White Out

A few years ago it seemed to be that practically every new car was silver. I was a big fan of silver and I had a silver car myself - the somewhat ill-fated Honda Civic. I liked the look of the car in silver and it also had the advantage of not showing up the dirt as badly as other colours. However, silver just seemed to become ubiquitous; even boring. I've had a few car colours over the years. I currently have a dark blue car which looks fantastic when it is clean and shiny and pretty awful when it isn't (rather like black in that respect) and have also had dark green with similar advantages and problems. I've had a couple of red cars which tend to fade after a few year's worth of sunshine and our current family car is a sort of blue-ish silver colour (well, it looks silver to me but I'm told it is blue). The one colour of car I have never had is white. I always associate white with commercial vehicles, police cars and rusty old bangers. I can see certain advantages with white: it is the easiest to repair and tends not to show up minor chips. They are also less prone to heating up I the sun (which my dark blue Yaris tends to do). However, I always associate them with bottom of the range, slightly rusty, old Ford Cortinas. However, I may be changing my mind.

White seemed to reach rock bottom a few years ago with even the police abandoning the colour in favour of silver. For a while the only new white vehicles seen would be vans or van based variants of popular cars. However, over the last few years I've noticed more and more top end cars,  particularly Audi sports cars and BMW Coupes, which have been turned out in stunning all white trim. Now, more and more cars seem to be available in a smart looking white finish. The odd-thing is I actually seem to like the look of them. A case in point is the VW Up! which one of my colleagues bought recently. The Up! seems to be smashing little car. Essentially it is very similar in size, cost, design and economy to the Toyota Aygo but it doesn't have the Aygo's disadvantages such as the lack of a proper boot space. My colleagues version is the "Up! White" which is meant to be a top of the range model but the paint finish looks quite brilliant. Maybe the reason that white cars now look so appealing is that they tend to be the shiny new models that have been bought recently and lovingly washed whereas the silver ones are now entering unloved banger status?

As an aside, when I was looking for the photo of the Up! I discovered that the "Up! White" is known as the "White Up!" in Germany. They also do a sister model which is all in black - I won't tell you what they called it but I was more reminded of this chap:

Anyway, as I usually swap cars when the wheels fall, I hope I won't be looking for a new one soon (although the Yaris is starting to develop expensive habits) but I think I may be sold on the whole white thing. It looks like white is going to be the new silver.