The shady business of car colours

Surely not, you’re thinking. Surely the world around me is filled with yellow spotto cars, and bright hues? And now your curiosity is peaked, because one of the big questions of the day, right up there with the meaning of life, is what are the most popular car colours in the world? And what are the most popular car colours in Australia?

Well, thanks to the Australian Automotive Dealers Association, the Western Australia Department of Transportation and numerous car dealership data reports, the truth of Australian car colours may finally be revealed. And, a warning; those with a phobia of monochromatic colour palettes and greyscale cars may want to avert their eyes.

According to the Australian Automotive Dealers Association (AADA), member reports claim that “approximately 85 per cent of new cars sold in Australia” fall under the greyscale umbrella of white, grey, black and silver. That’s more than four out of five cars on the road at any given time that don’t really have a colour at all. It’s like being offered a whole world of choices and saying “no thanks, I’ll have none”.

Worse still, around 40 per cent of all cars sold in Australia as recently as 2023 were white. The accepted reason is that white cars have heat-reflective properties that defend your automotive interior from becoming a mobile microwave.

The most up to date data for Australian car buyers is from Western Australia’s Department of Transport, which reveals that 82 per cent of Western Australia’s cars in 2024 were grayscale, with a mere 18 per cent being actually “coloured”, while a whopping 44 per cent of 2024’s car purchases were white.

Two things to keep in mind are that WA is particularly hot, and that cars bought for fleets and businesses (including mining ones, of which the state has many), tend to be white.

Here is the list in full, for 2024:

1 White (44 per cent)

2 Grey (16 per cent)

3 Silver/chrome (14 per cent)

4 Black (8.0 per cent)

5 Blue (8.0 per cent)

6 Red (4.8 per cent)

7 Other (2.9 per cent)

8 Green (1.8 per cent)

9 Orange (1.2 per cent)

WA has been collecting this data on colours since 2000, and over that time 60 per cent of its car market fell under the unadventurous greyscale.

The number of white, grey, chrome, matte and black cars has been steadily increasing since the early 1990s while the amount of chromatically coloured cars is decreasing rapidly.

Based on the last 30 years of data, it seems likely our car colour choices will get less and less interesting.

This might lead you to wonder, is Australia an exception on the global colour scale? Do more interesting countries with less predictably brilliant weather make more interesting choices?

Perhaps the rest of the world has refused to sink into the mundanity of greyscale coatings, and highways around the world still look as bright as a packet of Skittles. Sadly not.

The BASF Color Report 2024 for Automotive OEM Coatings reveals that white (34 per cent), grey (17 per cent) and silver (8.0 per cent), still rule, and not just in Mercedes-Benz dealerships.

Here is the full list for your perusal:

GLOBAL OVERVIEW 2024