Silver Out as World's Top Car Color

'Futuristic' white tops the charts
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 23, 2013 3:43 AM CDT
Silver Out as World's Top Car Color
Jane Harrington, PPG's manager of automotive color styling shows off the company's color palette in Troy, Michigan.   (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)

Are people going out and buying cars that match their Apple gadgets? That's one explanation the world's leading supplier of automotive paints offers for white becoming the world's top "color" for cars after silver reigned for more than a decade, the AP finds. Around a quarter of buyers now choose white for their new car, with silver and black tied for second at 18% each and gray in fourth place, according to PPG industries. Assorted reds, browns, greens, and blues are also in the mix, though powder blue is now usually seen only on electric cars.

Shades including a pink-tinged bright red popular in Asia are becoming more popular, but sedate colors top the charts because automakers usually pick just eight to 10 colors for new cars, with four of them always white, silver, gray, and black, a PPG exec explains to the Detroit Free Press. But variety can still be spotted on the road: Automakers are always "seeking ways to create variations of white, silver, black, and gray that are specific to their brands and that complement different vehicle types," she says. (More auto industry stories.)

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