Somebody posted this on the other site, thought I'd link to
The age of average by Alex Murrell https://www.alexmurrell.co.uk/articles/the-age-of-average
this post was submitted on 13 Apr 2025
256 points (95.1% liked)
Cars Australia
237 readers
1 users here now
A community for Australian Car Enjoyers, or just looking for information from other aussies.
Questions regarding purchasing, modifying, home servicing, show and tell, car porn, camping in their 4x4, etc
Usual aussie.zone rules apply.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I also chose black, but only because the choice was black, white or grey. White looks cheap and shows dirt fast, and grey makes you almost invisible in the wet and overcast UK weather.
Black cars show dirt, dust and mud the most
Also not a great choice for the Aussie sun. Absorbs heat. "An experiment by the Royal Automobile Association of South Australia (RAA) found that on a 43-degree day, the interior of a black car reached 83°C in just 20 minutes, while a white car reached 71°C in the same time." Either can kill you quickly at those temps, of course, but dark colours will always be hotter than lighter colours, and in Australia, most places, for most of the year, are pretty warm, hot, or a couple of degrees cooler than hell.
Black cars are also the most dangerous colour wise; most likely to get into accidents, and more serious accidents. Years ago I read that yellow and red are the safest colours, as the human eye picks those colours out as 'danger!'. Apparently something we inherited over 1000s of years and came about because so many of the dangerous bugs, spiders, snakes, reptiles etc have yellow or red on them.
But I've also seen info that says that white coloured helmets for bike riders are the safest as they stand out the most over the widest variety of backgrounds.
I remember watching a televised oval-track truck race a few decades ago; one competitor had to drop out because his truck developed vapour lock from the heat. The bonnet was black.
In the next race his truck had a white bonnet. A pit reporter with a pyrometer took temps of that truck's bonnet before the race, plus another truck with a black bonnet.
The white bonnet was 42C and the black bonnet was 82C -- just sitting there in the starting lineup, with engines off.
yup, my car only comes in shades of depression. Wrapping it would cost me thousands