White Cars

As I was heading out of the neighborhood, I found myself hitting the prime time morning commute traffic. Usually, I’m a bit ahead of it but I had an early morning appointment that slightly altered my morning routine.

At the front of our development, I noticed there was a long line of traffic and I patiently waited to make my turn. The longer I sat there, the more I noticed. Car after car was white. White sedans. White trucks. White SUVs.  At one point, there was four in a row (and the SUV waiting behind me? It was white, too).

My doctor’s office is located just a mile away from my house and along the way, I kept seeing white vehicles. Occasionally, there’d be the odd burgundy or gold (ahem, champagne) hued car. But the predominant color in Farragut, today, was white.

I wonder if it is something about our town.

But later, when I picked up lunch on the way to the office, it was the same. White car here; white car there.

We always had white vehicles when I was growing up. My dad preferred them because the white color reflected heat and, also, it was easier to keep the cars clean. At one point, my folks had a white station wagon, a white truck and, of course, the venerable white ’66 Mustang.

Maybe as a backlash to that, I have never owned a white car. The old S10 pick-up that I inherited is technically blue and white but I think there is more blue than white, so it fits.

We had the odd green phase – the one where we kept getting green cars even though that wasn’t our preference – and I have now driven two blue SUVs in a row. Lisa’s Honda is a sleek black.

I wondered if the white trend this morning was a fluke or if I was on to something so, as I often do, I went online to look it up. Sure enough, according to a Forbes article citing a report by DuPont the most popular car color in America, as of the end of 2012, was indeed white (followed, in order by black, silver, gray and red). A USA Today feature confirms what I read in the Forbes piece.

According to USA Today, here are the top four popular car colors in the U.S. (with percentages):

• White – 21%
  
• Black – 19%
  
• Gray – 17%
  
• Silver – 15%
  

(with blue and red closely duking it out for fifth place).

So, the punchline: I wasn’t imagining things. And it’s not just a Farragut factor.  White cars abound from sea to shining sea.

Maybe I need to re-think this color thing?

JG

Originally posted 4/23/2015