7 ms·

I've tried making this same point when it comes to auto designs (at least in the competitive, cost-sensitive ones). A lot of mid-sized cars look the same becaus

by bumby 4y ago

I've tried making this same point when it comes to auto designs (at least in the competitive, cost-sensitive ones). A lot of mid-sized cars look the same because the design constraints generally converge on the same handful of principles. They've converged not in the aesthetic sense as much as the engineering sense: because they work at a relatively low cost. (I'm speaking mainly about things like aerodynamics here, not necessarily EV-vs-ICE etc.)

ryandrake 4y ago
Even if they had to ultra-optimize the aerodynamics so all the cars look like the same bar of soap (they don't have to), they could still at least paint the damn soap a different color. But, no. All you see coming out of the factory are white, silver, gray, black, the occasional red and the occasional blue. What's driving this? That's what the article is about. Is it actually pull from customers, or is it push from the manufacturers? Is it: people all actually demand boring white soapbar shaped cars -> companies make boring white soapbar shaped cars? Or is it the other way around: Companies are economically incentivized to offer only a small number of colors and styles -> customer really doesn't have a choice -> customer buys what's available -> companies think that's what they really want because of their purchase choice. Same with the AirBNB look. Do people really like it, which translates into more rentals copying the look? Or are the landlords just uncreative, all copying each other, and that's all that ends up on the market? Or is something else driving it?
- hgsgm 4y ago
  Companies like selling cars, so I think they pick colors most people prefer. "Exciting" "Unique" colors look a bit silly or non-unique when your neighbors have the same color. If what you are asking for is 1000 color choices instead of 10, that's obviously more expensive to mass produce or customize.
  - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y ago
    > "Exciting" "Unique" colors look a bit silly or non-unique when your neighbors have the same color. Reminds me a lot of the orange Chevys Cruzing around.
  - mc32 4y ago
    There was a time in the aughts when nail polish colors were prevalent in (sub) compact cars for some reason. Not so much now.
- nradov 4y ago
  Car paint colors are driven by pull from franchised dealers and the dealership financing model, as well as by push from supply chain issues. In the US at least, most mainstream consumers expect to buy a car from dealer inventory and drive it away that day. So dealers mostly order only a few bland colors because most consumers are willing to settle for those as long as the car has the options they want and they get a good price. Like maybe you would prefer a bright green car but will settle for gray because the dealer offers low-interest financing. Dealers also incur inventory costs (floorplan financing) and their business model depends on rapid turnover so they can't afford to order "lot poison" that sits for months waiting for the right customer. Reducing color choices also simplifies manufacturing operations. Some luxury or performance oriented car brands such as Porsche and Tesla do allow color orders from a wider palette, sometimes to the extent of even doing custom paint blending to match a customer sample. But those customers are willing to wait longer and pay more. They don't need basic transportation to get to work tomorrow.
  - pnw 4y ago
    Tesla have reduced their palette to just five colors, presumably to cut costs. Porsche is the leader in paint color choice, no doubt about that, with 14 basic colors plus custom options. And to your point, consumers are willing to wait for the Porsche factory to build their car, rather than driving one off the lot that day.
    - runnerup 4y ago
      Aston Martin probably has them beat by a landslide for number of colors. They offer well over 100 colors. Actual Porsche prices out the door look like about $100,000 (even though MSRP for the cheapest models are a lot less). Please correct me if Porsche is significantly cheaper than Aston Martin vantage ($150k)… to me anything between $100k-200k seems like the same market segment but maybe I’m just poor.
    - rippercushions 4y ago
      At least for the Model 3, Tesla also charges extra if you choose anything other than white. Guess which color is the most common by far?
- YellOh 4y ago
  Fwiw, the explicit advice I got from my parents about cars/houses was to never choose a unique looking one. I was told odd-colored cars are more likely to be broken into, and houses that draw attention (if placed in a neighborhood of otherwise very similar houses) are more likely to be robbed. So even if my favorite color was an easy option when choosing a car, I'd probably go monochrome as long as that's what the majority of other cars are doing, almost entirely for property crime reasons. On writing this out, I have absolutely 0 idea how factually-based this is, but it is at least a thing some middle-class Americans tell their kids.
  - bumby 4y ago
    There's an old thought that red/yellow sports cars are more likely to get tickets because they are more noticeable. No idea if that's just lore or if data bears it out.
    - bandofthehawk 4y ago
