Car colors: 2024 was a gray year for new cars

It’s getting grayer on German roads. The color, which includes silver in official statistics, was by far the most popular among new car buyers in 2024, according to figures from the Federal Motor Transport Authority. At 33.0 percent, it accounted for almost a third of new registrations. That was another 1.4 percentage points more than a year ago. The trend has been going on for a long time: in 2019 it was only 30.3 percent, ten years ago it was 27.2.

Even the number two and three colors do not help to make the streets more colorful: 26.6 percent of all new registrations were black last year – a slight increase. 19.9 percent were white, slightly less than in 2023. If you add up the three so-called achromatic colors, they now make up 79.5 percent of new registrations. Five years ago it was only 75.7.

Things only get colorful from fourth place onwards. 8.9 percent of new cars were blue – 0.7 points less than in the previous year. 4.7 percent were red – a decrease of 0.4 points. Green only comes in sixth with 3.1 percent, but the color bucked the trend and recorded an increase of 0.5 points.

In almost all major brands, bright colors are in the minority

The dominance of achromatic colors can be found in all major brands: at market leader VW it is a good 83 percent. The number two in the German market, Mercedes 87 and BMW 84. Skoda, Audi, Seat and Opel, the numbers four to seven in the German market, also have values ​​of just over 80 percent. What is striking is that for the three premium brands Mercedes, BMW and Audi, black is preferred over grey/silver.

However, among the brands with at least one percent market share, there are also those that fall outside this grid. At Fiat, only 53 percent of new registrations are in one of the achromatic colors. How colorful the brand is can only be determined to a limited extent from the KBA statistics, because more than one in four Fiats is listed under “other” in terms of color. Mazda and Mitsubishi, for example, are clearly more colorful than average, with more than 18 red cars each and less than two-thirds achromatic shares. And at Suzuki, with a little less than one percent market share, just over half of the new registrations are colorful.

Ferrari doesn’t necessarily mean red

When looking at the largest brands, blue is particularly popular with customers of Renault, Peugeot, Skoda, Ford and Hyundai with values ​​between 12 and almost 15 percent. Green, on the other hand, finds its supporters among Mini and Dacia buyers with 13 and almost 15 percent.

If you also look at brands with a very small market share, the numbers are even higher. At Alpine, blue is 44 percent and green at Aston Martin is 29. At Ferrari, according to the cliché, many cars are red. 27 percent of new registrations last year. However, black was slightly more common among Italians at just under 30 percent.