During my last visit to Kroger for a Coke Zero restock, I was blessed to see the wonderfully orange (metallic orange, no less) Lexus RC 350. Never mind that the actual color name is Molten Pearl, that car is orange. Orange AF, even.
As we are all aware, car colors are frequently barely colors at all these days, as Jason most recently wrote about here. Says Torch:
Anyone who looks out a window at any random road or parking lot knows what I’m talking about here; the vast majority of cars out there are some shade of gray. Sure, automakers try to mask this by giving the non-colors evocative names like Slate and Dusklight and Graphite and Ennui and Abandonment, but the result is a world further denuded of color.
I knew this to be true, but I didn’t realize how inured I had become to the grayscaleverse until that RC 350 warmed my retinas. It was like that scene in The Tingler when the otherwise black-and-white film renders a sink and bathtub full of blood in bright red. “Oh right, color!”
… and what a color. Orange is pretty much my favorite hue, not only for cars but basically anything meant to look cool in a coat of paint. Look, I even painted my latest RC (bud sadly, not an RC 350) in a bright shade of citrus:
So, more orange cars please (and all the other bright colors, too. How about you?
What Car Colors Do You Miss The Most?
My parents had an orange Volvo 245 wagon when I was a kid. I miss seeing “ordinary” cars in bright colors. Now it seems to be only “performance” cars. I also miss seeing some good teal cars running around.
Side note, I got see The Tingler at a live riff session with Trace Beaulieu and Frank Conniff (from the early MST3K). What an experience.
Any real colors especially pastel, neon, and bright. The kia alien green color is one of my favorite that I probably miss seeing the most . It makes a happy little car more happy. They are quick to bring back a smuf blue that should be the last after a nice green, orange, yellow, and purple.
I’ve commented about it before, but there is an orange RC350 that lives near me and I drive past when the owner is parked at their job. We are the only two orange cars in town and it’s always fun passing each other on the road, as most people probably assume we are the same car (despite not looking much alike).
GM’s Raspberry Metallic.
S-10.
Geo Metro convertible.
emerald green, the color of money. Also, bright orange.
I miss any color that would be in a pack of Skittles. The gray-scale German rainbow is so 2010s
BMW Inca Orange and Agave Green.
Green, any flavor. Ford Maverick had a great green for MY2025, and then it was gone 🙁
Non-metallic reds, like Mazda Soul Red Crystal is cool but I swear hardly anybody besides a certain Italian manufacturer makes a classic non-metallic fire engine red anymore.
Ironically I like red more on humdrum appliance cars than I do on sports cars.
I love me some Milano Red on 80s/90s Hondas
Exactly! BMW briliantrot is a good one from the ’80s too.
I’d like to see more bright, punchy blues. I wish Grecian Water blue was more widely available on new Lexus models.
Saw a new Bronco that was painted kind of a steel mist blue and it looked great. I bet a mustang would also look good in that color.
My favorite in general is blue, and I do wish more than just Chevy trucks and SUVs wore a nice, bold blue. Instead of “even the Devil Z is brighter than this Blue.” Or, at the other end of the tonal scale, “Hyundai Racing Slate.” We need more Brilliant Blues, Bayshore Blues, that one VW color, heck, Petty Blue. Even Thomas The Tank Engine Blue. I want bright, bold Blues, not Barely Blue.
Green is a good color, too, and even darker greens are underused, except, maybe, by the British. I’d even take BNSF “it looks like black when it’s dirty” Heritage II green on a car.
Also more cheerful yellows, reds dat go fasta, oranges, purples…and, of course, if you can’t choose, there’s always Chromalusion. Or Maziora, whatever you want to call it. Color flip might be gaudy but we need silly stuff right now. Paint the lot in vibrant colors, bring the joy back to life.
One thing that saddens me is that most OEM color and material teams go through so much work to have all these different options of exterior and interior colors, only for dealers to pick black, white, and grey with only black interiors. Blame the dealers, give C&M the freedom to pick cool colors!!!
I truly believe dealers are responsible for killing off interesting colors (and manual transmissions but that’s a topic for another thread)
I miss teal, green, bright blues, orange and yellow. I also miss the option of 2-tone paint jobs.
And I also miss having the option of interesting decal packages… like the Islander decal package you could get on the YJ Wrangler.
Nissan Solar Yellow on the XTerra and Rivian Compass Yellow on the R1T
Nissan Solar Orange Pearl was great too (just one year on the 350z). It was like a creamsicle.
Greens and blues. Even really light shades of greens and blues can look nice on the right car.
Part of the reason my last car search took 3 months was because I refused to buy something in white, gray, black, or silver. 80% of the market, gone.
I drove to different states for both my car and my wife’s car MOSTLY because of paint colors!
Baby Shit Green. Hell, I’ll take anything right now.
I disliked it at first, but now I like Ford’s recent version, legend lime (as seen on the S197 Mustang).
Teal, purple, neon green, brilliant blues, anything FUN for christs sake.
I miss…
Wait for it…
BURNT ORANGE :D:D:D
I actually wanted a Grand Prix in burnt orange, just for the color, when it was all the rage!
A relatively recent one – Ford’s amber gold metallic from the late ’00s.
It very nicely split the difference between eye-searing look at this bright and too-sedate is that beige? It managed to be both classy and eye catching. Looked oddly fantastic on pickups.
This may have something to do with yesterday’s article about the Sonoma GT, but teal with magenta accents.
But really, any color. Anything to break up the grayscale monotony of late.
I also miss when interiors came in colors as well.
Yes! Teal is dope on cars.
A nice warm Copper metalic
As a colorblind guy born in the 70s, I swear every Maverick was that color. Might have just been rust.
That or green. Basically a lot full of Mavericks was a colorblindness test. Except for the bright blue metallic one an elderly neighbor of mine growing up had for easily a decade before giving up driving when it rusted out.
I miss purples and teals from the 90’s. I was too young to buy a car back then, but man, I would have picked one of those colors if I had the opportunity to.
Any of them. All of them. But especially interior colors. I’d rather have a car with a Gloss Pearl Boredom exterior and a blue interior than one with blue paint and Midnight Ink Piano Depression inside.
I miss the deep red cloth (not leather) interiors of the late 80s and early 90s. I may be alone in this though.
Me too! I always enjoyed the color gradations – deep burgundy for luxury cars, maroon for everyday stuff, and lurid cherry for performance cars.