vilakins | Cars and what they say

Cars and what they say

Ha! I was going to post about car colours anyway since I was out today and parked near a car dealer and noticed that there are no car colours any more. They're all shades of grey or silver. How incredibly boring, and dangerous too since they're basically road-coloured. Then I got an e-mail with a link to find out what my car style and colour says about me.

OK. My "two-door coupé for single women asserts girl power", and my silver means that "you are cool and elegant. The only problem is, as silver was the most popular car colour for several years, almost everyone owns one". Good point and observation. It was the one thing I disliked about my car but they don't come in red or yellow. I make up for it with a number-plate that says LIBR8R and the thought that it's yer basic spaceship colour, innit?

I snigger at Greg's result though. "A four-door sedan says practicality and caring" and "a dark green vehicle means that you are traditional, trusty and well balanced, but what it really means is that you are thrifty as who makes dark green cars any more? If you own one, it's probably been a while since you bought a new vehicle". Because this is all true. The old dunger is 15 years old, not that that's remarkable in this country.

They're wrong about SUV drivers though. They don't have a sense of adventure; the bloody things are mainly used as urban assault vehicles, not for roaming over uncharted territory or vast tracts of land.

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Minivans mean that I need nurturing and escape. Yeah. Sure. *g*

That's... odd. Maybe because it can be a kiddie-carrier and a camper van? Who knows, but it's a fun site.

I once worked with a guy who lived in a minivan in the carpark (showering at work) so he could spend what he saved on his passion for hang-gliding. Management didn't know or else turned a blind eye.

A study they did here showed that silver cars are involved in fewer accidents than cars of other colors--interesting, huh?

Really? Considering at least half the cars on the road here are silver, there hasn't been a reduction in the road toll. But that's reassuring to hear. I think it's a better colour than the dark blue I used to have, and it's a nice bright silver.

Edited 2010-04-20 05:38 (UTC)

I have a silver two-door myself. I don't think it says very much about me, though. :)

Me neither, really. It was a nice car and a decent price and low mileage so hey. I just wanted a Homda as they're very reliable. I didn't really choose my others either, but went for the first one that was suitable.

But Greg's does say something about him with the dings in the bodywork he'll never get round to fixing: that he's one-eyed and therefore no depth vision, and doesn't care what a car looks like as long as it gets him to and from work.

I like the concept of that thing, but they don't have a "Yellow" option! What gives!!

I know! I love a nice bright yellow; my first car was yellow (and British). They don't have bright blue or bright green either. But almost all our cars are Japanese and maybe they just don't do those colours.

I would personally hate to drive a car; the one positive thing about my wrists being shot is that I can't, and therefore nobody expects me to. (I was once very upset with someone who said to me that perhaps they might be able to do something about my wrists, "and then you'll be able to drive", as though this ought to be the goal of my existence.) However, if I were obliged to have a car, I should at least want one in an unusual colour, like bright green or purple. I have always wondered why the colour palette found on the roads is so generally limited; there are lots of different shades available within that colour palette, but the basic choice is pretty much red, blue or greyscale. And occasionally green. My parents' first car was green.

There is also beige, but this seems to be the exclusive territory of little old men who probably shouldn't still be driving. My great-uncle had a beige car which he definitely shouldn't still have been driving!

You have to drive here. We're too spread out to have workable public transport unless you work in town and live on a bus route there. And then you can't go anywhere at the weekends.

I thought it might be different for you with a lot more British or European cars on the road; ours are almost all Japanese and they don't do interesting colours. I'd like purple or another bright and vibrant colour like read, yellow, blue, or green, but they don't make them.

My first car was a bright yellow Mini, then I got an old red Honda, but after that it was the dull and boring dark blue and now silver. I;d love to see some more variety on the roads.

I haven't seen many beige cars on the road here, but I'd say it's a vehicle age thing over there. Perhaps they date back to the 70s?

Could be - now you mention it, I don't remember seeing a new beige one.

I'd say the commonest colour over here is dark blue (again, not great from the point of view of safety). If you want a bright colour, you can usually have red, and there are quite a few red cars on the roads; other bright colours are rare but not unknown. I occasionally see cars in colours that make me happy, but it's a noteworthy event when I do.

There is also the Yellow Sports Car, which was a bit of a cliché in the 80s; you still see one or two of those. My computer science teacher had one. It was a bashed-up old thing, probably about tenth-hand, and he drove it as if he thought he was at Brands Hatch. Blinking boy racers. :-)

You don't get a lot of sports cars here, but I did see a yellow one which I thought looked rather nice.

My little Pug hatchback, which I think fits somewhere between compact/funky and family sedan, is red. Not fiery red, and certainly not kidney bean red, it's a beautiful rich toffee apple red. So I don't know what my car says about me. :)

Worst car colour I ever saw..... chocolate brown ferrari. Wrong, just so, so wrong.

I think the closest cars get to red is maroon which is what I suppose they mean by kidney bean. My first car was a bright yellow Mini followed by a scarlet Honda Civic. You can't get those bright clear colours now.

I have never seen a chocolate brown car, but yes, that would be wrong. Was it 70s vintage perhaps?

