Is your car's exterior coat a factor in value?
One of the biggest aspects of a vehicle that can either draw in or push away someone looking to buy a vehicle at a glance is the bodywork. While the available performance, luxury, and comfort options of a vehicle can make it attractive to potential buyers, the general shape of the vehicle is the first noticeable feature and along with the color, it may arguably be one of the most important parts of any vehicle. But how big of a role does exterior color actually play?
In a perfect world, performance and comfort would be the most important features obviously. However, people are oftentimes visually-driven and you have to get someone to get close enough to your car for them to realize that they actually want to drive it. An extreme example of this would be a masculine guy looking at a bright pink car thinking, “I wouldn’t be caught dead driving that car.” At that point it wouldn’t matter what engine the car had or how capable it is, your buyer pool just got a bit smaller because of the color.
According to a study conducted annually by DuPont Automotive, color actually plays a very big role in the purchase of the vehicles we see on the roads today. The study has consistently found that the most popular color choices are silver, white, and black with an occasional variant of blue and light brown on certain models. The Yankelovich Partners study on color actually takes the matter a bit further finding that as much as 39-percent of consumers were actually more likely to buy elsewhere than to settle for a color that didn’t speak to them.
What this means for the manufacturer is obvious. Although, when it comes to the collector market, these findings offer a bit more murky of a path as the color for cars that the consumers are looking for were often chosen many years ago and changing the color could devalue the investment. Based off of these studies though, it seems like the best way to make a good investment in the collector car market would be to only buy cars that were originally painted in a neutral hue. You can find a more complete breakdown of these studies’ findings at kbb.com.
Would you settle for your dream car in a shade you don't like? Let us know below.
