How many South African motorists realise that their car’s colour can have a significant influence on its resale value? Let’s find out which is the best colour for your next car.
Which colour of car sells the best?
According to BusinessTech,1 the easiest cars to resell in South Africa are white or silver ones. Reselling becomes more difficult with the darker colours, such as black and navy.
Why is it that lighter-coloured cars have a better resale value?
Would this perhaps be because scratches are much easier to spot with the darker colours? In addition, darker coloured cars in the South Africa would tend to heat up quicker than their white or silver counterparts. In fact, a 2011 study, conducted by the Berkeley Lab Environmental Energy Technologies Division, showed that light-coloured cars reflect about 60% of the sun’s light compared to dark-coloured cars.2 They concluded that a black car would show a 2% greater fuel consumption due to a greater use of air conditioning.
What are the preferred car colours in other countries with hot climates?
Motorists in other countries which have a similar hot climate like that of South Africa have the same preference for car colours. These include different shades of silver and grey.
What car colours have the best resale value in Europe?
In Europe, it seems the opposite applies, where darker-coloured cars are preferred compared to their lighter-coloured counterparts. Perhaps this confirms the findings of the Berkeley study.2
Which colours remain popular?
According to BusinessTech,1 motorists should buy cars with black, white and silver colours. This is because these colours would still be attractive and popular in the years to come, thereby raising the resale value.
A US study reveals that resale value varies
A study by an online car website, involving over 2.1 million cars, showed that car values varied significantly over a range of colours. Lighter-coloured yellow cars depreciated the least, while gold cars the most. 1
What about white cars?
According to IOL,3 white cars retain their resale value the most. On the other hand, green- and maroon-coloured cars depreciated the most. This trend is a complete opposite of previous times.
A five-year UK study that involved hundreds of thousands of cars showed that the colour white still performed the best.3 Resale values of white cars were 6% higher than those of blue cars, and 8% higher compared to those of green cars.
Blue, green and purple cars are not so popular
The resale value of blue cars are below average market values, and are not much sought after. A five-year study3 also showed that the colour green continued to be unpopular, whilst purple cars showed the greatest depreciation. In fact, gold, green, maroon and turquoise caused their owners about 4 – 6% losses in car resale values.
In South Africa, yellow cars have the best resale value
Even though a yellow car could look like a taxi in some parts of the world, it still reaches the best trade-in value.4 According to iSeeCars.com car listings,4 a yellow car bought for R260 000 will, after five years, have a resale value about R20 000 higher than that of an equivalent black model. According to iSeeCars.com,4 even though silver and black cars may sell quicker, their resale values are not as high as that of a yellow car.
Why should yellow or orange cars have such good resale values?
According to iSeeCars.com,4 one plausible reason why yellow and orange cars have good resale values is because of there are so few of them. In fact, only 1.1% of all cars are yellow and orange.
We have seen how different colours of cars can affect their resale values. According to the above information, the best colour of your next car should be white.
Once you have bought your car, don’t forget to purchase affordable car insurance with Prime South Africa.
You may buy a new car, but don’t forget you can buy affordable car insurance with Prime. Read more about affordable car insurance here.
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