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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   3100 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for June 21, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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watching hundreds of drones driving dirty shitboxes without using their turn signals

Speaking of identical shitboxes with insufficient lighting. Is it just me or are there also absurdly fewer colors of cars on the road now too? Even if they were less common you used to see a variety of colors on new cars being sold. Raspberry colored Honda Fits, bright orange Mini Coopers, Forest green Subarus, golden yellow Scion xBs, etc.

Now it seems like the vast majority of cars are some shade of grey/silver. There's something so bleak about seeing a never ending stream of grey cars, driving on gray pavement, with a backdrop of grey concrete buildings, all under a grey sky. It's especially bad contrast when people refuse to turn their lights on when it's raining.

Checking a few random 2024 models it seems like cars are only manufactured in ~4-5 grayish colors (black, grey, white, silver, and bluish grey) and red for some reason. What happened to just regular blue cars? I could have sworn that even 10 years ago every make had a blue option. Then even if the manufacture offers a non-grey color it's a $1k up-charge.

I’m going to die on this hill, but drivers need to turn their lights completely on every single time they drive, day or night, clear or foggy. The visibility is just so much higher. Next time you drive, take a look at incoming cars and note which one you see first. It’s almost never the biggest or the most brightly colored car, it’s almost always the one with their lights on. The auto-on crap is rarely calibrated correctly.

Why do people not have them on always? Some inane cost saving measure that'll bring in a couple dollars per year? Why is it not regulated by law?

Daytime running lights are required on new cars sold in the EU, but in the US our overlords at NHTSA haven't been able to determine that lights make you more visible.

I'm with you on some form of active illumination whenever the car is in drive.

It's not clear to my why NHTSA takes a different stance than every other safety organization with respect to daytime running lights. Motorcyclist, US auto manufactures, insurers, and state DOTs all think that active illumination increases visibility, but somehow NHTSA can't find an effect.

Is it just me or are there also absurdly fewer colors of cars on the road now too?

It is not just you.

I'd tend to blame the obsession with resale value, taken apart in this article about watches. Time was, cars didn't last nearly as long as they do now, especially American cars. 100k miles used to be "on death's door;" now it's a warmup for a lot of models. It was common for the first owner to drive the car all the way to the junkyard, or to sell it for a minimal amount when they were done with it. Modern cars on the road are close to 14 years old, in 1970 the average was under 6, and it only broke ten well in the Dubya administration.

Once reselling your car becomes a concern, tastes become recursively drawn towards the inoffensive median, an ouroboros of boredom. Most people don't mind a white, silver, gray car. Personally, I would love a baby blue or orange car, but never buy a red or gold or black car. But I wouldn't reject a white car. Another person would utterly hate a baby blue or orange car, but would buy a red or gold car. But they'll also accept white. So someone selling a white car has more buyers than someone selling an orange car, giving them higher resale value.

It's recursive, because if the second owner expects to sell to a third owner later on, then he will also prioritize white over orange, and so will pay more for a white car than an orange car. And so on down the line.

People bought fun cars when they expected to drive the car all the way to the junkyard, or they simply didn't care and chose what they liked personally. Today, people make responsible financial choices, and pick boring colors. Everything trends towards a mushy middle. C'est la vie.

It started with the supply chain issues after COVID. Dealers didn’t want colored cars, because they wanted to avoid a situation where they only had three cars of a certain model in stock and two of them were niche colors that most buyers wouldn’t want. So they started ordering only gray, white and black models. The manufactures took note of this and started making more gray, white and black models and fewer brightly colored models. This in turn made the colorful ones more expensive and harder to find, and so even fewer people bought them. So now most cars on the road are gray, white and black.

Started way before covid.

https://www.thedrive.com/news/37001/this-graph-shows-how-car-paint-colors-have-gotten-more-boring-over-the-years this is article from 2020

But I’ve seen reports that the average age of cars on the road in the U.S. is ~13 years old. Assuming that this is referring to the median (and despite finding countless articles repeating the “13 years old” statistic, I haven’t found one that specifies if the average in question is a mean or median), then this suggests that post-COVID-lockdown effects on the distribution of colors among cars on the road can only be marginal at best. And even if the statistic refers to the mean, I doubt that outliers have too much of an effect here.

Of course, your explanation does perfectly answer the other part of your interlocutor’s question, why new cars only come in grey.

I've noticed that, post 2021, many new cars have a sort of muddy shade. Whether it's green, or blue, or brown there's a muddy undertone.

It serves to signal that the owner has a new-model car.

For the same reason, the iPhone usually comes in a new color when the latest model comes out. So if you have a rose gold phone, or a yellow phone, or whatever, people will know you have a new one.

I saw a graph of the relative popularity of colors of car paints, and they pretty much settled into shades of grey sometime in the late 90s. It used to be far more varied, but at one point it all converged on black, grays and white.

Thankfully it's not quite that bad in India, outside of the southern part of the country, where white is the new black. Then again with the solar insolation we get that's an eminently sensible decision, albeit a boring one. Personally, I'm fond of scarlet or crimson cars, and there are still plenty on the streets here.

Car enthusiasts will say that it's the manufacturers. It's another median approach to the market, playing things safe and giving people what they'll buy more consistently, even if it won't excite them as much.

I think that's copium.

If you ask any woman what color car they want, it's going to be grey, white, or black. Just like they're all doing with interior walls.

Men tend to be ambivalent at best, or simple followers of female preference. The vast majority of people view a car as an appliance or a status symbol where conformity is part of its value, as opposed to a critical component of their freedom infrastructure and identity. Look at how many identical Louis Vuitton bags you see being abused in an airport.

There's something freeing about that, as @Walterodim pointed out. Cars are fucking expensive and so not caring about them is nice in many ways. But bottom line: I think the reason for lame colors is that people are boring.

I used to own a fire engine red Sunbeam Alpine convertible, manufactured in 1966, and bequeathed to me by my dad. I burned it to the ground by accident but that's another story. Later in Japan I bought a Eunos Roadster, also red. If I had a sports car now I think I'd go for bright yellow--my wife would despise it. But yeah, yellow. Maybe with a white leather interior. I'd ride it up and down the coastline (if I could find one nearby.) With the top down.

But yeah we have a gray diesel that seats like 8. At least the license plate is custom (that was free for some reason) and a secret handshake to OT Star Wars fans. Small victories.

TK421?

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