Car colors and the risk of damage: surprising autoDNA data!
Does the black car color mean that the vehicle is unlucky? Does the body color have anything to do with the risk that the car had been involved in a collision before? autoDNA checked the relation between the car color and the statistical risk of damage found in the vehicle history.
Car colors, or what is the code of the color?
The VIN number allows checking a range of information coded by the car manufacturer. How to check the car paint color by the VIN number? To check basic information about a particular car, including the car color, all you need to do is type the VIN in a free browser, such as at autoDNA.
Is the black color unlucky?
Black is often linked with negative values, which is best illustrated by the black cat superstition. The black color – in combination with, for example, a cat – usually means something unlucky. If such a colored animal runs your way, then according to folk beliefs you will have bad luck and some misfortune may happen to you. Is it the same with a car?
As it turns out, the black car color does not necessarily mean the highest risk of damage found in the vehicle history. According to the autoDNA data, brown cars are more unlucky than the black ones.
As a contrast, red, green, pearl, and obsidian were reported at the end of the TOP 10 table of cars for which users of autoDNA in 2023 found damage in vehicle history reports searched by their VIN numbers.
Car colors and the risk of damage
Which car colors are the most unlucky. Based on autoDNA
In the case of brown cars checked in the autoDNA’s base in 2023, as much as 13.5% of the VIN searches returned a report informing about the damage. The following places were occupied by cars in black (11.4%) and gray and blue (12% and 11.4%, respectively). The silver color ranked fifth in the ranking of car colors with the highest probability of damage found in the report. Medium risk was reported for white and green. The TOP 10 is closed by red (9.3%), pearl (8%) and obsidian (6.8%).
Black dominates the automotive industry
What’s important to stress is that the risk might be distributed differently, according to the popularity of colors in a car fleet. In Europe, according to the report done by Axalta, the world leader in the automotive paint industry, the market is dominated by 4 colors of paint – white, including pearl, black, gray and silver – these most popular colors, including their shades, consist of as much as 82% of vehicles driving on roads around the world.
that white and pearl have as much as 34% market share? The Axalta statistics show that as much as 21% of cars are chosen by customers in black.
Is the brown car color unlucky?
So what about brown, the infamous leader of the autoDNA ranking? In Europe, according to the latest Axalta data, in 2022 it accounted for only 2% of cars registered for the first time, of which 1% was beige and 1% was brown. Then, as it turns out, it’s not always the case that the most popular colours indicate higher risk of damage.
Brown and green are at opposite poles. Which car color should you choose in such case? Both are quite rare, but it is green that is definitely the “safer” choice according to autoDNA data.
When buying and selling a vehicle, it is always worth free VIN lookup using the autoDNA vehicle history report, the market-leading provider of the VIN decoding tool. The VIN number is sufficient to check, among others, damage to the vehicle, including total loss, collisions, recorded odometer readings, and archive photos.
