14
votes
Why do new cars look like this? (Gray and without any flake, as if formed out of dough)
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- Title
- Why do new cars look like this??
- Authors
- Blackbird Spyplane
- Published
- Aug 30 2022
- Word count
- 657 words
As seemingly the resident car nut:
To sum up the post in a TL:DR:
First present on high end goods, trend is created, people that can't afford high end goods desired it, consumer demand brought the color to more attainable fare, market responds, cycle repeats itself with next trend.
I actually feel like car colors have gotten more boring over the past few years. It seems like almost every car on the road now is either black or white. There used to be more, like, dull greens or burgundies or dark blues. Colors that didn't especially stand out because of how dark they were, but it still varied. Even when things were just white or black I feel like there were more shades of white.
Maybe it's a combination of more car ownership and cars costing a larger percentage of peoples' incomes leading the to scrimp on things like color options. Or maybe it's the ruthless efficiency of modern car manufacturing having them trying to minimize SKUs.
In the UK it's grey, followed by black and white. I walk along a fairly busy road daily and I would guess that half the cars I see are some sort of monochrome. I was quite surprised when I managed to buy a (used) blue car a few years ago.
Anyway I looked it up. 62% of UK cars sold in 2021 were white, grey or black, and grey/black/white has been the most popular colour for over twenty years now.
It seems like a fashion trend with no deeper meaning. It will be trendy for a while and then maybe it will seem like a normal option? Variety is nice.
I like it. I'm bored with normal car appearance and this is interesting. Maybe I just haven't seen it enough yet for it to be "normal." And I have no idea whether it will age well or be "timeless" enough to not look ugly in 15 years.
As it currently stands, though, on the rare occasion I do see it, it just feels fresh.
Now of we could get cars that look classy instead of aggressive…
Yeah I would love that.
Every year the exterior designs try harder and harder to look like some muscle-bound predator. Just feels like they're insecure about their "alpha-ness," you know? I definitely prefer something classy.
And of course, this phenomenon is most noticeable in pickup trucks, to nobody's surprise. Gotta market to your audience.
I think it'll follow the normal trend cycle where it starts to look dated really fast and then becomes nostalgic in ~20ish years.
I'm sharing mostly because I like characterizing this look as "wet putty." I've been calling it a play-doh or Fischer price color scheme for a while, but this makes more sense. And yes, I too am bored with it. I think its works well in whites or light grays, but when I see a bronco in some wet putty shade of orange I can't imagine driving in it without feeling like an extra in a 90s music video.
Yeah, sometimes I've seen one of these paint jobs (although not talking about the grey ones, but rather orange, red, yellow, browns, etc.), and it's made me get this little nostalgia burst for toy cars I used to play with.
And actually, I think that's a positive trait for a car. Since exactly 0% of my identity is attached to the car I drive, I'd be happy driving around something that looked like a toy, just for the fun of it.
It was a super interesting read and something I knew nothing about before, thanks for sharing!
I've been paying closer attention to cars in the past two years than I ever have, but honestly, I never noticed this trend.
To be honest I'm 100% ready to admit that the aesthetic looks so boring that I would have completely skipped over it in favor of literally anything else.
I do kind of like it on those Porche examples, but to be honest part of the appeal is that it makes a very expensive machine look much less noticable, which can be a good thing. I also appreciate paint jobs that don't reflect the sun directly into one's eyes. But in general, I think you're better off in a loudly colored car that people can see for safety's sake.
Ok, I'm one of those millennials: I love the matte-but-shiny look.
It has the visual feeling of daylight filtering through a forest mist.
It sensually reveals curves and contours. It's like the skin of your freshly showered beau or belle who's lying beside you in bed.
It plays with light and showcases itself while it denies its surroundings a place in its image that a reflective glossy surface would have otherwise gladly given.
Matte-glossy look forever.
I always thought it was weird how universal the flake/glitter look was on cars. In general I'm not a big fan of the sparkle+glossy look on things. It feels cheap, and makes me think of designs with cheap frills to distract from low quality. I like the idea of simpler solid colors.
To be fair, I haven't noticed this style on cars before and found the pictures in the article a little surprising at first, but I kinda like it. If I was buying a car and saw it as an option then I expect I'd strongly consider it.
I also love basic solid-color ikea furniture. I love the old xkcd about minimalist branding. These less fancy designs make me feel the creators of the product are proud of its quality and think the product stands well enough on its own without cheap distractions.
I can speak as an owner of a Tacoma cement, and do not regret the choice of this color instead of other traditional colors, even this choice of color sold out too fast. Sometime after Nissan released this color to their own pick-up and I know people who re-painted their trucks with cement as well, but they did not nail the exact color as Toyota uses premium paint (That's what I was told from Toyota). It is as easy as this color is different from traditional colors, looks great, and is easy to work with if you want to mod it and blend it with other accessories.
Toyota later released a similar color called Lunar Rock, really similar but I heard people calling it baby puke color.