The trend is towards green

When it comes to cars, the Germans are not very colourful. This year, too, most buyers opted for a new car in white, black, gray or silver. As reported by the Association of the Automotive Industry, more than three quarters (77.3 percent) of newly registered passenger cars wore one of the four body colors. That is another 1.4 percentage points more than in 2021. Gray and silver (the Federal Motor Transport Authority does not differentiate further here) lead the popularity scale with a share of 30.8 percent, as in previous years. This corresponds to an increase of 0.9 percentage points.

Black is in second place, which a good one in four opted for (26.3 percent). Compared to the same period of the previous year, Schwarz increased its share the most with a plus of 1.7 percentage points. White at rank 3 lost some of its popularity. The proportion fell by 1.2 percentage points to 20.2 percent. But it is precisely here that the popularity of car colors can change over the years: in 2006, just 1.6 percent of new car buyers opted for a white car.

When it comes to bright colors, the trend towards green, which became apparent last year, continues. As in the previous year, green takes third place among the bright colors. Although green only accounts for 2.2 percent of new registrations (plus 0.5 percentage points), a look at the absolute figures shows an increase of 25.7 percent – the highest of all passenger car colors.

Blue is still the most popular colour, with almost every tenth driver opting for 9.9 percent. That is 0.6 percentage points less than in the previous year. It is followed by red with 5.8 percent red (minus 0.5 percentage points).

Orange (1.1 percent; no change from the previous year), yellow (0.9 percent, minus 0.1 percentage points) and brown (0.7 percent; no change from the previous year), for which ten years ago was still a rarity, are rare around seven percent of drivers have decided. Just one in 1,000 new car buyers opted for a lilac or violet car. In 2012, the proportion was still 0.6 percent.

The VDA assumes that many car buyers are already thinking regarding resale in a few years when making their color decision, and calculate the best value for a color that is currently very popular, i.e. black, white and grey/silver. The choice of color is therefore subject to a self-reinforcing effect. As you can see every year, there are still developments and surprises. (awm)