      It's very unlikely. Once you control for the type of car (minivan, sports car, etc) and type of person buying the car (young/old, male/female), red cars get similar amount of tickets to other colors. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/red-handed/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/red-handed/
    - ensemblehq 4y ago
      They generally have higher insurance rates although I'm not clear on what's driving the model.
      - nicenewtemp84 4y ago
        People repeat this for decades... Apparently never noticing that they have never ever been asked for the color of their car when getting an insurance quote.
      - dragonwriter 4y ago
        > They generally have higher insurance rates Because they are on average driven by people who rate higher risk for other reasons, not because color is part of the model. Otherwise, a popular hack would be to get insurance first, and then paint a car red/yellow if that’s what you wanted.
- anonymous_sorry 4y ago
  > All you see coming out of the factory are white, silver, gray, black, the occasional red and the occasional blue. Isn't this just fashion? I've heard it argued that times of popular optimism and plenty tend to favour bright colours, extravagant design and conspicuous consumption. Think Calvin Klein underpants deliberately on show above low slung waistbands, analogous to frilly lace ruffs and cuffs in earlier ages. Times of austerity tend to be associated with muted shades, and perhaps virtue signalling rather than wealth signalling. Since the 2008 banking crises I think we've been firmly in the the dull, serious phase.
- hoosieree 4y ago
  There are a lot of good reasons for "the AirBNB look. White walls reflect ambient light and can enhance existing light sources. This can help make up for small (i.e: cheap) windows or limited light fixtures. Natural wood is durable but not hard and cold like metal or glass, nor will it break down and end up permeating your cell membranes like plastic. Exposed beams make ceilings more interesting visually but also dampen echoes and make a space feel less sterile and prison-like. Humans have been living in shelters made from wood and stone since the beginning. It wouldn't surprise me if affinity toward these materials shows up somewhere in our DNA. Not sure about the Nespresso machines.
  - Earw0rm 4y ago
    Reasonably acceptable coffee without demanding skill (aeropress, barista machine), potentially creating mess (anything using fresh grounds), or needing much in the way of regular cleaning & maintenance (any of the full-service machines which contain a dairy refrigerator). Inexpensive and mostly idiot-proof. Just ignore the grotesque environmental waste of the pods.
  - majormajor 4y ago
    It's often just fashion, not actual affinity for natural materials. The "AirBnB look" IME is usually engineered wood (aka bits of wood + liberal amounts of adhesive) floor, or even vinyl (tile if they're fancy), not natural wood. Natural wood scratches too easily and is more expensive to deal with generally. So for a rental? Nah. But yeah in actually older places sometimes it's natural wood liberally coated with basically-plastic clear coat. ;) A lot of the exposed beams are also not "real" structural beams. Often they're plastic too! Stuff like this. Lower maintenance, doncha know. https://www.architecturaldepot.com/BM.html https://www.architecturaldepot.com/BM.html
  - sacnoradhq 4y ago
    I'm surprised they didn't call it Architectural Digest look. Empty palatial interiors staged to appear on magazine covers, but not necessarily lived in by actual humans. Sometimes, I wonder if the the AD places are empty investment homes / porn shoot locations.
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- Macha 4y ago
  So I checked the local market and while metallic grey is the most popular here in Ireland, white is fifth, compared to its clear first place when I've been to California. White is established in popular culture as the colour of transit vans and small traders, which isn't an image that inspires demand in personal vehicles. I think in recent years, Tesla marketing has rehabilated the image of white cars a little, but I don't see them getting US levels of use in the near future, especially as there aren't actually that many Tesla's being sold here. So I think there's some level of marketers adapting to at least what they think works in the market rather than simple volume discounts on white paint.
- ProfessorLayton 4y ago
  I believe a lot of it has to do with resale value. People want to be able to trade in their car for maximum value, and picking the color with the widest appeal helps with that. This seems to have created a feedback loop where car manufacturers ship more of the "boring" colors because that's what customers are buying. This also applies to things like computers: A cursory search on ebay shows that a silver iMac generally sells for more than an equivalent yellow iMac, for example. For someone who trades in their old equipment when buying new, this is a big deal.
  - nicenewtemp84 4y ago
    Odd colors actually have the best resale value on the used market. A yellow Porsche is very hard to sell new. Very few are made and sold in yellow because dealers don't spec them that way. 10 years later, if you try to sell a black Porsche, you have 72 others competing with you. If you try to sell a yellow Porsche, the buyer will fly from across the US to buy it from you.
    - ProfessorLayton 4y ago
