Car color and purchase influence

So just wondering how important is the color of the vehicle when looking to purchase. What are the best and worse selling colors? All things being equal that is.


I'm playing with re painting a gold wagon I bought for $600 or just polishing the color since it's not bad....no clear coat peeling. Thanks

I'm guessing silver is going to be the easiest the sell. That seems to be the neutral/ "I don't really care what color my car is" color.

When you're talking under the $3,000 price point though...color isn't really a big consideration. Condition is key.

bubbagumpshrimp said:

I'm guessing silver is going to be the easiest the sell. That seems to be the neutral/ "I don't really care what color my car is" color.

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Yep....my mother gets silver. Last car she bought was back late in 2006 (2007MY) and it has a grand total of 28k miles on it to date.

bubbagumpshrimp said:

When you're talking under the $3,000 price point though...color isn't really a big consideration. Condition is key.

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That or what it is. Back in 2002 when I bought my 97 Jetta TDI you couldn't find one in my area and like a lot of people I wasn't going to buy without seeing, nor was I going to drive thousands of miles to find one. The one that showed up FS in town was Memory Red (not my favorite) but the miles and condition were good, and I could tell it hadn't been wrecked.

Steve

Yeah, I guess I just needed reassurance. Since it's a 2003 wagon the gold was sort of a put off.but the price was too good to pass ($600)..I got some mint aristo wheels for $250 during the same trip. I don't like how they look with that color..only thing wrong with the car is it's auto,has a head issue and the front and rear bumpers need replacing as well as some other small things. I'm planning on a <70k mile motor /5 speed install, some power upgrades, suspension and cleaning up the paint.

Hadn't made my mind up if to change the color or not as it would probably hurt my bottom line. Thanks for the input guys

I mean, personally I wouldn't buy a gold car.. if that's what you were asking. For 600 bucks that sounds like a bargain though. Maybe it's that cheap because nobody else wanted the color?

http://i.imgur.com/VzpNove.jpg

You, you wouldn't think, but yea, color matters. But on an older used vehicle, can't imagine how you would recoup the cost. I guess if you can paint it nice, real cheap.

I would clean up the gold paint. Ever since my parents got a "SunBug" (gold Beetle with a sunroof) in the mid-'70s, I've liked gold cars. Gold was my second choice when I bought my Jetta in '98.


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I hate green, I refuse to buy green cars.

black, grey, white by far the most popular, I think statistically it used to be grey, but these days its white? don't quote me.

White always wins in sales, due to all the commercial and fleet sales. So it sort of skews the results. Red is always pretty high too. Silver, gray, gold, that awful unflattering "greige" that so many Toyotas and Buicks are, are usually pretty high volume too. Dark green was #2 after white when I bought my dark green '93 F150, and was still pretty high when I bought a dark green '95 Golf, my sister bought a dark green '96 Jetta, and I bought a dark green '98 Jetta. But now it has all but fallen off the sales chart, so much so that hardly any greens are even available any more. Black always sells reasonably well too.

Some people do not care, even if they are buying new, since so many Americans live in a hand-to-mouth world they have the need for instant gratification. So they buy within the confines of whatever cars a dealer has on the lot. Dealers won't want to stock anything that is a little off the wall color wise. This tends to homogenize a lot of what you see on the roads as a result.

I have a Sundown Orange 2005 New Beetle. Think General Lee from the Dukes of Hazzard. It is literally like the third one of these I have EVER seen that color. I love it! But it fits that car. The same color on a Jetta would be a bit strange.

I like some of the cool retro colors available on the Camaro, Mustang, and especially on the Challenger and 500. Fiat really has that part in the bag when it comes to the pull-me-over colors. That Grabber Green Challenger with matte black stripes and wheels is an awesome looking car to me.

When VW ships new models, we only get black, grey (silver) and white in the first shipments. I like color, love the tuti-fruity bug colors, canyon red was really sweet on the sedan. Recently bought the wife a newish car, almost everything was some shade of grey, uggh.

BobnOH said:

I like color, love the tuti-fruity bug colors...

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Back when I was looking for a New Beetle, I walked away from one because it was yellow...lol. I know we all have our likes and dislikes, but I just cannot own/drive a yellow car. Problem with the Beetle was even the door panels inside are yellow...ack!...lol.

