HOW DOES CAR COLOUR AFFECT RESALE VALUE?
BY ALLISON ROGERS
What’s the difference between yellow and gold cars? Thousands of dollars, apparently.
When sprayed on a vehicle, one of these colours holds its value a lot better than the other—and the result may surprise you. iSeeCars, a car research company and search site designed for car-buying consumers, recently collected a slew of data on how the colour of car can impact its resale value. Through an analysis of 1.6 million 2020 model year used car listings, the company comprised a list of colours holding the best (and worst) resale values.
Don’t go for the gold when it comes to cars, says the report—gold vehicles see a 25 percent drop in value after three years. That’s a whopping $11,000 difference between MSRP and potential resale price in today’s market.
Yellow cars, on the other hand, only depreciate by about 13.5 percent after three model years. On average, that’s about a $6,500 gap between the MSRP and resale value three years later.
“Yellow cars represent the greatest disparity between how many are produced and how many people want one,” said Karl Brauer, an analyst with iSeeCars. “Not many people want a yellow car, [but] there are clearly more people who want one than [there are] vehicles [that] exist, which explains why yellow performs so well on the second market.
“The same can be said for orange and green—colours we don’t see often but are obviously higher in demand than in supply.” Orange and green claim the third- and fourth-best depreciation scores: orange cars lose about 18.4 percent ($7,000) of their MSRP after four years, while green vehicles see resale values drop by an average of 19.2 percent ($8,700).
Beige is the second-best value retainer, says the report, depreciating an average of 17.8 percent ($8,400) after three years. Kelley Blue Book data says that black, white, gray and silver are the most popular vehicle colours in Canada. Well, a black car depreciates 23.9 percent or $10,000 three years after release; white cars see a 22 percent price drop ($9,700); gray vehicles plummet 22.5 percent ($9,400) and silver cars drop 23.2 percent ($9,200) after three years.
When it comes to bolder hues, blue and red tend to be the timeless choice. Thankfully, they prove to be safe choices, depreciating 22 percent ($9,200) and 20.6 percent ($8,500), respectively.
Breaking it down by vehicle segment—pickup, SUV, minivans, sedans, coupes—yellow remains the top choice for SUV owners with resale values dropping just $4,500, or nine percent, after three years.
For sedans, however, yellow takes a dive to the seventh-ranking position, while brown skyrockets to number one. When all vehicle segments are considered, brown cars depreciate about 24 percent ($10,300) after three years. Brown sedans, however, are worth just 16.8 percent ($5,200) less after a three-year period. Analysts suspect the SUV owner opts for more conservative hues—something run-of-the-mill that blends in—hence the skewed supply and demand. “Brown is far less impactful than yellow, [but] it’s not a colour most people associate with strong demand. Yet there are fewer brown sedans in the market than buyers who want one,” said Brauer.
The same rings true for minivans; those with an earthy green coating depreciate at a slower rate than flashier counterparts. It’s also true for pickup trucks, as beige vehicles depreciate at a rate of 7.9 percent ($3,600) after three years. That’s a far cry from the worst depreciating pickup—silver trucks are worth 16.5 percent ($8,000) less than MSRP after three years.
Those known, traditionally, to be flashier— like convertibles and coupes—also match their stereotypes. Yellow convertibles and yellow coupes hold the best resale value. To create this report, iSeeCars analyzed data from more than 1.6 million 2020 model year used cars between April 2022 and May 2023. The MSRP of each car was adjusted to account for 2023 inflation, then compared to the car’s listed price. Data was then organized by car colour and body style.
For more information, visit iseecars.com/ car-color-study.
