Most popular auto colors by decade - Model Railroader Magazine

Hi all,

Walter, in a lot of ways the real answer to your question is, what Harley Earl liked in the 40's and 50's, and what Bill Mitchell liked in the 60's.  Harley Earl was a California born auto designer who grew up working and designing in his father's custom body shop in the teens and 20's.  In 1927 GM hired Harley to design the new La Salle "companion car" to be sold by Cadillac dealers.  By the 30's Earl had been named a VP of GM (the first stylist named a VP by any major auto maker) and used his position to found the "Art and Color" division of GM.  Art and Color was responsable for styling and color selections for all GM brands.  When GM started their touring Autorama show Earl used it to gauge public reaction to new styles and color combinations.  Earl retired in 1958 and was succeded by Bill Mitchell, who lead Art and Color throughout the 60's.

If we're trying to create a feel for those decades on our layouts we may want to use verhicles in some of the colors that were specific to each decade, but didn't remain popular.  In the 40's (pre and post war) most colors were darker shades of red, blue, black, green and brown.  Burgundies and midnight blue were very popular on 40's cars as well as 40's and 50's trucks, but were rarely used on 50's cars.  In the 50's, very light shades of primary colors, and white became popular.  Also, the use of two tone paint schemes with highly contrasting colors like pink, orange and turquoise were uniquely mid-50's.  By 1957 Harley Earl had tired of the two-tone schemes and he favored single color designs with wide panels of bright metal, al a the '57 Chevy Bel Aire.  When Bill Mitchell took over in 1959 the use of metallic paints grew substantially.  Three metallic colors that Mitchell popularized in the early 60's that didn't last were called Persian Sand (a rosey pink), Azure Aqua (a light greenish blue) and Fawn (a golden brown).  By 1967 these colors had all but vanished from the option book, replaced by even stronger tones with names like Hugger Orange.

As others have already mentioned, black and red have always been common.  You really can't go wrong with having them on your layout.  One interesting thing about white, it's been the most common color for "vehicles" since the 50's, but not always the most popular color for "cars."  This difference is caused by the high number of fullsize vans and pick-ups that are ordered in white for commercial and fleet use.  In recent years silver has been the most popular car color.

BTW, the first Ford model T was red, not black.  The black only policy was not instituted for several years.  The often sited reason for the singal color policy is that it simplified production, which is quite true.  What's less commonly sited is why black was chosen as the singal color.  The reason - black paint dried faster than other colors.