Two parking lot photos tell a story about what we’ve lost without even realizing it. In 1980, the lot is an explosion of color—mustard yellow, foam green, burnt orange, cherry red. Every car is different, distinct, expressing something about the person who chose it. The parking lot looks like a celebration, a rainbow of automotive personality.
In 2025, the same view shows seas of white, black, and gray. Row after row of nearly identical vehicles, distinguished only by subtle differences in grille design or badge placement. The color has been drained from our roads, replaced by a monochrome uniformity that prioritizes resale value over self-expression.
The statistics are stark: over eighty percent of new vehicles now come in neutral tones. General Motors once offered 120 paint colors. Today, fewer than thirty. We traded personality for practicality, expression for minimalism, joy for sensible financial decisions.
Cars used to be extensions of ourselves—rolling statements about who we were and how we wanted to be seen. That orange Volkswagen Beetle wasn’t just transportation; it was a declaration. The lime green sedan wasn’t merely practical; it was playful. Every parking lot was a gallery of individual choices, a visual representation of the beautiful diversity of human taste.
Now our roads have gone from rainbows to grayscale, one sensible choice at a time.
It’s not just about cars. It’s about what this shift represents: a broader cultural movement toward conformity, toward playing it safe, toward making choices based on resale value rather than personal joy. We’ve been trained to think about the next owner before we’ve even enjoyed being the current one.
When did we stop choosing things that make us happy and start choosing things that make financial sense? When did practicality become more important than personality? When did we decide that a white SUV was somehow more adult, more responsible, more appropriate than a cherry red coupe?
The 1980 parking lot shows a world where people still believed their car could be fun, could be an expression of their personality, could bring them joy every time they walked toward it. The 2025 parking lot shows a world where we’ve calculated that joy out of the equation, replaced it with depreciation curves and resale value projections.
We’re not just losing colorful cars. We’re losing the willingness to be different, to stand out, to choose something because it makes us smile rather than because it makes financial sense. We’re losing the understanding that sometimes the impractical choice is actually the most valuable one—because life is short, and you should love the thing you drive every single day.
There’s a reason the 1980 photo feels joyful even though we’re just looking at a parking lot. It’s because color brings happiness. Variety brings interest. Individuality brings life. The 2025 photo feels sterile, corporate, like a rendering rather than reality.
Some will argue this shift makes sense. Neutral colors are easier to maintain, have better resale value, appeal to more buyers. And they’re right. But they’re also wrong. Because what we’ve gained in practicality, we’ve lost in joy. And joy matters more than we think.
Our roads went from rainbows to grayscale because we decided that fitting in was safer than standing out. That conformity was smarter than individuality. That the next owner’s preferences mattered more than our own happiness.
But here’s the thing: that burnt orange car in 1980? The person who bought it didn’t care about resale value. They cared about driving something that made them happy. And when they walked through that parking lot and saw their bright orange car among all the others, they probably smiled.
Can you say the same about your gray SUV?
The photos don’t lie. We’ve transformed our world from vibrant to monochrome, from individual to uniform, from expressive to practical. Car by car, choice by choice, we’ve drained the color from our roads and called it progress.
Maybe it’s time to bring back the rainbow.