Do you have a favorite color that you would like on your new car? Most people have a specific color in mind when they go shopping for their new car, but they don’t always buy a car in that color. So you need to ask yourself if car color is important to you? Car buyers often change their mind about car color once they are at the dealership for a number of different reasons.
When it comes to selling cars, salespeople and sales managers know that car buyers buy a vehicle that is different than the one they came to buy. In fact nearly 80% of all car buyers leave the dealership with a different vehicle than they decided to buy before they left home to go to the car dealership. When I say they buy something different I don’t mean that they buy a different model although sometimes they do. Sometimes the difference is the trim level or the factory options, but more often than not the difference is the car color.
Dealer Inventory and Car Color
Very few car dealerships have the room or the volume to stock new cars in every color, trim level and interior color combination. So in order to compensate for this lack of inventory they do things that some may say is less than honest. These things may include saying that car color is not available in this region, that specific color combination is no longer being manufactured and last, but not least offer a discount for accepting a car color that is currently in stock. The discount may only be a few hundred dollars, which is not any more of a discount than they would have offered you to make a deal if they felt they had to in order to make a sale.
I can tell you first hand that I have sold more cars that were a different color than the buyer wanted than I could possibly remember. This is a very common practice and many customers will accept a different car color if they feel that they are getting a good deal on a new car. If that doesn’t work I could always locate a car for them if I have to, but I might charge them more to get their special request.
Personally when it comes to car color and I want a specific color I will do what I have to do to get the color I want. I want what I want and if I am going to spend thousands of dollars on a new car I am going to get the color I want. Car color can also have an impact on your trade-in value when you need to get your next car. When a used car manager appraises a used car color can sometimes hurt your trade value. The most common car colors that are easy to sell are silver, black, white and gray. Used cars in yellow, red and green are less desirable and may reduce your trade value by several hundred or even thousands of dollars. That fact might not be important to you when you are buying your new car, but car color does affect trade value. You must decide on how important the car color is to you.