U.K. New-Car Buyers Go Gray

Hard on the heels of a report declaring white the most popular car color in North America in 2019 come figures showing the favorite in the U.K. was gray – or, if you will, grey.

The number of gray cars registered in the U.K. last year rose 5.3% to 521,273, with more than one in five new cars (22.6%) sporting a gray paint job, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders says. It was the second straight year atop the ranking for gray, which also was No.1 from 2000-2008.

Black was second and white third in the SMMT report, meaning 60.7% of all new cars on U.K. roads in 2019 were shades of monochrome, although registrations of black cars were down 2.4% and white cars down 4.1%. Blue was third for a sixth straight year and red ranked fourth for the sixth time in the past seven years.

Germany-based chemical company BASF, an automotive-coatings supplier, said last week that white was the most popular car color in North America in 2019, with white, black, silver and gray accounting for 77% of the market in the region.

The SMMT says its 2019 ranking of the top 10 most-popular car paints was unchanged from 2018 except for 10^th place, where yellow ousted beige.

With the U.K.’s overall new-car market falling 2.4% in 2019 to 2.3 million units, only gray and turquoise saw their numbers rise in the 12 months, the latter up 29.3% with 2,358 registrations. Silver, making the top three 16 times in the past two decades, posted its fewest registrations in 20 years, with 201,008 models specified in the color, the SMMT says.

U.K. customers favored gray except in Scotland and the Channel Islands, where white was No.1. Nationwide, the least popular colors were maroon, cream and pink, with less than 1% of all registrations combined.

The trade group says the smallest cars in the U.K. segment were more likely to be white, while luxury sedans more commonly were black. Drivers of diesel- and gasoline-powered cars tended to opt for gray, but white was the most popular color for zero-emission battery-electric vehicles.

SMMT top car colors 1998-2019