Any colour you want as long as it’s black.

That’s all well and good, but I don’t like black cars. Why? Polished and in the sun they look okay, but for the rest of the time they just look . . . black!

Why do I dislike them so much I hear you ask?
Simple. They have no colour, no imagination. But I do have a technical reason for disliking them too, allow me to share it with you.

Black cars absorb light so it hides the shape of the car. Not the general outline of the car, no it hides the design features, the creases and curves. Next time you see a black car just take a minute to look at it in a side profile. It looks slab sided and a mass of metal. Now look at the same car in colour, preferably a bright metallic but any other colour will do. Now when you look at the side profile you’ll notice the crease running down the side and the curve around the wheel arch.

If you look at a black door mirror it just looks like a spot on the side of a car, whereas in a colour you’ll see notice the curve of the housing. Many years ago you could have any colour you wanted as long as it was black, now you can have any colour you want. BMW has its own Individual programme where you can have any colour or mixes of on any model you liked the look of. Google the Karl Lagerfield 7 series if you don’t believe me, and remember that was in the 90’s.

I worked at JLR’s Special Vehicle Operation and was lucky to have a small part in building the Project 7’s and a couple of the Defender’s used in the James Bond film Spectre. The most special car? The Range Rover Trinity, that was simply stunning inside and out. They had serious interest from the middle east for that car but management thought it was better to take it off sale (another inspired management decision!)

The reason for sharing this information is that onsite was the most advanced paint booth in the world at the time. The idea was simple, you could take anything object to them and they will be able to produce a paint that matches exactly. So your favourite suite/hand bag/tie/wallpaper could be replicated and sprayed onto whichever model you wanted.

Unfortunately that didn’t come cheap and money is no guarantee of taste as they say! I was building a defender one day and it was Eastnor green with a French racing blue roof which looked as bad as it sounds trust me. I flagged this unusual colour combination to management who checked the order to confirm it was correct, which it was. Apparently it belonged to Ralph Speths daughter who went racing and wanted the roof to stand out in the car park so it was easier to find.

Back to the colour of cars though, and in my opinion all cars look best in silver. Why? Cars are predominantly made of metal which in its natural and unpainted state is….silver. That philosophy is easily applied to wheels too, which again seem to be painted fashionably black these days. My mate has a Black Jaguar XK-R with the proper 5 litre supercharge engine which had black wheels when he bought it. A couple of years ago he had the wheels refurbished back to the original silver finish, and the difference was incredible. It made the wheels look much larger as they stand out much more.

I was on a large M5 event last year, and every one was a bright colour such as yellow, green or red, as were some of the support M3’s. When you see them lined up it makes you realise just how lazy people are when it comes to choosing colours.

So next time you choose a new car, be imaginative, be bold. But don’t go for black.