Today is Monday, January 12th. I'm Mimi Fotz, and this is Hello from the Van. Parents, today's episode is about 15 minutes long. Our episode today comes from a game. And the game is called Car Rainbow. The whole purpose of the game is you take the rainbow and you then try to find cars in each color. Parents, this is a lot like the alphabet game that you do with signs, but it's with car colors. It has become increasingly hard to do a car rainbow, especially on road trips. Today our big question is why are all modern cars the same bland colors? What happened to color in the automotive industry? And why is the child's game, Car Rainbow, so difficult to play these days? The first thing I had to do was research vehicles. Here's the important stuff. Cars have been around for about 135 years. On January 29th, 1886, Carl Benz, yes, of Mercedes-Benz, applied for a patent for his vehicle powered by a gas engine. The patent is regarded as the birth certificate of the automobile. Automobiles, as they were originally called, were normally made of wood and brass and were not painted. It was not until the turn of the century that we really got into painting cars on the regular. American Henry Ford in 1908, so about 30 years later, started what's called mass production. Basically, he started an assembly line. So each person takes one part and they do that one part over and over and over again. So rather than a bunch of people working on an individual car, it was a bunch of people working on one individual part, and the car would move rather than the people. Henry Ford starts this assembly process and he starts to mass produce what's called the Model T. Over 20 years, 15 million of these Model T cars rolled off the assembly line, making Ford the largest automobile producer in the world. By 1914, there were over a million cars in the US alone. So he started in 1908, and by 1914, a million cars were on the road. So kids, imagine that there's no vehicles. It's all just horses and farmland. And then suddenly, within five years, there are a million cars. I didn't realize how quickly Henry Ford and the assembly line affected the United States. And keep in mind, there was no infrastructure for vehicles. There was infrastructure for horses and carriages, not for cars. This turn of the century change was huge. The car that Henry Ford made famous was called the Model T. From 1914 to 1925, Henry Ford's Model T was only available in the color black. He said you can have any color you want, as long as it's black. This wasn't because other colors didn't exist, it was for efficiency. If you're making a lot of cars and all those cars are the same color, it's a faster process. You don't have to change colors, change paint, change anything. You just make all the cars the same color. After 1925, Henry Ford added green, red, gray, and blue. So that's the brief history of the car. The other important thing, where did cars come from? They were modeled after carriages, right? That were drawn by horses. And carriages were made of wood. And this wood was not painted with the type of paint that we think of today. It was made with oil-based paint. So the paints that went on these new Model T Fords would fade in the sun. So they would start as black or brown cars, and within a few months they would actually turn yellow. So paint had to change as well. Sunlight is a great disinfectant, but also come to find out those UV rays are real harsh on paint. So colors had to change. We didn't get brown really, like a nice brown that didn't fade until the 1930s. The other thing that was happening in the 1930s was what's called the Great Depression. We'll talk about it more later, but basically it was a really sad time where a lot of people didn't have jobs and there wasn't a lot of food or money to go around. Because no one had any money, they had to get very creative. So around this same time, there was a lot of aluminum. So the aluminum was cut into flakes and then added to the paint, and the paint was actually sparkly. So before we got red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet, we got sparkly paint. It is the Edward Colen era of cars. The 20s and 30s are also when we started to perfect enamel paints. They went away from oil-based paints that were kind of sticky and took weeks to dry to enameled and lacquered paints. With this combination of new types of paints and the depression of the 1930s, car manufacturers had to get creative. And how did they sell these cars? They tried to make them bright and happy. In the mid to late 1930s, we started to get shiny, bright cars. Yellows and oranges gained popularity during the depression and it helped boost sales. In the early 1940s, we start to add blues, greens, and reds. This is directly related to World War II that was happening. If you think about the paint colors that are used in war, blue, green, and red. That's right. It's the same colors. They basically said, hey, we got a lot of this because we're using it for war. We might as well used it domestically or use it locally. So that's the first 50 years of cars and paint, but then the 1950s hit, and this is where things changed. War was over. The entire world is celebrating. An automobile design reflects this adventure, the success of like, we won the war. Let's celebrate. People want personalized colors, they want bright colors, they want happy, flashy colors. This is when we really get into it. If we go back to Ben's, yes, the originator, his company reaches a hundred thousand cars manufactured in a single year. In 1956, Benz expands their color range. This includes 26 single colors and 23 two-tone paint schemes. So if you're buying a car from Ben's, you can get 49 different options of color. The 50s and 60s are full of vibrant, beautiful colors. If you've ever been to a car show and see cars from this era, these are the most colorful ones. We get to the 1970s and society starts to change. It becomes all about nature and mother nature and saving the planet. And car colors start to reflect that. This is when we get earthy colors. Earthy colors just reign supreme. We've got yellows and browns and golds. Basically, when you look outside, what colors do you think