Why we choose boring coloured cars. And you may have conformed to this car colour syndrome without even knowing it! | Opinion

Turning into a particular street near where I live is like accompanying Dorothy and Toto on their tornado fuelled journey from Kansas to the Land of Oz.

A uniformly monotone carscape transforms to a world of vivid colour where the seemingly never-ending stream of black, grey, silver and white vehicles we face in 2026 is displaced by an eye-opening line-up of brightly coloured SUVs, sedans and hatches parked nose-to-tail on the left-hand side of the road.

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A rare, glowing conga line that not only catches the eye but kicks off a little burst of serotonin. Maybe there are some coloured cars in the world, after all!

I did some digging and even the colour names feel like they’re designed to lift your spirits - ‘Sunshine Orange’, ‘Plasma Yellow Pearl’, ‘Frontier Blue Pearl’, ‘Ultra Red’ and ‘Mamba Green’.

But the run comes to a depressing end with a ‘Shadow Black’ Ford Ranger near the corner.

We've previously quantified the phenomenon. In 2024 the most popular new car colour in Australia, accounting for 44 per cent of sales, was white. That was followed by grey (16 per cent), silver/chrome (14 per cent) and black (8.0 per cent).

So, how did we get here? Why have brightly coloured cars become an exception to what appears to be the boring black, grey, silver and white rule?

I have a theory, and in short, you can blame it all on ‘Astral Silver’ and ‘Delphin Grey’.

Back in the 1980s while yuppies were firing buy/sell messages to their stockbroker on the car fax, the vehicle they probably aspired to was a Merc SL, or even an S-Class, finished in Astral Silver (paint code 735).

Mercedes-Benz had managed to connect upper luxury status with metallic silver, and Astral Silver, often matched with a blue or black interior, bridged the late 1970s transition between W116 and W126 S-Class models, as well as the shift from W123 to the landmark W124 E-Class.

At the same time BMW was coming of age as a producer of serious luxury performance cars with the E32 7 Series taking the fight to Merc’s top-tier in the latter part of 1980s just as the E34 5 Series represented a quantum leap for its mid-size offering.

The signature, aspirational colour this time was Delphin Metallic Grey (paint code 184), often generically referred to as gunmetal grey.

So, my theory is, over a generation or two, those colours, or something approximating them, have been buried in our collective automotive psyche.

Silver and dark grey paint equals European luxury, specifically uber-cool German luxury. 

And while the majority of new car buyers can’t stretch to a BMW or Merc flagship, many can afford to tick the option box that says silver or dark grey metallic paint on their vehicle of choice.   

Hence the ocean of uniformly silver and grey machines moving as a drab mass across our highways and byways.

As for white, it’s invariably a no-cost choice, often the only $0 paint option in the new car spec sheet. 

Add in the plethora of white commercial vans and utes and no surprise it’s everywhere.

Black is a little trickier. Why, oh why, is the most impractical of all shades such a popular choice?

Again, it could be down to the ‘80s, but this time it’s Hollywood leaning into jet black Lincoln Town Car limos as a mega status symbol, combined with Aussie prestige hire cars transitioning from white to a more mysterious black, complete with dark tinted windows.

There you have it. Subconscious alignment between 1980s aspirational vehicles and car colour choices made en masse 45-odd years down the track.

What do you make of my theory? C’mon you black, grey, silver and white car owners, let me know your thoughts in the comments.