Almost four out of five cars registered in Germany in the first half of the year are black, white, silver or grey. Colourful cars are becoming increasingly rare.
German roads are becoming increasingly colorless. In the first half of the year, the so-called achromatic colors white, black and gray – including silver – accounted for almost four fifths of new German car registrations. This was the result of an analysis of figures from the Federal Motor Transport Authority by the dpa. The trend has been going on for some time: in 2019, the colorless share was just over three quarters in the first half of the year, and since then it has increased every year.
The dominant color is gray, which also includes silver in the statistics, at 33.1 percent. Since 2019, its share has increased by almost three percentage points, and since 2014 by as much as six. Black follows with 26.5 percent. Although it has increased recently, compared to 2014, it is down by almost two percentage points. Back then, black was still number one. White is in third place with 20.1 percent, and the fluctuations here have been rather small over the years.
Blue and red far behind
Classic bright colors follow far behind. None of them reach double-digit percentages. 8.7 percent of new registrations in the first half of the year were blue – just three years ago it was 10.6 percent. Red accounts for 4.8 percent – here too, the trend has recently dropped significantly. In contrast, green – currently in sixth place with 2.9 percent – has improved significantly. Five years ago it was only 1 percent. The color brown, on the other hand, has largely disappeared. Ten years ago it still made up 6 percent of new registrations, now it is only 0.5 percent.
If you look at the car brands with at least one percent of new registrations, Seat is the least colorful. 89.5 percent of all new registrations of the Spanish VW subsidiary in the first half of the year were black, gray/silver or white. Mercedes and VW itself follow with 86.8 and 84.5 percent. The grayest – including silver – is Nissan with 43.4 percent of cars in this color, the blackest is Mercedes with 37.8 percent – just ahead of Volvo. White is the current trend color at Tesla with a share of 46.5 percent of the brand’s new registrations.
Dacia is the greenest
There is no clear answer as to which is the most colorful. Although Fiat has the lowest proportion of achromatic colors at 54.2 percent, the Italian brand has a share of almost 27 percent of new registrations whose color falls under “other” and therefore cannot be classified. So no reliable statement can be made here. If you leave Fiat out, Mazda and Mitsubishi are still the most colorful, but even with them achromatic colors dominate at more than 60 percent. But at least they are the two most common red brands – with 19.6 (Mitsubishi) and 18.8 percent (Mazda). Hyundai and Peugeot share the top spot for blue with 14.1 percent and the greenest brand by color is Dacia with 14.2 percent.
Even for brands that are clearly associated with certain colors, the registration statistics sometimes tell a different story. Ferrari red may be a fixed term, but black is now the most common color for new registrations for the sports car brand.
Source: Stern
