Looking at industry trends, one color expert has surmised that blue is the new black, or in this case, the new white. According to Jane Harrington, a color styling manager in the auto-paint unit of PPG Industries for over three decades now, blue is rising as a serious contender to take the crown from white, the current most popular car color.
According to MarketWatch, Harrington said that there has been a proliferation of blue-colored cars at auto shows, where carmakers reveal their newest, or heavily updated, models. As auto shows typically serve as the world premiere and market springboard of a new vehicle, color matters significantly, and in the past these reveals have been done in red, black or silver, said Harrington. White has not been seated at the top of the car color ladder for very long now.
Its reign started in 2011, after a decade-long rule of the color silver, according to Fortune. It was Silicon Valley tech giant Apple that pushed white into the limelight, said Harrington, because it turned the color into a global symbol of luxury and class. Blue, on the other hand, seems to be emerging on its own merit. Harrington said that the color is highly customizable, giving both automakers and consumers an "advantage of variety." This is because blue comes in a myriad of different shades both light and dark, and can even be tweaked to appear green or gray, a flexibility that not ever color offers.
It remains to be seen whether Harrington's prophecy will ring true, as the numbers don't quite add up yet. In 2016, ten percent of all models were blue, as opposed to 12 percent in the previous decade. Car color preference has a volatile history: Before silver, green was the color of choice in the 1990s, yet it makes up for only two percent of models now. A good sign for Harrington, however, is industry pioneer Tesla. The electric car company recently debuted a deep blue model, and based on its studies saw that blue metallic was one of its most profitable car colors.
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