Black looks good when it's overcast (or in the shade). I love my black Golf, but in the light it looks like it's been washed using a Scotchbrite pad. The MK5 Jetta I just bought is white...and I searched for a white one. I would have bought any color for the right deal, but in this case I wanted white.

I'm quite fond of silvers and greys...but my old man hates them. I've had a couple silver vehicles, and they always hide the dirt nicely.

I'm sick of seeing silver on cars. White too. They are everywhere and blend in to the landscape and start to look invisible to me.

My new old 2003 Jetta is metallic blue with grey leather interior. My 2014 Passat is Opera Red Metallic and I constantly get compliments on the color.

OP: clean up the gold and repaint it the same color if needed.

I'm shy of red cars, and yellows are awful, especially the pale yellows. An unwashed pale yellow Spark is nearly ipecactic. But I like orange....what's up with that?

I like blues, greens, burgandys and silver/greys if they are rich and not excessively dark.

Black IS a pain, but looks soooo good when clean. It's the single best counter to ugly styling. If a car is STILL ugly dressed in black, it is a truly, truly ugly design!

I agree the factory color options for cars these days has become quite anemic, but that is to be expected when new car buying in USA might as well be done by automated vending machines these days.

Blame oilhammer for inspiring me to opine pointlessly to this thread, and my weak resistance to stop myself, going back under my rock now.

'bout time you blamed me for something.

If you like orange, I'll drop my Beetle off and you can clean on it for a few days (or weeks ).

mrurbina said:

So just wondering how important is the color of the vehicle when looking to purchase. What are the best and worse selling colors? All things being equal that is.
I'm playing with re painting a gold wagon I bought for $600 or just polishing the color since it's not bad....no clear coat peeling. Thanks

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Don't repaint it....
Unless you are willing to spend SEVERAL THOUSAND dollars for a good paint job, it will hurt the value....
Nothing is WORSE than a cheap respray....

thanks for the input ..btw it was located at a house in the middle of nowhere and the title was " need to get rid of" the dash pic clued me in that it was a mk4 golf or jetta. he had spent $1200 on a belt job (closest vw shop is 200 mi away) and they installed it wrong so a valve got damaged,then payed $400 for a guy to "adjust" the valve..still runs but you can hear the issue. Since it was his second car and him being on disability, it was time to let it go. I got in just in time because it was only up for 1 week. CL can me a gold mine if you search..i found my DD 2003 auto from the original owners with all receipts, even had the original window sticker for $1200 ..only this wrong was a slight jerk between 1700-1900 rpm.

anyway I'll just replace the bumpers and polish the paint. Body and paint are otherwise in great condition.

oilhammer said:

I'll drop my Beetle off and you can clean on it for a few days (or weeks ).

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If that's what you want for Christmas this year....

A Wheat Beige Wagon? I'd rock that color over my Spice Red Metallic Wagon.

All the other VW's in my past have been converted to white. The only odd ball to this trend has been the '90 Corrado (owned for almost 20 years now) which looks surprisingly good in black with black leather & carpet. I was looking for a white one when this black one came along. Only other color I'd wish it to be is A9V Brilliant Black Metallic. If it wasn't such a hassle to get a good color change, Brilliant Black Metallic would look good on my MkIV wagon, especially in light of my present failing clear coat.

I thought bad a$$ red in a sport wagen was the most desired color.When I bought my 2001 Jetta eight years ago, as long as it wasn't black on black I didn't care.Diesel fuel was $4.75 a gallon and RUG was $4.25 a gallon, so I invested in a WVO setup and saved a lot of money in fuel costs. After filtering, etc., I was paying less than $0.50 a gallon and thought I had the world by the short hairs. I lived in BF Nowhere and everything was at least an hour away. I was making a 3 hour round trip at least twice a week and my Subaru was getting expensive to drive 6 plus hours a week.

where2 said:

The only odd ball to this trend has been the '90 Corrado (owned for almost 20 years now) which looks surprisingly good in black with black leather & carpet. I was looking for a white one when this black one came along.

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I went to look at a white Corrado for sale a couple months ago, and came very close to buying it. I believe it was a 1990 as well. It was in great shape for the age of it. I don't believe I'd ever seen another white one...must have been a rare color for them?