bUT My rESalE vAlUe!
this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2025
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Good point. If your car is a crazy color it's resale value will drop
Not always. If you keep that car in good condition and it ends up being a desirable color it it could be considered rare by resale time, you're just rolling the dice when you buy it with that strategy compared to a more common/basic color.
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More specifically, all of the bright colours tend to fade in the sun over time.
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That, and many of these cars wouldn't last long enough for the paint to fade from UV. Your yellow car turning beige wasn't a concern if it wasn't going to reach 100,000.
Are you inplying these older cars weren't intended to last longer than 100k because I'd wager most of the cars in the top image at least doubled that before going to scrap.
I park next to an 80s beetle with over 350k on the odometer. My own truck is from the 90s with 280k.
I work with a guy who daily drives his dad's old Mercedes. While he inherited it, it wasn't a "project car" or anything, it was a daily driver kept in good repair. Honestly, you put on a new clear coat, detail the interior? It feels no more than a few years old. 500k miles.
I owned 6 SAABs that were made from '82 - '90. I refused to touch a GM SAAB. Didn't even buy them with less than 100,000 miles on the odometer. 1/6 died at ≈750,000 miles. That was my fault, found out about hydroplaning the hard way, on I-75. The other 5 died between 1.3-1.7 million miles. Never quite got one to 2,000,000. Several hundred people have, and despite SAAB not making a car since 2011, they still keep adding cars to the list of 2,000,000+
Not OP, but most of those cars only had 5 digits on the odometer. It says something about how long the manufacturer expected them to last.
It's important to remember how far we've come on longevity. 100k as the expected lifespan wasn't common until the 90s. My grandmother once told me that 40k meant it was time to start looking for a new car. This probably would've been for cars in the 50s.
Obviously you can take any car to any mileage if you're willing to sink the time and money into it. Many of these cars are prized by enthusiasts, and became project cars. But your standard utility cars of the 70s and 80s were probably not getting to 100k before needing a lot of repairs.
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Not just the color. Each make and model used to look distinct and unique. Now they all have the same vague SUV shape. It makes sense aerodynamics and safety standards are a thing but it still feels so corporate and almost dystopian.
But SUVs are neither aerodynamic nor safe (for others)...*
*In comparison with normal cars.
There are also things like safety standards and whatnot, there’s more nuance here beyond some shape conspiracy lol
It's largely roll over protection safety requirements have increased dramatically. So you get massive pillars that have to distribute force into the rest of the body.
Which also has to handle that load, or prevent intrusion laterally from side impacts.
It's largely driven by safety designs.
They typically look like a mildly used bar of soap on wheels.
It's carsinisation but for cars. Everything evolves into a type of SUV. It makes sense since physics kind of dictates how aerodynamics works and engineers just have to work around that.
I'm looking forward to the day when we don't have rear-view mirrors and just use cameras. Kind of surprised we haven't just gone that direction already. Screens and camera tech has gotten good enough that we can do that pretty efficiently.
The issue I have with some of the more "modern" cars is getting rid of the door handles on the outside. These pop-out things are just a hazard for people in colder climates or places where dust and other ingress can cause problems opening the door. Although, it would be nice to have my kids walk up to the door and not jerk on the handle 2-3 times before I can get the keys out to unlock it.
Mirrors just work. No electricity, no lenses to get covered and blocked.
Cameras are good for the places mirrors can't see, but otherwise it's more shoving electronics in places were it's not needed driving up cost, complexity, and decreasing repairability.
I like function over form for safety items. Simple, reliable, and imo there is beauty in something clearly being designed for a purpose.
Another factor that seems to get ignored with mirrors vs cameras is depth. A mirror is still a 3D reflection and there’s usually enough depth information to judge distances pretty well. You lose all sense of scale and distance with a lens and screen.
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There are far more sedan shapes over SUV ones on the road, but with that said I agree with your reasoning. It’s natural that the most efficient shapes are adopted en masse so everyone can benefit. Same with other things like safety standards/regulations.
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It's like we live in a world built out of that gray shit inside that Krabby Patty in the one episode.
Well, gray and depressing does fit the times.
Paging through the 80s and 90s car colour options for somewhat mainstream cars like bmw is crazy in comparison to today. Sure they were the expensive paint option but there were hundreds.
There’s some awful colours today (eg you can get 3 shades of grey, red, or the precise shade of yellowish green that a newborn infant leaves in their diaper for a Prius). I say - at least it’s a colour.
Kind of true also for housing.
Drive the West Davis highway in Utah, north of Salt Lake City, and most of what you'll see is cookie-cutter McMansions in the same color schemes.
I saw one larger house that looked like an unpaid intern copied and pasted the same set of rooms multiple times onto the standard front entry.
Cheaply built, soulless architecture, tiny lots, on ground that was lake bed less than a hundred years ago.
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You could also get factory colors “custom”. What was available at the dealership was one thing, but they had a host of other color options you could special order. Like upgrading from an AM radio to AM/FM Cassette. You just had to wait for the factory to do a run of that option before your car would get shipped. More options were a la carte and you weren’t forced into trim packages like today that are like cable tv packages - pay for a bunch of shit you don’t want to get the one or two options you do. Want AWD? Sure! But you have to take “premium sound”, floor mats, cargo separator, and exterior trim packages too.
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All the crazy colors and styles originally happened to sell "self expression" because the culture was becoming more anti consumption. Advertisements for most things used to be more matter-of-fact, then they started focussing on manipulating emotions to sell more shit. I guess now the culture is more pro-consumption and status-obsessed, so conformity is what sells now.
The famously anti-consumption, status-unobsessed, non-conformist 1980s, that's what they always say.
I read a while ago that people are sharing cars more and more. While someone may love a hot yellow, their partner may not, so they both settle for a grey. The market has gone from "I love it!" to "I don't hate it..."
That's more like 1974 than 1980.
My current car is bright red. I bought it used without consideration to the color. That's been the case for every car I've owned. I've had orange, metallic beige (I think Honda called it "Champagne") three times, forest green twice, silver, and burgundy. I've never had blue, black, gray, or white.
If I got to pick, I think I'd choose candy apple red, burgundy metallic, or a deep cobalt blue metallic. I liked the green one okay, but I'm not a big fan of green.
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It's not quite as bad as it looks. The lower image either has had the saturation reduced or was taken with a potato, and the upper image has had the saturation increased. The lower image has a gold car (parked by an asshole) and a a couple red cars, but the image quality makes them hard to notice.
The upper image still has a lot more variety, but it's a bit misleading.
Ahh missed that being europe. We were not that color diverse in the US in the 80's. we had a lot more dark browns and a lot less vw's
Picking cherries is fun!
Yes.
Sick of the gray in cars, clothing, buildings, etc. etc. etc.
Not pictured here is "soul red crystal," the best red in the game.
"It comes in any color you want as long as it's black."
Everyone wants a car that blends in so that they are less of a target for cops.
For most of us, that is not a concern at all.
I would argue this is 2010's and people just can't afford the new colorful 2020 cars, they all seem bright and colorful.
Every new car I see on any car lot other than a Volkswagen one is just full of white, black, blue and red.
The new microbusses and old beetles (both kinds) are colorful. One lot a few blocks away even has a jetta with that "lego" thing going on where every panel is a different color. I always liked when they did that.
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I was listening to NPR recently & they had a segment about this. The guy they had on said it was a mix of corporate savings & market response. Many people just wanted black, white & red cars. So that's the colors we see the most.
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And the new ones all seem to be pavement colored, wtf?
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