Green is the new trendy colour?

Noticed that there has been an increasing trend of concept cars / new cars launched with green as their signature colour. Possibly due to influence from those eco-tree hugging brigade. A couple of years white was the rage - most notably was launch of BMW M3 and 1-series Tii Concept, Lamborghini Gallardo LP-560, maybe also the Audi A4, Toyota iQ.

Below are some notable new cars / concept cars launched with green as the signature colours. But not all of these models use green as their signature colour because their eco-credentials. Some are purely out of historical reasons - like Lotus and Porsche's RS series cars.

Mazda2

Chevy Spark


Ford Focus RS

Porsche 911 GT3 RS

Lamborghini Gallardo LP560-4

Proton Satria Neo R3 Lotus

MTM tuned Audi R8

The tuner crowd have long embraced green colour, remember Paul Walker's Mitsubishi Eclipse in the first Fast and Furious installment?


VW Scirocco

and the IROC Concept that previewed the production Scirocco.



Ferrari 599 GTB KERS-Hybrid Concept


Electric powered Ruf Greenster Concept

Remember at one time, a very popular colour for the Perodua Myvi was olive green? But the colour has since been discontinued, presumably due to a drop in popularity against other more conventional hues / tones of silver, gray, black and white?

Statistically, green is far from displacing the traditional favorites of silver, black, gray, and white. Globally, green only accounts for 1% of all passenger carrying vehicles sold. But in developed markets with a higher level of eco-consciousness like North America and Europe, the share of green coloured cars sold is slightly higher than the global average. Below are statistics from the 2009 Dupont Colour Popularity Report.




Interestingly, the market share of white have dropped about 5% between year 2009 and 2008.


There is nothing new in promoting green colour or using green as a trendy colour associated with fast cars. Back in the glory days grand prix racing and European road racing, the famous British Racing Green - a certain dark hue of green used to adorn all British racing cars from Jaguars to Lotuses to Bentleys and Aston Martins as well as classic British F1 teams like Vanwall and Cooper. While the French racing cars were blue, German's silver (at one time they were white too)  and Italian's red.

Britain vs Italy!

An example of a classic Vanwall GP car, seen during Goodwood Festival of Speed


Related link : DuPont 2008 Automotive Colour Popularity Report