Once upon a time the roads were filled with more colours
than Joseph’s Dreamcoat. Every car park and dealership looked like the paint
swatch section in your local Wickes. Back then car colours were fun and bright and
stood out: blues, greens, reds, browns and yellows. Growing up, we’d play Yellow Car, which was basically punching your mates every time a lemon-coloured car
drove past. Some did yellow mini, but they were too few
and far between. But nowadays it’s nigh-on impossible. If you played grey car, on the other hand, you’d be very sore. Go into a car park today and you’re met
with rows of monochromatic colours, like someone’s turned the colour filter to
black and white, with the occasional bright red or blue car dotted amongst
these black and white crossover SUVs. It seems then, all the cars have grown up
and lost their colour.
I’ve always loved owning bright coloured cars. My first car was a baby blue Mazda 323 with a 1.6-litre gem of an engine that, for some reason loved to chew through its alternator belts, leaving me stranded in the middle of rural nowhere or stuck under an overpass in the middle of Bristol on an icy cold day. After the Mazda went to be made into cider cans, I bought a deep metallic green Vauxhall Corsa C with a teeny one-litre 3-cylinder engine that Vauxhall insisted was blue. It just wasn’t. It was a fantastic green too. After a thorough polish and wax, it would glow like something you'd find in a showroom. Well, apart from the lacquer peel on the roof, but we won’t talk about that. I then went on to own a bright blue Peugeot 206 with a tiny 1.1 litre engine and some of the softest seats I’ve ever had in any car. Even growing up I was around bright cars. My grandmother had a red MK1 VW Polo and then a faded red Vauxhall Nova, and the family car was a second-generation Renault Espace with blue and purple pearlescent paint, and even up until recently Dad has always had fun-coloured cars, even owning a bright cherry red Toyota MR2 MK1, which he swapped for an equally red Audi TT convertible.
There’s something fun about owning a bright coloured car. They polish up well, giving them an eye-catching shine, meaning that even the slower, less interesting nugget cars can still grab your attention. It gives the car more of a personality and individuality too. They’re also easy to find in a car park as well, in my case usually meaning looking for the shiny nugget amongst the more practical, neutral cars.
Now I feel qualified to moan about the dull-coloured cars, because I too have reluctantly ended up joining the dull-car-colour club. I now drive a silver Hyundai because I needed a practical estate. Don’t worry though, I’m considering having it wrapped British Racing Green. I did want a 21-plate Corsa D in bright orange, because I’ve always been a fan of the Corsa, right up until I found out that the petrol engine I wanted to get it with used a wet belt.
You see, lately I’ve really been noticing a shift that until now has passed me by. It seems that every single car on the road has had its saturation turned down to zero, and now primer and base colours are the in thing. Dealerships have gone from roadside rainbows to minimalist collages with blacks, whites and primer greys mixed together, with only the odd splash of colour here and there.
My question now, though, is, how long will this last? Is the future as monochrome as a Charlie Chaplin film, or is the dull-colour car fad just a phase that will pass? I guess only time will tell, but I for one hope that by the end of it the roads won’t be totally jam-packed with base-coloured cars, and the roads will go back to being lined with exotic vivid colours.