      >Very few are made and sold in yellow because dealers don't spec them that way Dealers aren't speccing them yellow because they don't sell as well as other colors. If people were lining up for yellow Porsches, dealers would absolutely be ordering more yellow Porsches. Odd colors may be priced differently at the top of the market for used cars (I don't know), but that's just not true for the typical car used buyer.
      - nicenewtemp84 4y ago
        I specifically wrote that a new yellow Porsche is difficult to sell. People will travel for used cars. New car buyers want to pick a car. A few new car buyers do spec out custom orders and wait, but it's very rare. In general, that's atleast how half the crazy colors come into the market.
      - danaris 4y ago
        The problem isn't that fewer unusual colors are made. The problem is that no unusual colors are made in almost all car models. There are a very small handful of models that have a few particular colors beyond the basic black/white/red/silver/dark blue options, but otherwise manufacturers have decided that because fewer people want yellow (or bright blue, or pink, or orange, or magenta), no one gets those colors. Ever.
- golergka 4y ago
  I'm a digital nomad. I've lived in a lot of Airbnbs, and I love the Airbnb look. You know why? Because when landlords are trying to get creative, the result is usually horrible. Getting creative, if you're not a specialist in the field, would yield horrible results 95% of the time. Which is okay if you're doing it as a hobby, of course. But as a customer, I really don't want to be subjected to this. And Airbnbs where landlords have actually hired a competent interior designer usually have "Luxe" brand and are clearly targeted towards people in a completely different tax bracket.
  - bandofthehawk 4y ago
    Maybe that has more to do with your specific taste though? For me personally, I think my tastes have changed over time where I think I enjoy a bit more variety/chaos in terms of decoration and environment compared to the sterile greige look that's currently popular.
  - fennecfoxy 4y ago
    That is a good point as well, it's also a template that can be used. These people are financially motivated, it's cheaper to just use an existing and proven aesthetic to target a particular demographic than come up with something unique that may or may not work. It's certainly not millennials that are renting out these airbnbs, but I'm sure are heck we're mostly the ones staying in them.
- red-iron-pine 4y ago
  > so all the cars look like the same bar of soap (they don't have to) they do have to, though. updated standards to fuel efficiency and crash safety. there are only so many ways to make that happen -- an aerodynamic, fuel efficient bumper that also meets safety requirements -- and still be cheap enough for the average person.
- amalcon 4y ago
  There's a very boring, practical thing that most of those colors have in common. White, silver, and gray make your typical road dirt less visible. Black also accomplishes this pretty well in climates where they don't need to salt the roads. Blue and red are common favorite colors, so it's not surprising you get a little of those. Brown and tan used to be very common up until the late 80's or so; I'm not sure why that went away but that's the only one that seems surprisingly absent.
- nicenewtemp84 4y ago
  I sold cars for a decade. I love red cars. Atleast at the brands I worked for, dealers specd out their own vehicles including colors and interiors. We ordered a lot of black white greys because they are the easiest to sell. If someone likes a car in general, almost anyone will accept either black or white or grey, even if you would like red (rare). If you like a car, and all they have is red, while you dislike red (very common), you don't buy it. Dealerships have been around for 100 years and make millions of dollars for their owners. They're not operated by stupid people.
- efsavage 4y ago
  > What's driving this? That's what the article is about. Is it actually pull from customers, or is it push from the manufacturers? It's both. Most people don't want a gray car as their first choice, but it's probably more people's second choice than a real color. So red cars sit on the lot for 15.3 days, blue ones for 14.2, and gray for 11.6. Obviously (in MBA terms) the dealer, should order more gray cars. So they sell more gray cars, and the feedback loop means it's now hard to find a blue or red car because, if you ask a dealer, "nobody" buys them. So now the manufacturer just stops making those colors, which makes their life easier, and the cycle is complete. I begrudgingly have a gray truck and my wife has a silver SUV, because those were basically the only options available, many brands now you can't get a decent color selection if you special order them.
  - fomine3 4y ago
    It should be true for the US that customer can't order a specific car. But other markets also like boring colors. Interesting to see worldwide research (PDF) https://www.axalta.com/content/dam/New%20Axalta%20Corporate%20Website/Images/Color/axalta-2022-global-automotive-color-popularity-report.pdf https://www.axalta.com/content/dam/New%20Axalta%20Corporate%...
dclowd9901 4y ago