of? Well, that was the car colors that were reflected in the 1970s. This continues through the 1980s. There's no big changes between the 70s and the 80s. Then we get to the 90s, and for some reason, there is a surge in green cars in the United States. Over 20% of cars in the 1990s are green, a very specific forest green. But how did we go from that to what we have today? Well, there was a big change. In the early 2000s, glass flakes are introduced by paint companies, specifically a paint company called PPG. So now you can take one specific base color and you can make it into any type of finish. You can make it very, very sparkly. You can make it more of like a matte color, meaning like a flat-looking color. You can add just a plain gloss coat over the top of it. You can make a basic color into just about any finish. And that's due to these glass flakes that have now been added to all of these paints. And as finishes change, manufacturers started to pull colors from their assembly lines. So what about modern colors? What are the statistics for today? How many colors and how many cars? Well, I would love to tell you. Let's play a guessing game. 39% of cars on United States roads are one color. If you had to guess which color that is, what color do you think it is? I'll give you five seconds. Which color did you guess? Was it white? 39% of cars on United States roads are white. There's another group of colors that are also 39%. If you had to guess, what color is that? Did you say black or gray? Then you would be correct. That's right. According to a market research report from 2024, 78% of cars are white, black, or silver. 9% are blue, 7% are red, 2% are green. That's a drastic change from the 20% of cars being green in the 90s.1% are gold. And then finally 0.09% are purple. And if you have a yellow car, you are the Mewtwo of this world. You are 0.08% of cars on the road. If you think of car colors like Pokemon, finding a hot pink car in the wild is like finding a Mew. It's pretty rare and doesn't happen very often statistically. But I wanted to know if this holds true for 2026 cars. So I did some more research. I went to the manufacturer websites for Honda, Toyota, Chrysler, and Kia. I looked up their highest range of minivan and their lowest range of minivan. And here is what I found. All four manufacturers offer their vans in basic colors black, white, and gray. If you would like to buy a minivan that is easier to find in the Costco parking lot, it's going to cost you about $500 extra over the cost of your already very expensive minivan. I personally lose my minivan in the Costco parking lot on the regular. In fact, this last week I very confidently walked up to a Honda Odyssey and pulled on the door several times. And it still didn't open. And I thought, oh darn, my keys aren't working. Then I pulled my keys out and I pulled some more. And then someone else walked up to the van and I said, Oh, I'm sorry. Is this one yours? And yes, right next to it was an identical gray Honda Odyssey. I was at the wrong car. And why was I at the wrong car? Because statistically we're all driving gray Honda Odysseys, people. Anyhow, if you'd like to avoid my fate, let me give you some options. If you want a red minivan, it's available on high-end models. If you would like a green minivan, it is only available from Toyota. Yep. Honda, Chrysler, and Kia do not offer a green option in their cars. Oh, and if you want a Kia, it's only available in gray without the upcharge. If you want a different color, you're gonna have to pony up at that Kia dealership. The manufacturer with the most color options is Honda, coming in with seven, and the lowest is actually Chrysler. Your options at the Chrysler dealership would be black, white, silver, blue, or red. And despite this very limited color range, all four manufacturers will charge you extra for what they deem unique colors, like pearl and gray, and anything besides more gray. Oh, and did I mention that these minivans range in price from $53,000 to $60,000? And they're still gonna charge you for those very unique colors? This is a far cry from the $825 that it would have cost you for an original Model T Ford in 1908. In the end, it would appear we've come full circle. From Henry Ford only offering the Model T in black to Kia only offering their minivan in gray. What was old is new again, and manufacturing and its wheels are ever turning in the same direction. So let's go back to our original question. Why is it so hard to play car rainbow these days? It has to do with two things cost and profit. It saves on costs to have all cars be the same basic color or to only offer one color. And you make more profits if you charge people $500 every time they want a unique color. As you drive around and ride around with your parents, look at the cars around you. Be aware of those surroundings. Pay attention. What kind of cars have different colors? Why do you think? And where do you think car colors are going today? Do you think that we're headed for more color or less color? Do you think it's helpful or not helpful to have all cars the same color? Either way, I hope that your future road trips are full of very easy car rainbows. I'm Mimi Votts, and this has been Hello from the Van. Parents, did you know that we have study aids on our YouTube channel? Do you just need something to put on for ambient noise with a countdown for 20, 15, 10, 5 minutes, maybe? Do you need a kid-safe one-minute timer? We have all of those on our YouTube channel. They are meant to be soothing meditation aids for kids as they study. We also have a 30-minute Christmas timer with a Christmas tree and ambient noise. We will be adding more study aids in the coming weeks. Thank you. And now it's time to cite our sources. All research was done by yours truly. Our references are PPG: The History of Automotive Colors by PPG Paints, CNBC's article, Most Cars Are Painted One of These Four Colors, and Here's Why by Robert Ferris from 2022, Toyota.com, Automobiles.honda.com, Chrysler.com, and Kiaautomobiles.com. Other references include The Model T by Ford.com, The Model T Forum, and finally Barnfinds.com. 85-year-old paint. 1930 Ford Model A's.