Like a lot of men his age, my dad likes to talk about how everything used to be better.

Shoes used to last longer, musicians used to be more talented. Movies used to cost a couple bucks. And cars?

They just had a lot more character.

My first car was a 1965 Chevy Impala.

And this was a real car.

It was a real car I bought from a neighbor. It had 25,000 miles on it and I paid

$400 for it. I mean the personality that it had. Every detail about it, the headlights, the

tail lights, the fender, the bumper, the bumper the doors you could punch the

the 65 Chevy and you'd break your hand as Tom Crockett tells it, a big part of that character was the multitude of colors that

you'd see on the road back in the 1960s and 70s.

In the old days we had variations of brown, tan colors. There were

light blues, lots of different shades of blues. My uncle Guy had like a canary yellow Cadillac. He'd drive it with a top down.

But these days, he says, it seems like all the cars on the road look the same.

Black, white, silver, black, white, silver, black, white, silver, black, white.

There is some truth to that. Today's cars are a lot less colorful than they used to be.

80% of vehicles sold in North America are now acromatic, white, black, gray, or silver.

That's up from 36%, 50 years ago.

Now, if you're like my dad, you might say that the automobile industry has lost its flare.

But according to car color designers, there are actually more

color options than ever before. It's just that those so-called boring tones are

what today's young buyers actually want.

We know that Boomers and Gen X are definitely looking for some of those pops of color,

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