I’d argue that convergence _is_ soulless-ness and cars present a great example of the point. The “soul” of something that is inanimate is the qualities that make it memorable or stick it in our mind with some manner of tactility. Not literal tactility but the nature of how you can visualize something so clearly it’s almost like you can touch it in your mind. I’m getting a bit spacey here but let’s get concrete: Jeremy Clarkson often posited that a car tended lacked soul if it was refined and well put together. Often, he felt like older Italian cars, with all of their questionable design decisions were very soulful, because they reflect the fact that people, fallible human beings built it. It was a product of them, as much as a piece of art is purely a product of its artist. It’s why a Van Gogh has soul but a Van Gogh replica does not. The effort to make things perfect and completely refined with no strange decisions removes the humanity from them. Renders them soulless.
- hgsgm 4y ago
  We have troubles at work dealing with more than ~50 souls in our monkeysphere. Do we really benefit from 100 or more souls in our homes, one for every appliance and piece of furniture?
- PaulHoule 4y ago
  I think of Nader’s Unsafe at any speed which pointed out how numerous stylistic features in old cars were dangerous: for instance you could get spiked by a hood ornament, slashed by tail fins, etc. People tend to think of cars as an old technology but cars are under intense regulatory (and commercial, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurance_Institute_for_Highway_Safety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurance_Institute_for_Highwa...) pressure on issues like safety, emissions, noise, and fuel economy. A narrowbody airliner today can be based on a 1967 design with almost-state-of-the-art engines and nowhere-near-state-of-the-art avionics and control systems but there is no room on our roads for a new car based on a 1967 design. With all of the requirements acting on cars it is little wonder that looks go by the wayside.
- karmakaze 4y ago
  I agree that convergence is soullessness, both on the part of the producer and consumer who is choosing the default or merely practical. That's fine for those who only see cars as a means of transportation. A 'better looking' (according to those 'with taste') shape of a car doesn't have to cost more intrinsically. The reason we have many similar, not so great looking cars is because it's not a primary filter for sales volume. Something that paints outside convergent lines, is however a reason why a potential buyer would not buy it. Poor quality can give a car a kind of personality, but that's not the soul of it. The same car could be reliable and have the same soul. The main difference is whether it is developed to a specific vision, or if checking boxes and aggregated by committee.
marcosdumay 4y ago
AFAIK, the reason cars look the same is that they are optimized to use the same mass-produced parts. Not really because of physical, aesthetic, or usability reasons.
- bumby 4y ago
  Yes, they often are designed to use a common platform. But I'm speaking specifically to aerodynamic shapes. The body of a car is relatively easy to change in the design phase even with the same underlying mechanical systems, but I believe they still converge on the same basic aerodynamic shapes.
  - marcosdumay 4y ago
    There are actually quite a lot of possible shapes that don't degrade aerodynamics. If you take a look on the conception of any modern car, you'll see that the original design is always completely different from the one it gets after it's adapted to factory.
    - bumby 4y ago
      You’re probably right, it’s more about aero + production constraints. I don’t think the concept cars use the same constraints, which is why they have to change to get to production. Even if a design looks different and is still aerodynamic it doesn’t mean it can be economically produced without large changes to the production process. I’ve only worked in body panel stamping in automotive assembly as a controls engineer, so I may be taking a bit out of school here.
makeitdouble 4y ago
I think that's why "average" is felt as a tyranny. Sure these vehicles make sense in a cost vs aerodynamics for a base set of functionality. But taking a step back, not everyone want the same base functionalities, nor have the same need or desire of cost vs aerodynamics. At an extreme some people want a golf cart that have some trunk capacity and is road legal. At another extreme some want a practical but "fun" to drive car. Others want a mid-sized car that can somewhat fit two mountain bikes without being too much a trouble to use as a daily commuting car. These could all have optimized, wildly different designs, but it's more cost effective to cut off the minority cases and aim for an average that somewhat pays lip services to each specific case. And the more the cost effective average option is prioritized, the costlier it becomes to have a custom design for a niche use case, creating a vicious circle. To take another industry, we're seeing that in laptop computers: Macbooks nail the average with perfection, and that also means there's no way to get a big screen low power laptop from Apple, for instance. In comparison smaller makers have more niche models, Lenovo or Asus have wild models that are probably commercially possible because they don't try to catter to everyone with a single laptop line in the first place.
zestyping 4y ago
In the United States, size is one attribute in which cars have not converged. Cars keep growing bigger, for no sensible reason. That demand was created by aggressive marketing (encouraging Americans to attach their egos to their cars) and fearmongering (people feeling the need to get larger cars to protect themselves from other, ever larger cars).

