Yellow-coloured Cars Depreciate Less

Sure, but would you like to drive one?

Unless we are talking about the latest Lamborghini Huracan, which looks like this:

We might end up, instead, looking like we're driving one of these:

Nonetheless, a recent study conducted by iSeeCars.com has found that the rate of depreciation for yellow cars is significantly less than that of the more popular black, white, grey and silver-coloured vehicles. The car search engine company looked at 20 million used cars made from 1981 to 2010, and calculated that over the period of five years, yellow cars on average depreciate by 26.2% compared to black vehicles, which had the highest depreciation rate of 34.4%; the average depreciation rate was found to be 33.6%.

Let us illustrate this: let's say, you were going to purchase the Huracan (if you could afford one, this shouldn't matter, but we just wanted an excuse to post more pictures of this fine, fine machine). With a selling price of US$200,000, five years from now, the yellow version will re-sell for US$16,400 more than the black version.

Yellow or black? Give us either, we won't sell but treasure it forever and ever.

According to Phong Ly, CEO of iSeeCars.com, 'While a popular car colour like black or silver may get more interest and sell faster, our analysis indicates it may not get as high a value as a car, say, in yellow. Scarcity may account for the difference – only 1.1 percent of all cars are yellow and orange; the dearth of supply of such colors may drive prices up.'

The study found that the trend applies throughout all vehicle categories. However, it would be hard to find a sedan car rolling down the streets looking like a lemon, but much more common to a blur of vivid, splashy colours which was a sports car zooming past.

We do have doubts about the findings, though. These rare-coloured cars are rare, in the first place, because of lack of demand and, as Phong Ly had said, the popular colours sell faster. If this is the case, wouldn't the seller and the used car companies lower prices to be able to sell these less in-demand vehicles? What do they do? Play hard to get? The study was conducted, it turns out, based on listed prices, not transacted prices, which could mean the findings are not accurate.

Well, if you are still deciding between the yellow or black Huracan, we think you should just pick the one you like because should you decide to sell it one day, you could just PAINT IT whichever colour that can fetch the highest price!

images: Lamborghini.com, Wikipedia