DuPont reveals some colourful statistics

Women are traditionally mocked for their tendency to focus on car colour rather than what men regard as more important matters such as marque and technical minutiae, but chemical group DuPont takes the matter of car colour very seriously indeed.

The worldwide trend is rather conservative, with white, black and silver dominating. Go to India, however, and the general preference is for yellow or gold, while Chinese motorists favour orange – the only country to do so.

Red, the car colour popularly believed to be the most likely to be involved in accidents, is more desirable to Indian and North American drivers than it is to Europeans.

Blue cars are more popular in North America and Europe than they are in India, being the top choice for motorists choosing chromatic colours.

Europeans are clearly not afraid of being thought dull in their choice of colours, with a whopping 18 per cent of drivers opting for grey, a colour that only 12 per cent of North Americans consider a viable choice and Indians positively reject, with only four per cent of purchasers opting for this.

The Russian market is far more idiosyncratic, with motorists dedicated to red, green and blue, chromatic colours holding their own far more effectively there than in other parts of the world.

It looks as though choice of car colour is part of the culture of a country, along with differences in musical, literary and gastronomic styles.

As with these other aspects of life, this should be celebrated. Vive la difference!

http://www2.dupont.com/Automotive/en_US/news_events/article20061129.html

New post on at Thursday, 15 October, 2009, 6:49 am and is archived in Classic cars, Lifestyle. Subscribe to answers with RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.