by bumby 4y ago

ryandrake 4y ago

Even if they had to ultra-optimize the aerodynamics so all the cars look like the same bar of soap (they don't have to), they could still at least paint the damn soap a different color. But, no. All you see coming out of the factory are white, silver, gray, black, the occasional red and the occasional blue. What's driving this? That's what the article is about. Is it actually pull from customers, or is it push from the manufacturers? Is it: people all actually demand boring white soapbar shaped cars -> companies make boring white soapbar shaped cars? Or is it the other way around: Companies are economically incentivized to offer only a small number of colors and styles -> customer really doesn't have a choice -> customer buys what's available -> companies think that's what they really want because of their purchase choice. Same with the AirBNB look. Do people really like it, which translates into more rentals copying the look? Or are the landlords just uncreative, all copying each other, and that's all that ends up on the market? Or is something else driving it?

hgsgm 4y ago
Companies like selling cars, so I think they pick colors most people prefer. "Exciting" "Unique" colors look a bit silly or non-unique when your neighbors have the same color. If what you are asking for is 1000 color choices instead of 10, that's obviously more expensive to mass produce or customize.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y ago
  > "Exciting" "Unique" colors look a bit silly or non-unique when your neighbors have the same color. Reminds me a lot of the orange Chevys Cruzing around.
- mc32 4y ago
  There was a time in the aughts when nail polish colors were prevalent in (sub) compact cars for some reason. Not so much now.
nradov 4y ago
Car paint colors are driven by pull from franchised dealers and the dealership financing model, as well as by push from supply chain issues. In the US at least, most mainstream consumers expect to buy a car from dealer inventory and drive it away that day. So dealers mostly order only a few bland colors because most consumers are willing to settle for those as long as the car has the options they want and they get a good price. Like maybe you would prefer a bright green car but will settle for gray because the dealer offers low-interest financing. Dealers also incur inventory costs (floorplan financing) and their business model depends on rapid turnover so they can't afford to order "lot poison" that sits for months waiting for the right customer. Reducing color choices also simplifies manufacturing operations. Some luxury or performance oriented car brands such as Porsche and Tesla do allow color orders from a wider palette, sometimes to the extent of even doing custom paint blending to match a customer sample. But those customers are willing to wait longer and pay more. They don't need basic transportation to get to work tomorrow.
- pnw 4y ago
  Tesla have reduced their palette to just five colors, presumably to cut costs. Porsche is the leader in paint color choice, no doubt about that, with 14 basic colors plus custom options. And to your point, consumers are willing to wait for the Porsche factory to build their car, rather than driving one off the lot that day.
  - runnerup 4y ago
    Aston Martin probably has them beat by a landslide for number of colors. They offer well over 100 colors. Actual Porsche prices out the door look like about $100,000 (even though MSRP for the cheapest models are a lot less). Please correct me if Porsche is significantly cheaper than Aston Martin vantage ($150k)… to me anything between $100k-200k seems like the same market segment but maybe I’m just poor.
  - rippercushions 4y ago
    At least for the Model 3, Tesla also charges extra if you choose anything other than white. Guess which color is the most common by far?
YellOh 4y ago
Fwiw, the explicit advice I got from my parents about cars/houses was to never choose a unique looking one. I was told odd-colored cars are more likely to be broken into, and houses that draw attention (if placed in a neighborhood of otherwise very similar houses) are more likely to be robbed. So even if my favorite color was an easy option when choosing a car, I'd probably go monochrome as long as that's what the majority of other cars are doing, almost entirely for property crime reasons. On writing this out, I have absolutely 0 idea how factually-based this is, but it is at least a thing some middle-class Americans tell their kids.
- bumby 4y ago
  There's an old thought that red/yellow sports cars are more likely to get tickets because they are more noticeable. No idea if that's just lore or if data bears it out.
  - bandofthehawk 4y ago
    It's very unlikely. Once you control for the type of car (minivan, sports car, etc) and type of person buying the car (young/old, male/female), red cars get similar amount of tickets to other colors. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/red-handed/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/red-handed/
  - ensemblehq 4y ago
