future Shop, offered some of the best deals on iMacs. Though the very best prices were often given to students, at campus stores.
Yesterday I was in town shopping with my daughter. We came out to find her car shining brightly in a sea of bland, drab, greyscale. Despite the heavy rain, seeing that colour couldn’t help but put a smile on our faces. Yellow is such a happy colour.
Pretty colour. A very similar yellow was used by the Ottawa Citizen newspaper, for their entire fleet of reporter’s cars, and delivery vans, for decades. From K-cars to Neons. Some days, you’d see 3 or 4 similarly bright yellow cars parked at city hall or the courthouse.
Love it! Nothing like a bright fleet colour to bring some happiness when they’re out and about.
Nobody says that, but most new cars are shades of gray.
I can’t believe how some peeps get all excited about ‘metallic’ paint jobs on classic cars! A HOT car should be a HOT colour, or at least a ‘warm’ colour. (red, orange, yellow, even off-white). There’s a few lovely PURPLE 1970 Challengers we can see online!
In 1965 my dad bought a new Pontiac Parisienne. It was a VERY drab metallic blue! It was a family car anyhow, so I am not that disappointed about it.
BTW, I’m almost finished painting, and decorating my 2006 Rocky Mountain Vertex 10 converted e-bike. It was a BORING black, but I painted the baskets, and fenders bright orange, and got same colour pedals, grips, etc. I also applied some orangeish flame, and Orange Crush, BC LIONS decals in the right places. It looks GREAT, and is now a piece of…ART! L0L
People like colors, however carmakers hate it because it complicates the productivity, so instead of offering gorgeous colors they use annoying shades to make you think twice before giving up the safe way of black, silver or white.
Dealers too. Most people looking to buy a new car walk into a dealer and drive out with it then and there, not many special order their cars to pick the one or two token colors offered and all the dealers have in inventory to choose from are mostly the greyscale selection. It’s a feedback loop.
I will say, while I see a lot of white Teslas, I also see a whole lot of blue and red ones, probably more so than silver and charcoal grey ones in fact, and definitely more of those than any other non-sports cars on the road, and Tesla doesn’t have a traditional dealer network.
Makes it very hard if you want a nice colour in a used car. And there’s nothing to make your white Corolla stand out from all the other white Corollas when you’re trying to sell it. Whenever we’ve bought a used car in the last fifteen-odd years, it seems you have to scroll through screen after screen of cars in boring non-colours to find the few interesting ones.
Now that you mention it, every Tesla I’ve seen has been white.
I had a black and silver car: a Smart Forfour which you never lost in a carpark. Being back two-tone!