Red and buried. Have red cars had their day?

Richard Aucock, Contributor
Wed, 18 Dec 2024

Red was once Britain’s most popular car colour, but a plunge in popularity means new red cars could disappear from UK roads entirely by 2037.

Back in 1997, 1 in 4 of all cars on the roads were red. It was regularly the top choice for new cars throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

However, sales of new red cars have been falling ever since, down from 13% in 2014 to just 7.5% today.

AA Cars is now predicting that if the downward trend continues, red cars could disappear entirely by 2037.

Drivers are instead switching to grey. The number of buyers choosing new grey cars has almost doubled between 2014 and 2023, up from 14% to 27%.

Interestingly, the rise of grey cars has come at the expense of white, falling from 13% to 7%, while sales of new silver cars have fallen from 22% to 17%.

Black is now the second most popular new car colour in the UK, according to sales figures.

Almost two in three new cars sold in Britain last year were either grey, black or white. Red, meanwhile, has dipped beneath blue in the top 10 most popular car colours.

"Drivers of a certain age will fondly remember a time when nearly every other car on the road seemed to be red, but those days are long past," says AA Cars director James Hosking.

"The rising popularity of monochrome and grey cars has the potential to make our roads far less colourful."

It’s a similarly colour-free trend when it comes to used cars, with black making up 27% of searches on the AA Cars site. White was second on 23%, with grey third on 18%.

And red? Just 6% of searches, even lower than the trend in the new car market.

Only a wave of nostalgia will be able to save red cars from going the way of turquoise or maroon, said Hosking. Along with cream, they accounted for not a single used car search last month...

Ask HJ

Are red cars still vulnerable to sun 'bleaching'?

I owned a couple of red cars in the 1980s and 90s. Both were new and even though they were garaged much of the time the paintwork suffered badly from ‘sun bleaching’. I understand that modern paint finishes are more resistant, but has the problem been solved completely, or is it still worth avoiding red if wanting to keep the car for a few years? Also, are metallic finishes more resistant than ‘plain’ red?

All paint colours are susceptible to the effect of UV rays but colours such as red can show the effects more readily. However, the durability of paint finishes has improved since the 1990s, so we would be much less concerned about a red car fading over time. There is no specific evidence to suggest that a metallic finish will resist UV rays more readily, but with red being a less popular colour in recent years we would expect the majority of red paint finishes to be metallic in any case.

Answered by David Ross

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