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Grey Dominates Car Colors, Swapalease.com Reports

Eighty percent of the cars and trucks in the Swapalease.com auto lease marketplace are in the gray family, including white and black.

by Staff
January 28, 2015
2 min to read


CINCINNATI —Eighty percent of the cars and trucks in the Swapalease.com auto lease marketplace are in the gray family, including white and black. Swapalease.com analyzed colors of its entire online ecosystem and discovered that the grayscale dominates the automotive landscape.

Specifically, the colors black (31.4%), white (19.6%), silver (13.1%), dark grey (9.1%) and grey (6.5%) are the top five colors and make up 79.9% of the Swapalease.com marketplace. Two additional colors in the grayscale, off-white (0.8%) and light grey (0.7%) also add to the overall universe.

Red is the first color not in the grayscale, sixth most popular overall, and represents 5.2% of total cars. Blue and dark blue are right behind in the seventh and eighth spots at 3.6% and 2.6%, respectively. Purple is last on the list — in the twenty-third position — at 0.1%.

It’s not like grey was the color of 2014 either, officials said. Last year at this time the grayscale represented 76.5% of the marketplace, again showing its dominance. According to Scot Hall, the company’s executive vice president, grey has been popular since before the recession.

“Red and blue were much more prominent in the Swapalease.com marketplace in the early and mid-2000s, but since around 2005 the popularity of grayscale cars and trucks began to emerge,” said Hall. “If anything, silver led the grayscale renaissance, but since the recession varying forms of exotic greys have become popular with drivers and car shoppers.”

Since the inception of Swapalease.com in the late 1990s, though, black has always been the most popular shade in the car lease marketplace.

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