Car Colours!
My Neighbour's wife has just come home with a two year old Mini Cooper "D" and I think it might take weeks before the smile on her face fades a little!
Or will it? The car looks lovely now but its Black! so in about 48 hours it will be needing a wash. It made me think a bit back to the 60's when I was selling new cars.
Almost all of them then came in two colours or Duotone as it was called. The Triumphs had some lovely names & Colours. Wedgewood and Gunmetal,, Cactus and Sage, and a lovely rich dark red and something.
Vauxhalls & Fords not only had Duotones, but often white sidewall tyres too! The Singers ( Up market Hillmans) came with a contrasting side flash.
In comparison todays cars often look very bland, not helped by them often being quite similar in shape.
I guess its part of getting a bit older but I do wish that todays cars had a bit more Colour & Style. All that seems to matter is their emmisions! I suppose that is yet another way that our nanny state seeks to get us out of our cars, - making them so boring
that we lose interest in motoring!
TF
Comments
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One of the loveliest things about classic/ older cars was some of the lovely colours and colour combinations you could have! We have four vehicles, all different, and colourful. MGB is Teal blue, with chrome! Little MH is pale green and a sort of magnolia.
Jeep number one is a nice dark purple metallic, with a sand soft top. Jeep number two is newest vehicle, metallic gunmetal grey! So at least they are all different.Most new cars are boring, unless top of range/ elite badged. Shape boring, performance boring, and generally coloured silver and very boring!
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All the cars i own are shades of silver.I like silver as it masks scratch marks aswell as dirt better than most other colours.I love some dark colours but when they get marked it stands out like a sore thumb and that becomes annoying for me.Black looks fantastic
when its clean and polished but i would never have another black car as it was a constant battle too keep it looking good.peter.
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My Forester's black as well. In fact it's a fancy metallic black with glints of red, green and gold which can be seen on the rare occasions the sun shines. It shows every mark and always looks as if it's been mud plugging. I wouldn't buy black again.
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We have had quite a few classics down the years in all colours, Almond P6 Rover 3.5, chocolate coloured Riley Kestrel, Blaze MGB GT, Bright red Range Rover, and Land a Rovers in most of their classic colours! We called to get some LR paint from specialists
in Matlock, great for painting our old vans up! Worse colour we had was a black early Discovery, but as Bugs says, you don't wash hardworking LR's very often!
We
did handprint a Series 3 LR, blue! Looked quite good with a sand coloured tilt!0 -
The best duo tone car I have owned was my 1960 Rover 100 in two tone green, wish i still had it ,but back then, when the new Rover V8s came they were to tempting to keep the P4 100
Most recent cars have all been "silver"as they tend not to need washing so often
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Sometimes the names of the colours sound posher than they look. We used to have a Range Rover in "Cairngorm Brown" (which we always pronounced with a plum in our mouths). It was in fact a dull muddy brown. But perfect for a farm car!
Write your comments here...friend had something similar. She referred to the colour as "T*rd Brown".
Either that or she was Irish.0 -
4 of the last 5 cars I've had have been black, the odd one out was my last car a BMW which was dark blue. There not too much trouble to keep clean, 10 mins in a car wash
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Vladimir & Oleg keep my black vehicle black. 2 tone? A bit Cliff Richard for my tastes. Metal black & chrome can't beat it.
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All the cars i own are shades of silver.I like silver as it masks scratch marks aswell as dirt better than most other colours.I love some dark colours but when they get marked it stands out like a sore thumb and that becomes annoying for me.Black looks fantastic
when its clean and polished but i would never have another black car as it was a constant battle too keep it looking good.peter.
had a silver Yaris for 12 years it hardly ever looked like it needed a wash. Now got a smart new blue one and it
always looks grubby.0 -
Purple sounds just about right
This do ya? We had a purple Ford Escort with white 'go faster' stripes in the 1970s but remember my dad buying a Ford Consul which was cream and green with whitewalled tyres. I learned to drive in it when I was 13 yrs old.
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Brue, thats a bit better! I have noticed that White appears to be the new Black! I have a strong suspicion that the manufacturers today (Toyota are certainly doing it) are using various ways of trying to influence us to accept whatever colour they decree is "in". My local Toyota dealer has a 95% white forecourt. No where in the showroom is there any evidence of a colour chart and when questioned a salesman said "oh yes there are some other colours available but you would have to order them especially and there will be a big delay"
Of course a manufacturer will make more profit if choice is reduced, and all cars coming off the production line are the same colour.
Is that manipulation or what?
TF
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Manipulation only happens if you allow it. Vote with your wallet. You pay the money, they give the service. If you don't like the service-walk away. They are appealing to your/our greedy nature.
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We have had lots of cars over the years in many different colours. One of my favourites was a 86 plate Vauxhall Senator which was in a lovely bottle green colour with the interior to match maybe not to everyones taste but I thought it was great. Also my
Isuzu Trooper is a nice light blue colour which is very unusual. We did have a black car once a Ford Mondeo which was a great car and looked great when clean but it got dirty far too easy i was cleaning it 3-4 times a week during the winter.0 -
My Kuga is black and I've learned to live with the dirt. Previous Focus was pale blue metallic and hardly showed the dirt at all as did OH's old Getz. She's had her i20 two months now and the red paint does seem to be holding its own against the dirt.
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The other thing I suppose that really has improved today is that dreaded scourge - Rust!
I remember the early Foreign cars were really bad for it. The Renault Dauphine, the Lancia Beta and most Fiats were terrible. I think probably because in their own countries salt wasn't used on the roads in the winter.
But our own early Vauxhall Victors, BMC Farina's like the Austin A55, The Morris Oxford, The Wolseley 15/60 and the Riley 4/72s all rotted away underneath. So did the Hillman Avengers. Even the expensive Jaguars that i sold were prone to it. The Little Triumph Heralds with their separate chassis were much easier to repair though.
Today it is much better, very few cars rust away as quickly as they did then.
TF
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Ah yes, the famous "Roll Over Renault" the little Dauphine !! -- not sure if that title was used before but by Heaven it fitted that one !!
As for the Fiat the last car as such, that I owned before I saw the light & got a VW Baywindow, was a nice little 128/3P hatchback and did it rust ?? It surely did == within the warranty I had all four headlight reflectors replaced -- not a square centimetre of reflection at all on two of them !! Don't understand why that happened tho' == there were sufficient drain holes ,, ,, ,, ,, ,,
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Coloured cars bring back memories, I owned a lovely little Wolsey 1500 in Old English White / Gun Grey.....also a bright Orange Beetle .
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, the other is sliver and black, but SWMBO choose her
