Gray Cars

The Gray Porsche

I was at Starbucks one morning (big surprise) and I saw a gray Porsche in the parking lot. And I wondered why anyone would want a gray Porsche. I took a picture of it (to the left).

For some reason that I don't understand, people are buying gray cars. Not only are they buying them, they are buying a lot of them. According to a Road and Track article, "The grayscale colors of white, black, gray, and silver now account for 80.4 percent of all vehicles on the road, compared to just 47.3 percent in 1996." And, yes, some cars are literally gray. I see lots of gray SUVs. Even sports cars such as that Porsche that used to be brighter colors are, according to the same article, becoming more bland:

In 1996, just 3 percent of sports cars were painted [gray]; today, gray is the most popular sports car color, at 21.2 percent. Red has moved in the opposite direction, falling from 23.4 percent of sports cars in 1996 to just 10.8 percent today.

Chevrolet even offered a "Sea Wolf Gray Tri-coat" and three other gray colors (depending on the model year) on the C8 Corvette. Apparently it's not available on the 2027 models (I looked at their website). 

(The first C8 Corvette Z06 I saw in the wild was white. Who wants a white sports car?)

I don't know what is driving this. At a gas station I asked a guy driving a gray SUV why he chose that color off the lot. He said because it wasn't silver and every other SUV on the road is silver (in his opinion and I don't think he's wrong). 

On a lot of cars the gray literally looks like shiny primer. There's nothing pretty about that, in my opinion. Don't people want pretty cars anymore?

Now I own a blue car and a red car, so I'm not guilty of adding to this problem. Although my last car was white. I discovered every third car in the parking lot is white so I went with blue for my next car. My wife likes red cars.

Why do you think people are buying bland-colored cars now? Let me know in the comments below.

P.S.: Is it grey or gray? This answers the question. Save you a click: in America it's grAy. Everywhere else it's grEy.