I disagree Humph; 'burgundy', as in dark, muddy red, looks awful on just about anything, and not just cars. I watched a dark-red LEC - the only one that came up that wasn't black or a shade of grey - for a while before buying a silver one. The red car hung around on the dealer's site for ages; having seen a couple like it on the roads since I can understand why.
Proper metallic reds, on the other hand, can look great and really lift the look of a car. The Saab Ruby red is on such, and certain big Citroens (used to?) come in a vivid red that would have been my choice if I'd gone for a Grand Piano over the (silver) Verso. Rover in the 1990s offered the original, angular 200-400 in Nightfire Red, which was similar: rich and vivid, not dull and muddy. Lexus today still does a nice red; pity it puts it on such ugly cars.
Non-metallic red seems to be on the increase again. I think this may be due to the rise in private leasing: I noticed last year that metallic has gone back to being a (high-)priced option rather than thrown in FOC, and customers are picking plain red as the cheap option. Looks a bit tacky on a Mercedes C, to give one example I've noticed round here.
As for pale blues and greens, I think of them as 'tinted silvers' and like them a lot (unless it's that baby pink that Honda used to put on Jazzes.) BMW offered a few in the mid-00s that looked subtle and expensive on a 5 or even a 3 saloon. I see at work a pale blue 3 coupé of similar age to mine; certainly nothing wishy-washy about it.
Black cars used to work because they had nonconformist shock value and rarity on their side. Now that everybody's 1.6 Focus or Golf is black, they don't even have that and just look awful. I suppose black is lazy shorthand for 'cool', but there's nothing cool about a grubby black Astra, while a black M3 just screams 'trying too hard'.
Last edited by: WillDeBeest on Mon 28 Mar 16 at 12:05
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