What color are your cars?

[bill937ca]

Do the cars on your layout reflect the cars on Japanese streets? An observation in A Geek in Japan that 'almost all the cars are black or white' made me do some research.  First a few videos.  My observation is that most cars are white, black or gray.

 

 

 

 

Now, the figures. Overall 79% of Japanese cars are either white, black, silver or gray.  Red never accounts more than 2% of any category. Bright colors (blue, purple, red, beige/brown, green and others) are most common in the  compact/sport category at 30%.

 

The top four overall are:

white, white pearl -- 24%

silver -- 22%

black, black effect -- 19%

gray -- 14%

 

The numbers by category are in this article.

 

A quick check showed a fair number of Kato vehicles are white, but these are mainly Kei trucks.  Tomytec seems to offer many colored cars which do not necessarily reflect the reality colors on the streets. May be these are the colors people drool and dream about.  But the Japanese people are reserved and perhaps bright car colors are just too flashy for their personalities.

[Claude_Dreyfus]

Funnily enough, I have made the comment on another forum about this very thing. I find that in particular the small car collection - Honda Jazz, Nissan Micra etc. - are in an assortment of bright and garish colours that are not everyday sights on the streets of Japan. To me it seems that white is the predominant colour, followed by silver and grey.

 

Whilst the sheer volume of vehicles required for Yamanouchi Oshika means filtering is impractical, Kanjiyama will have about 60% white vehicles and about 20-25% silver/grey. Does that make me a geek? Probably... Does that make me a little 'sad'? Most definiately, but for me it is not 'rivet counting' it is all about trying to create the impression of Japan from observation, which is most of us are trying to do to an extent.

[bill937ca]

Tomytec car collection 14 has 12 pieces. Three are gray, 3 are white, 1 is black, 1 is black and white (police) and 4 are bright colors. That's fairly close.

[bikkuri bahn]

White cars don't dirty up as noticeably as say, black cars.

[KenS]

I'd never noticed the colors of cars in Japanese photos specifically, but looking at a non-statistically-valid set of them (i.e, the ones in my reference folder) seems to agree with that. It's a bit surprising, as Japan often uses more color on things like buildings than would be typical in the U.S. I think you're probably right that it's because cars are a reflection of the individual's personality, and flashy colors would be seen as "standing out". That seems to be less of a concern for younger Japanese today than previous generations, but probably most of those cars are owned by finacially-successful, and older (and perhaps more conservative than average) people.

 

One option for some of the more colorful cars would be to decorate them as taxis. Since those are commercial vehicles, making them stand out is simply advertising.  And while most taxis appear to be part of fleets that use the same color, that just means that having a bunch of red taxis would be a reasonable thing to do if you end up with a surplus of red cars.

 

Body shells are often removable, and re-painting a bunch silver, white or black could also be done fairly easily with one can of spray paint (I use masking tape taped upside down to a board for painting small parts like that; stick the cars to the sticky side of the tape, and the spray won't blow them away).

 

Whilst the sheer volume of vehicles required for Yamanouchi Oshika means filtering is impractical, Kanjiyama will have about 60% white vehicles and about 20-25% silver/grey. Does that make me a geek? Probably... Does that make me a little 'sad'? Most definiately, but for me it is not 'rivet counting' it is all about trying to create the impression of Japan from observation, which is most of us are trying to do to an extent.

 

Exactly, it's part of creating the correct impression.  You don't have to exactly match the statistics, since they are averages and individual collections of objects will vary from them in the real world. But on a larger scale coming close to them will look more "right" to someone who is familiar with the original environment, even if they don't know why. I'm certainly going to give vehicle color more thought now.

 

It's like avoiding brick/stone buildings for a model of modern Japan.  You can certainly find prototypes of both, but those materials are much less common in modern Japan than in the west, and a scene full of brick buildings just wouldn't "look right".

[Densha]

The fact that these colors don't stand out is what it makes not stand out for me, until now. I did notice it a bit though previously, but for some reason never really bothered about it. I think it has a charm though, I don't like all those flashy colors on cars either, and it makes the trains stand out more!

[bill937ca]

What`s really interesting is that the supplier of brilliant paints used by some auto makers has only two plants. One in Japan and one in Germany.  When the earthquake occurred last year their were press reports of paint shortages. But it appears these paints do appeal to most Japanese.

 

http://www.just-auto.com/news/paint-pigment-paucity-poses-problem_id109945.aspx

 

http://www.thestar.com/business/companies/article/962191--automakers-face-paint-shortage-after-japan-quake

[ToniBabelony]

I have cars of many colours, since it's mostly focused on the late 60s and 70s. Lots of pastel colours. It really makes the streets come alive, plus it's quite realistic.

[cteno4]

we have always commented on this at shows when we fill the jrm streets with cars and there is so much color in the tomytec sets -- way more than what most of us remember from pictures and visits.

 

i wonder how this has trended over time or if japan has always been into the black/white/silver mode.

 

jeff

[ToniBabelony]

i wonder how this has trended over time or if japan has always been into the black/white/silver mode.

 

I have a photo book on Tokyo from the eighties where the colours are more white/silver/red with some champagne/creme (and the occasional black luxury saloon) in between. Definitely more red cars in the eighties though.