    They generally have higher insurance rates although I'm not clear on what's driving the model.
    - nicenewtemp84 4y ago
      People repeat this for decades... Apparently never noticing that they have never ever been asked for the color of their car when getting an insurance quote.
    - dragonwriter 4y ago
      > They generally have higher insurance rates Because they are on average driven by people who rate higher risk for other reasons, not because color is part of the model. Otherwise, a popular hack would be to get insurance first, and then paint a car red/yellow if that’s what you wanted.
anonymous_sorry 4y ago
> All you see coming out of the factory are white, silver, gray, black, the occasional red and the occasional blue. Isn't this just fashion? I've heard it argued that times of popular optimism and plenty tend to favour bright colours, extravagant design and conspicuous consumption. Think Calvin Klein underpants deliberately on show above low slung waistbands, analogous to frilly lace ruffs and cuffs in earlier ages. Times of austerity tend to be associated with muted shades, and perhaps virtue signalling rather than wealth signalling. Since the 2008 banking crises I think we've been firmly in the the dull, serious phase.
hoosieree 4y ago
There are a lot of good reasons for "the AirBNB look. White walls reflect ambient light and can enhance existing light sources. This can help make up for small (i.e: cheap) windows or limited light fixtures. Natural wood is durable but not hard and cold like metal or glass, nor will it break down and end up permeating your cell membranes like plastic. Exposed beams make ceilings more interesting visually but also dampen echoes and make a space feel less sterile and prison-like. Humans have been living in shelters made from wood and stone since the beginning. It wouldn't surprise me if affinity toward these materials shows up somewhere in our DNA. Not sure about the Nespresso machines.
- Earw0rm 4y ago
  Reasonably acceptable coffee without demanding skill (aeropress, barista machine), potentially creating mess (anything using fresh grounds), or needing much in the way of regular cleaning & maintenance (any of the full-service machines which contain a dairy refrigerator). Inexpensive and mostly idiot-proof. Just ignore the grotesque environmental waste of the pods.
- majormajor 4y ago
  It's often just fashion, not actual affinity for natural materials. The "AirBnB look" IME is usually engineered wood (aka bits of wood + liberal amounts of adhesive) floor, or even vinyl (tile if they're fancy), not natural wood. Natural wood scratches too easily and is more expensive to deal with generally. So for a rental? Nah. But yeah in actually older places sometimes it's natural wood liberally coated with basically-plastic clear coat. ;) A lot of the exposed beams are also not "real" structural beams. Often they're plastic too! Stuff like this. Lower maintenance, doncha know. https://www.architecturaldepot.com/BM.html https://www.architecturaldepot.com/BM.html
- sacnoradhq 4y ago
  I'm surprised they didn't call it Architectural Digest look. Empty palatial interiors staged to appear on magazine covers, but not necessarily lived in by actual humans. Sometimes, I wonder if the the AD places are empty investment homes / porn shoot locations.
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Macha 4y ago
So I checked the local market and while metallic grey is the most popular here in Ireland, white is fifth, compared to its clear first place when I've been to California. White is established in popular culture as the colour of transit vans and small traders, which isn't an image that inspires demand in personal vehicles. I think in recent years, Tesla marketing has rehabilated the image of white cars a little, but I don't see them getting US levels of use in the near future, especially as there aren't actually that many Tesla's being sold here. So I think there's some level of marketers adapting to at least what they think works in the market rather than simple volume discounts on white paint.
ProfessorLayton 4y ago
I believe a lot of it has to do with resale value. People want to be able to trade in their car for maximum value, and picking the color with the widest appeal helps with that. This seems to have created a feedback loop where car manufacturers ship more of the "boring" colors because that's what customers are buying. This also applies to things like computers: A cursory search on ebay shows that a silver iMac generally sells for more than an equivalent yellow iMac, for example. For someone who trades in their old equipment when buying new, this is a big deal.
- nicenewtemp84 4y ago
  Odd colors actually have the best resale value on the used market. A yellow Porsche is very hard to sell new. Very few are made and sold in yellow because dealers don't spec them that way. 10 years later, if you try to sell a black Porsche, you have 72 others competing with you. If you try to sell a yellow Porsche, the buyer will fly from across the US to buy it from you.
  - ProfessorLayton 4y ago
