But the right ones can make an automaker see green.

A car can have the smoothest engine, the best brakes and the nicest interior, but if it’s the wrong color, it just won’t sell, said Alan Starling, a Kissimmee, Fla., auto dealer who owns Pontiac, Buick, Chevrolet, GMC and Oldsmobile dealerships.

After the engineering is done, it all comes down to choosing the colors that work best with the shape and style of the car.

But unlike many other aspects of automaking, there is no exact science for this. Automakers say color selection involves studying trends, monitoring the mood of the country, gut feelings and, sometimes, even luck.

Take the case of the Pontiac Bonneville sports sedan.

One day about three years ago as Pontiac engineers were putting the final touches on the new Bonneville, the time came for Pontiac Division General Manager John Middlebrook to choose which exclusive colors would make it to production.

Since the Bonneville would be built in a General Motors factory along with several other brands of GM cars, many of the colors were to be shared between Buicks, Chevrolets, Oldsmobiles and other GM vehicles.

But every year, Middlebrook said, each division chooses two or three exclusive colors.

Two other GM divisions didn’t want a dark green that was available that year, but Middlebrook had a hunch that it might work on the Bonneville. So he had one painted in that color.

“When I looked at the Bonneville, I saw a lot of Jaguar influences in the rear haunches in that product. I thought British Racing Green was the right color. It just looked like the right thing to do,” said Middlebrook from Pontiac’s headquarters in Michigan.

Middlebrook liked what he saw and made the dark green an exclusive Pontiac color. It was a decision that has led Pontiac to a pot of gold at the end of a long rainbow of sales.

The Bonneville has become one of the hottest selling Pontiac sedans in years, and the dark green version has been leading the way.

Middlebrook said customers order about a third of all Bonnevilles in dark green. On the more expensive SSE and supercharged Bonneville SSEi models, dark green accounts for 40 percent of sales. But it’s rare, Middlebrook said, for one color to dominate so.

“We used a gut judgment on that dark green, but as it turned out, it really did fit the product and image,” said Middlebrook.

Orlando businessman Bob Kearney agrees. When he decided to buy a new Bonneville recently, picking the color was the easy part.

He grew fond of British Racing Green Jaguars when he and his wife lived in Great Britain.

And because the Bonneville also reminded him of the Jaguar, he said he never considered any color other than dark green.

“It was the first impression we had of Jags. It conveyed a certain elegance to most people,” said Kearney, of Kearney Systems in Orlando.

Kearney said his Bonneville, an SSE model outfitted with gold wheels and gold pinstripes, draws plenty of compliments.

“It turns heads and is constantly getting second looks,” he said.

But some cars and colors don’t work out so well.

Toyota has found that a shade of purple on its midsize Lexus ES 300 luxury sedan has underwhelmed buyers.

Don Brown, Toyota’s national product manager, said Toyota monitors how well colors sell two ways.

“We track the volume we sell and the velocity _ the average number of days a car sits in stock before it is sold. We might be selling an acceptable volume of purple cars but if they sit at the dealership three times longer, we might discontinue that color or change it,” Brown said from Toyota’s U.S. headquarters in Torrance, Calif.

At Toyota, choosing colors is a complex procedure because the automaker’s vehicles are exported all over the world. And car buyers in each country have unique tastes, Brown said. Not only that, but in the United States there are regional color preferences. For example, lighter colors, he said, are generally more popular in the Southeast.

Many colors that are popular in Japan and other countries won’t sell here, Brown said. In Japan, shades of yellow and gold are popular on cars because, he said, Japanese tea often has those colors and car buyers there are familiar with them.

In Europe, dull shades of green and some shades of yellow are popular on Range Rover luxury sport-utility vehicles, but those colors wouldn’t sell well here, said Bill Baker of Land Rover of North America, the Maryland-based importer of the British-made vehicles.
“Color is a matter of style. Like a suit of clothes, it’s an expression of your personality,” said Baker.

Automakers such as Land Rover and Toyota that export vehicles all over the world have a tougher time choosing the right colors.

“If every country wanted 10 exclusive colors, we couldn’t do it” because the production lines are not designed to handle that many different color combinations, he said.

Even though automakers know that buyers always will want basic colors such as white, red, blue and black, there still is a lot of testing, analyzing, predicting and guesswork involved in picking other colors.

“A lot of it is gut feeling, trying to match the color and shape of a car. Like any other process, we try to study our market and study where trends are going,” said Brown of Toyota.

He said Toyota designers try out colors on clay mockups of cars, sometimes using more than one color at a time. One side of a car could be green, while the other side might be red, he said.

At General Motors, designers use a special kind of paint that can be peeled off.

