Visual Sunday: Safety Colours

ViaRETRO
Smalltalk
Porsche led the way with Safety Colours in the very late sixties and into the early seventies. But besides being safer, it was also vibrant, exciting and visually appealing. ViaRETRO says: Bring colour back to our streets!

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ViaRETRO
ViaRETRO is first and foremost about the joy of classic cars: The rare, beautiful and exotic – and the obscure, the famous and quirky, and of course everyday cars from a bygone era.

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3 Responses

  1. Indeed! most anything beats the drab sea of various shades of grey we see today…

    [tho I would argue that Porsche started it; in Europe maybe… guess it depends on your definition of “safety colours”]

  2. I’ve stated my views on the drabness of modern car colours before – they really are generally incredibly dull. I noticed this again while in the US recently – an unscientific estimate would be that 75% of the cars I saw were either silver, grey, or white – a veritable ocean of blandness. I have to admit I’ve had the odd silver car myself, and our two modern BMW’s are shades of blue…but unless you’re prepared to pay extra, most manufacturers offer a far more limited colour palette as standard than used to be the case. One of the things I love about the classic car scene is the wide variety of colour – something that was definitely better back in the day.

  3. I dont think your estimate is too far off…in fact, it may be conservative!
    This is a subject near and dear to my heart, and one that aggravates me even. The other day, I was standing in a doctors office, waiting [imagine that] for a bit. His office is on the tenth floor of the building and faces Yale Avenue, a major [6 lanes] north/south thoroughfare in town. As I stood peering out the window waiting, I began to count. First, I looked at the parking lot below; the section directly beneath me held approximately 50 cars. There was a total of 5 that were not on the grey scale between [and including] white to black. And of those, two were a dark maroon, one a dark blue, one dark green and one sandy beige metallic.
    I turned my attention to the street and attendant traffic. Granted, to one from London, the amount of traffic wouldnt seem too great, but the street stays busy and has 3 lanes going each direction. The building is near a very busy intersection and is part of a hospital complex thats the largest in the area, plus normal business etc traffic. Its too busy for me…
    anyway, I stood there for 10 minutes or so and counted. Naturally I didnt count the number of cars going by – too many if I would have wanted to anyway – but i began to count anything that wasnt white, silver, grey or black. I barely ran out of fingers and toes before the doctor came in… Pathetic.
    Two reds and a blue right now for me. :)

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