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| What's wrong with an orange car? |
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I gather from recently published statistics that blue is now the UK’s most popular car colour, having nudged silver into second place. But together, these two colours account for almost 50 per cent of the cars on Britain’s roads, and four times the number of red cars, which nonetheless occupy third place in the colour league-table.
What I find sad is the fact that bright, solid, ‘Smartie’ colours account for so few cars. Yellow and orange cars, for example, together make up less than one per cent of the total. Green fares a little better, which I find odd, as a lot of people think of green cars as being ‘unlucky’. (This seems to stem from pre-war days, long before Armco barriers - when green cars that ran off the road could remain in the undergrowth for days, without being spotted.)
Mauve and purple are, nowadays, almost non-existent. That is a good thing. As the light fades in the open country, the landscape turns purple – as all painters know – and any car of a similar colour disappears into the background, which is why I have always described such colours as ‘deadly night shade’.
I have never understood why people buy silver or dull-coloured cars – mine are anything but – so perhaps a reader could explain to me the attraction of these particular shades.
On a psychoanalytical level, they say that geniuses pick green cars… maybe that’s why they’re so rarely seen on the road! Perhaps the vast majority of people subconsciously consider themselves to be quite dull and mediocre, hence the surplus of mundane coloured cars?
Maxwell Nicolas | 12 Mar 08 - 11:14Sweden has one of the highest, if not THE highest, suicide rates in the world. I think most Volvos are finished in ‘doom’ blue - which would make sense.
Gerry Pollard | 12 Mar 08 - 18:25