    >Very few are made and sold in yellow because dealers don't spec them that way Dealers aren't speccing them yellow because they don't sell as well as other colors. If people were lining up for yellow Porsches, dealers would absolutely be ordering more yellow Porsches. Odd colors may be priced differently at the top of the market for used cars (I don't know), but that's just not true for the typical car used buyer.
    - nicenewtemp84 4y ago
      I specifically wrote that a new yellow Porsche is difficult to sell. People will travel for used cars. New car buyers want to pick a car. A few new car buyers do spec out custom orders and wait, but it's very rare. In general, that's atleast how half the crazy colors come into the market.
    - danaris 4y ago
      The problem isn't that fewer unusual colors are made. The problem is that no unusual colors are made in almost all car models. There are a very small handful of models that have a few particular colors beyond the basic black/white/red/silver/dark blue options, but otherwise manufacturers have decided that because fewer people want yellow (or bright blue, or pink, or orange, or magenta), no one gets those colors. Ever.
golergka 4y ago
I'm a digital nomad. I've lived in a lot of Airbnbs, and I love the Airbnb look. You know why? Because when landlords are trying to get creative, the result is usually horrible. Getting creative, if you're not a specialist in the field, would yield horrible results 95% of the time. Which is okay if you're doing it as a hobby, of course. But as a customer, I really don't want to be subjected to this. And Airbnbs where landlords have actually hired a competent interior designer usually have "Luxe" brand and are clearly targeted towards people in a completely different tax bracket.
- bandofthehawk 4y ago
  Maybe that has more to do with your specific taste though? For me personally, I think my tastes have changed over time where I think I enjoy a bit more variety/chaos in terms of decoration and environment compared to the sterile greige look that's currently popular.
- fennecfoxy 4y ago
  That is a good point as well, it's also a template that can be used. These people are financially motivated, it's cheaper to just use an existing and proven aesthetic to target a particular demographic than come up with something unique that may or may not work. It's certainly not millennials that are renting out these airbnbs, but I'm sure are heck we're mostly the ones staying in them.
red-iron-pine 4y ago
> so all the cars look like the same bar of soap (they don't have to) they do have to, though. updated standards to fuel efficiency and crash safety. there are only so many ways to make that happen -- an aerodynamic, fuel efficient bumper that also meets safety requirements -- and still be cheap enough for the average person.
amalcon 4y ago
There's a very boring, practical thing that most of those colors have in common. White, silver, and gray make your typical road dirt less visible. Black also accomplishes this pretty well in climates where they don't need to salt the roads. Blue and red are common favorite colors, so it's not surprising you get a little of those. Brown and tan used to be very common up until the late 80's or so; I'm not sure why that went away but that's the only one that seems surprisingly absent.
nicenewtemp84 4y ago
I sold cars for a decade. I love red cars. Atleast at the brands I worked for, dealers specd out their own vehicles including colors and interiors. We ordered a lot of black white greys because they are the easiest to sell. If someone likes a car in general, almost anyone will accept either black or white or grey, even if you would like red (rare). If you like a car, and all they have is red, while you dislike red (very common), you don't buy it. Dealerships have been around for 100 years and make millions of dollars for their owners. They're not operated by stupid people.
efsavage 4y ago
> What's driving this? That's what the article is about. Is it actually pull from customers, or is it push from the manufacturers? It's both. Most people don't want a gray car as their first choice, but it's probably more people's second choice than a real color. So red cars sit on the lot for 15.3 days, blue ones for 14.2, and gray for 11.6. Obviously (in MBA terms) the dealer, should order more gray cars. So they sell more gray cars, and the feedback loop means it's now hard to find a blue or red car because, if you ask a dealer, "nobody" buys them. So now the manufacturer just stops making those colors, which makes their life easier, and the cycle is complete. I begrudgingly have a gray truck and my wife has a silver SUV, because those were basically the only options available, many brands now you can't get a decent color selection if you special order them.
- fomine3 4y ago
  It should be true for the US that customer can't order a specific car. But other markets also like boring colors. Interesting to see worldwide research (PDF) https://www.axalta.com/content/dam/New%20Axalta%20Corporate%20Website/Images/Color/axalta-2022-global-automotive-color-popularity-report.pdf https://www.axalta.com/content/dam/New%20Axalta%20Corporate%...