Was it 70s vintage perhaps?
Oh, no. It was a shiny new one, just a couple of years ago.
I know what you mean about the 70's though: Mission Brown everywhere! :P

You had it too? This house was built in the 70s, all Mission Brown ceiling beams and skirting boards. Ugh. They were painted white before we moved in but you can see it show on the beams outside the house and any scuffs on the skirting. I thought it was a local fashion.

Perhaps it was just in Australia and New Zealand, but Mission Brown was the colour of every piece of outdoor timber and a good deal of interior woodwork as well. My first home was a little unit in a new development area of many unit blocks which were built in the 70's - every one of those hundred or so buildings had Mission Brown balcony rails, front doors and garage doors. Ugh!

Ugh indeed! It's such an unattractive colour. And all the kitchens were brown, gold, olive, and copper. Ours was Mission Brown going by where the grey paint's come off the cupboard doors. I'd love to replace them and strip the walls back to the rimu underneath (I can see it in the cupboards) and just apply a clear treatment.

I seem to recall bright orange and lime green being popular colours for the kitchen bench tops. The 70's is not a decade that I associate with great decorating style! :P

Silver is a common colour over here but I don't like it. It looks to me as though the car skipped a stage in the factory and never got painted. Light coloured cars are easier to see in low light levels, and therefore safer, but as I said, I don't like silver, and white looks horribly grubby so quickly.

My ideal would be yellow, but that seems to be unfashionable at the moment and is hard to find new, although I've just been told that Seat do a yellow car. The Fiestas I was looking at come in scarlet, white, black, silver, mid-blue, dark ink blue, dark grey, deep purple, a yellowy-green and magenta.

I've seen the occasional bright orange car, which would be fun, but don't know which manufacturers are doing orange at the moment.

Magenta or scarlet perhaps?

Greg had a white car and it always looked dirty. My silver looks pretty good all the time though even when I haven't cleaned it for a while, and so did the yellow and the red ones I had.

I was at the Mazda dealer's today and looked at the Mazda2, which is the car Gary was there to pick up. It's a nice little car - I can get the seat really well adjusted to suit my short legs - and one of the colour options is a lovely warm burnt orange. I'm very tempted by it.

Oh, Gary said he'd heard that it's not obligatory to have any kind of car insurance in NZ. Is that right ?

Edited 2010-04-21 01:14 (UTC)

As far as I know. I've always had insurance though.

Round here, SUV mostly means 'will overtake obnoxiously just to get one space ahead in the queue for the red light' ;p

Actually I expressed my opinion of SUV drivers a lot more strongly (bastards with huge egos and no concern for others, or mothers picking up their kids in the tank) but thought I'd better tone it down as some readers might drive the things. I did a rant once at work and this lovely Indian lady who was really kind to me turned out to have one. :-P

I used to have a hard time getting into traffic at a certain free-turn intersection and several times the same guy in an SUV would let me in, so there are exceptions. :-)

It's a puzzle to me that they're so popular here. They don't get tax cuts or whatever they get in the US, they're inclined to roll, so what's the attraction? Down in Taupo, they seemed to be the main form on transport.

I suspect most people who drive 'em just don't realise how loud and aggressive they can appear to people cycling nearby. Flooring it to overtake takes up a lot more space on the road and is bloody loud.

I used to cycle a lot as a kid but Auckland traffic is too aggressive. There've already been too many accidents. If I lived in Hamilton I might have a bike though; drivers there seems more laid-back, possibly because it's a lot easier to get around and there are fewer of them (and it's fairly flat!)

SUV's seem to bring out the worst in people, they should do a study on that.

I also have a two door silver car, I don't mind the silver because it doesn't show dirt. However, it is hard to spot in the parking lot since it seems most of the cars there are silver.

Before this car, I had the same make but in cherry red. Red was my third choice but it came into stock earlier than black or white (boring, I know) so I took it. I loved that color. You don't see it on the road at all any more.

I've had the same problem in parking lots! At least my car has a relatively distinctive back and noticeable number-plate, but I do sometimes walk towards the wrong one. Is yours Japanese too? I'd have thought that there'd be a lot more variety over there in US models, or have they followed the Japanese trend? I remember reading years ago in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon about a character looking down from the air at Japanese parking lots full of white and silver cars. They seem to have phased the white out--for good reason; they always looked dirty. Greg used to have one.

I do like the look of my car (a Honda Integra) (http://pics.livejournal.com/vilakins/pic/000qrebw), but I wish it wasn't such a common colour.

Mine is very similar. I have a Honda Civic. The Integra is part of the Acura line here--also made by Honda. I have now exhausted my knowledge of car models.

The look of cars here doesn't vary all that much--at least to someone like me who doesn't look very hard. Unless you're driving a Porsche or something, I'd notice that ;)

I once had a bright red Civic (my second car) and liked it a lot. I then went to a dark blue Integra because I wanted aircon, and stayed with the Integra because the dealership made me a good offer when the other one started having problems. I like Honda in general so my next car will probably be one. I'm happy with this one for now though.

We currently don't have a car (too impractical and parking is either non-existent or ridiculously expensive) but our last one was a red Toyota Tercel. I'm not too keen on driving but C loved that little car.

I loved my little red Honda Civic too early model, more than second-hand) but I really needed a car with aircon in summer. I miss red and yellow and other bright colours.

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