Pontiac’s Middlebrook said that no longer are color decisions made based on what looks good on a 10-inch color card. Now, all colors being considered are applied to the cars.

“It is very important that you go beyond looking at color chips. You can only really make a decision by putting the color on a car. We put the peel coat on and take the car outside. We look at every new color on the product before we make a decision. And we find that what might look beautiful on a 10-by-10-inch patch might change once it’s outside on the car with all the trim in place,” he said.

In the old days, GM used to paint thousands of cars different colors, Middlebrook said.

“Not many years ago, we had a big color show in Phoenix. The cars would be driven by, and we would vote on the colors we liked.”

At Toyota and other automakers, ideas for new colors come from many sources. Brown said Toyota tracks social and political events as well as trends in the economy. For instance, when the economy is down, people tend to go for brighter colors. Today’s environmental movement has made earth-tone colors popular with buyers, he said.

But Toyota officials also meet with designers and color planners from other industries _ from appliance makers to fashion designers to plumbing fixture manufacturers _ to learn what colors are popular on other items. Middlebrook said GM also does this.

“Color is a major part of the purchasing decision,” said Starling, who has been an auto dealer in Kissimmee for more than 20 years. He said once a customer decides on which model of car he wants, color is usually the next consideration.

Even though he doesn’t care for some of newest colors used by GM, Starling trusts the process used to pick them.

“It’s amazing how much time and money and effort that goes into it. I used to question some of those decisions, but they are way ahead of the curve. It’s really one of the neatest things about our industry. With the long lead times this business requires, they make very few mistakes,” said Starling.

Choosing the wrong colour when you order your shiny new 53 registered car could end up costing you dear.
And according to motor trade experts,if you opt for a trendy,bright colour, you could end up seeing red when you eventually come to trade it in a few years down the line.
Experts at Parker’s Car Price reckon you can save money in the long term by choosing the right colour for your car now.

Parker’s editor, Steve Rose, says: “The British are still a conservative bunch when it comes to car colour and, despite manufacturers spicing up their colour range with hot reds, vivid yellows and lively greens, most buyers prefer their cars in a safer shade.”
Silver is the current in-colour and, although it’s not long since experts were predicting that a glut of silver cars on the market would bring values down,Parkers experts now reckon that they could fetch hundreds of pounds more than cars painted in trendy or dull colours.

“Even the police are at it, “adds Rose, “the traditional jam-sandwich look has been replaced by silver with day-glo transfers.”
And he explains: “The motor industry loves safe colours. They’re easier to resell and therefore worth more than in your – facehues. Everyone wants an Audi in silver: it says I’m businesslike, self confident and a success. But an A4 in yellow or light blue is too look-at- me for the traditional Audi buyer and fetches less than the same car in silver.”

Silver isn’t just the smart choice for Audi,BMW, Mercedes and newer Jaguars like the S-Type; it also lends prestige to mundane mid- market motors such as Astra/Vectra and Focus/ Mondeo; it’s cool on sportsters, too, from MGF and MX-5 right up to the Porsche 911. And the curvaceous lines of mini models such as the Toyota Yaris and Deawoo Matiz seem to wear silver better than solid colours.

Traders will bid up to pounds 400 more for a silver car in the pounds 7000-pounds 10,000 bracket, and sticker prices increase accordingly.
It’s not just that silver looks classy; it doesn’t show the dirt as much as other colours. Sober dark metallic shades of red, grey, green and blue are close behind,but tend to fetch around pounds 150250 less than silver.
Monochrome cars look tired without a weekly car wash and a good polish.

Black and white cars do have a following among buyers of sportier hatch backs and coupes,but they are not liked on medium or executive cars.
White knocks pounds 200 or so off the value of a Mondeo or Vectra. On a prestige car, it’s very bad news, no-one wants a expensive white saloon. The few that are around tend to fetch far less than dark blues and silvers.

The trade’s current ‘doom’ colours are solid dark blue and brown – worth up to pounds 500 less than acceptable solid colours such as red. Buy them only if you’re hard-up, colour-blind or just want to fade into the scenery.

And be careful about ‘lifestyle’ colours. Buyers are happy enough with Kiwi or Mango or Citrine Yellow on cheeky superminis – for the moment, at least. But try to sell a family car in a fruity flavour,and you’ll have to drop the price to shift it. And remember that ‘lifestyle’ changes as fast as haircuts or hemlines.

Steve Rose adds: “When the police force and ambulance service start to buy cars in more expensive metallic colours, you’ve got to believe it’s important. But for the canny second hand buyer not interested in colour, there’s big savings to be had on solid and less fashionable shades”.