White the most popular colour for a car, but for me it’s black

Choosing a car colour? Drug dealers, Henry Ford and the style-conscious have got a tip for you.

Car colours

“Have you owned a black car before?” the saleswoman at the car showroom asks me. There’s something in her intonation that suggests owning a black car is different to owning any other ­coloured car.

It was the same look and tone of voice a sales person at a department store used a few months earlier when I bought a food processor. “You know the blades are very sharp and you have to wash them very carefully?” she said before she agreed to take my money. “I do,” I replied, and yet still managed to slice my hand the first time I used it.

“My current car is black,” I proudly say, hoping to allay the sales person’s concerns. “Oh, OK then,” she says, somewhat relieved. “So you understand the particular maintenance issues with a black car?” I sure do, I tell her. I know how hard it is to keep them looking clean, and when it is clean I know how every fingerprint is like a stab in the chest. I know that you could slow roast a shoulder of pork in a black car if you park it in the sun on a summer’s day. But I also know that when a black car is fresh from the car wash without a speck of dust or a single fingerprint on it, it looks so cool. Every car design looks good in black … when it’s clean.

Occasionally when I’m driving I see cars and wonder why someone would choose the colour they did — like lemon yellow for a Porsche, for example. I’m sure there are plenty of drivers who don’t care what colour their car is, just as there are plenty of drivers — myself included — who choose the colour of their car for emotional rather than practical reasons. I just don’t understand the practical choice.

“It’ll show the dirt, son,” my father said when I bought my previous black car. He also said the same thing some years before when I bought a white car, but that’s beside the point. “It’ll show the dirt” has always seemed to me a somewhat illogical comment — a car is either dirty or it isn’t. That said, my father had a great strategy for avoiding cars that “showed the dirt” — he bought dirt-coloured ones. In the 1970s our family cars ran the gamut from mission brown to greige with a mad moment of burnt orange in between (it was the 70s, remember), car colours that have long since disappeared from auto showrooms.

Although my father’s choice, like many people’s, was driven by practicality he was also acutely aware of the message the colour of one’s car could convey to other drivers. A warning: there is no logic to what follows. White cars were for nuns or public servants, he said. Red cars were for louts and black cars were for hearses or drug dealers. When I recently purchased a new car I only had three solid colours to choose from because, apart from the cost, metallic paint is just a bit too glitzy for me. So it came down to white, red or black. White is the most popular car colour on Australian roads, according to the most recent data, and because of that it is thought to have the best resale value. How boring to be thinking about resale value when you buy a car. Do you think about divorce on your wedding day? The second most popular colour? ­Silver. Snores.

Red is a bit too showy for me. Unless you’re buying a Ferrari, or equivalent, then red is just, in my opinion, trying too hard. Red is for supercars, not mini SUVs of the type I am contemplating buying.

As I sit there deliberating over three colour choices, the sales woman says if you’re concerned about which colour will show the dirt the least, perhaps you should look at silver or grey. “I’m not concerned,” I say. “I’ll have it in any colour so long as it’s black.”