Silver has kept its title of being the most popular car colour in Britain despite a 3% decline in popularity which has seen its numbers fall by 205,326 to 6.6m vehicles.
New DVLA data requested by RAC Insurance* shows that as of the third quarter of 2017 silver cars made up just over a fifth (21%) of all cars on Britain’s roads and that the total number of licensed cars had grown by 1.5m to just over 32.3m.
The appeal of black has grown stronger, further cementing its second place in the RAC Insurance Car Colour Rankings, with a 7% increase (495,909) to 6.4m registered cars – 20% of all cars. The top three is once again completed by blue which enjoyed a 2% growth of (100,124) to 5.8m vehicles, which represents 18% of the total.
Three more colours – grey, white and red – make up the big six which each number above 3m cars. Grey is the fourth most popular with 4.3m cars on the road in late 2017, up 16% (576,117) the first quarter of 2016. White, however, is still the fastest growing colour in terms of pure numbers, rising from sixth to fifth in the list. There are now 3.6m motorists driving white cars, a 27% increase on early 2016, which means white cars make up 11% of all cars driven.
Red now holds sixth spot with 3.4m cars, having been overtaken by white. Green still has seventh place but its appeal is waning with a 16% drop in numbers (166,616) taking under the one million mark to 899,880 (3% of all cars on the road).
The fastest mover in terms of percentage increase, however, is cream/ivory which has enjoyed a 36% rise from 19,321 cars in Q1 2016 to 26,354 in Q3 2017. In terms of overall popularity this only represents 17th place out of 19 colours recorded by the DVLA. The number of multi-coloured cars remain broadly unchanged at 7,702.
2017 RAC Insurance Car Colour Rankings
| Rank | Colour | Q3 2017 | % of total | Q1 2016 | Change v Q1 2016 |
| 1 | Silver/aluminium | 6,635,989 | 21% | 6,841,315 | -3% |
| 2 | Black | 6,411,436 | 20% | 5,915,527 | 8% |
| 3 | Blue | 5,789,640 | 18% | 5,689,516 | 2% |
| 4 | Grey | 4,287,082 | 13% | 3,710,965 | 16% |
| 5 | White | 3,608,430 | 11% | 2,833,084 | 27% |
| 6 | Red | 3,445,264 | 11% | 3,237,326 | 6% |
| 7 | Green | 899,880 | 3% | 1,066,496 | -16% |
| 8 | Beige/buff | 230,742 | 1% | 235,683 | -2% |
| 9 | Brown | 188,373 | 1% | 169,656 | 11% |
| 10 | Yellow | 178,149 | 1% | 172,297 | 3% |
RAC Insurance spokesman Simon Williams said: “Silver is still hanging on to its title of being the most popular car colour in Britain, but black is catching up fast and may well overtake very soon. Blue – in its various shades – remains consistently popular but has lost ground on surging black. White is the fastest growing of the really mass appeal car colours as it continues to race up the popularity rankings, now leapfrogging its rival ‘red’ into fifth.”