dclowd9901 4y ago

I’d argue that convergence _is_ soulless-ness and cars present a great example of the point. The “soul” of something that is inanimate is the qualities that make it memorable or stick it in our mind with some manner of tactility. Not literal tactility but the nature of how you can visualize something so clearly it’s almost like you can touch it in your mind. I’m getting a bit spacey here but let’s get concrete: Jeremy Clarkson often posited that a car tended lacked soul if it was refined and well put together. Often, he felt like older Italian cars, with all of their questionable design decisions were very soulful, because they reflect the fact that people, fallible human beings built it. It was a product of them, as much as a piece of art is purely a product of its artist. It’s why a Van Gogh has soul but a Van Gogh replica does not. The effort to make things perfect and completely refined with no strange decisions removes the humanity from them. Renders them soulless.

hgsgm 4y ago
We have troubles at work dealing with more than ~50 souls in our monkeysphere. Do we really benefit from 100 or more souls in our homes, one for every appliance and piece of furniture?
PaulHoule 4y ago
I think of Nader’s Unsafe at any speed which pointed out how numerous stylistic features in old cars were dangerous: for instance you could get spiked by a hood ornament, slashed by tail fins, etc. People tend to think of cars as an old technology but cars are under intense regulatory (and commercial, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurance_Institute_for_Highway_Safety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurance_Institute_for_Highwa...) pressure on issues like safety, emissions, noise, and fuel economy. A narrowbody airliner today can be based on a 1967 design with almost-state-of-the-art engines and nowhere-near-state-of-the-art avionics and control systems but there is no room on our roads for a new car based on a 1967 design. With all of the requirements acting on cars it is little wonder that looks go by the wayside.
karmakaze 4y ago
I agree that convergence is soullessness, both on the part of the producer and consumer who is choosing the default or merely practical. That's fine for those who only see cars as a means of transportation. A 'better looking' (according to those 'with taste') shape of a car doesn't have to cost more intrinsically. The reason we have many similar, not so great looking cars is because it's not a primary filter for sales volume. Something that paints outside convergent lines, is however a reason why a potential buyer would not buy it. Poor quality can give a car a kind of personality, but that's not the soul of it. The same car could be reliable and have the same soul. The main difference is whether it is developed to a specific vision, or if checking boxes and aggregated by committee.

marcosdumay 4y ago

AFAIK, the reason cars look the same is that they are optimized to use the same mass-produced parts. Not really because of physical, aesthetic, or usability reasons.

bumby 4y ago
Yes, they often are designed to use a common platform. But I'm speaking specifically to aerodynamic shapes. The body of a car is relatively easy to change in the design phase even with the same underlying mechanical systems, but I believe they still converge on the same basic aerodynamic shapes.
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  There are actually quite a lot of possible shapes that don't degrade aerodynamics. If you take a look on the conception of any modern car, you'll see that the original design is always completely different from the one it gets after it's adapted to factory.
  - bumby 4y ago
    You’re probably right, it’s more about aero + production constraints. I don’t think the concept cars use the same constraints, which is why they have to change to get to production. Even if a design looks different and is still aerodynamic it doesn’t mean it can be economically produced without large changes to the production process. I’ve only worked in body panel stamping in automotive assembly as a controls engineer, so I may be taking a bit out of school here.

makeitdouble 4y ago

I think that's why "average" is felt as a tyranny. Sure these vehicles make sense in a cost vs aerodynamics for a base set of functionality. But taking a step back, not everyone want the same base functionalities, nor have the same need or desire of cost vs aerodynamics. At an extreme some people want a golf cart that have some trunk capacity and is road legal. At another extreme some want a practical but "fun" to drive car. Others want a mid-sized car that can somewhat fit two mountain bikes without being too much a trouble to use as a daily commuting car. These could all have optimized, wildly different designs, but it's more cost effective to cut off the minority cases and aim for an average that somewhat pays lip services to each specific case. And the more the cost effective average option is prioritized, the costlier it becomes to have a custom design for a niche use case, creating a vicious circle. To take another industry, we're seeing that in laptop computers: Macbooks nail the average with perfection, and that also means there's no way to get a big screen low power laptop from Apple, for instance. In comparison smaller makers have more niche models, Lenovo or Asus have wild models that are probably commercially possible because they don't try to catter to everyone with a single laptop line in the first place.

zestyping 4y ago

In the United States, size is one attribute in which cars have not converged. Cars keep growing bigger, for no sensible reason. That demand was created by aggressive marketing (encouraging Americans to attach their egos to their cars) and fearmongering (people feeling the need to get larger cars to protect themselves from other, ever larger cars).