What Color Car is Most Likely to be Stolen?

The more popular the color, the more likely a car is to be stolen, a new study found. CREDIT: Ffotograff65 | Dreamstime View full size image

When looking for a new car, keep in mind that the color of your vehicle can cut its chances of being stolen almost by half.

The more popular the color of your car is, the more likely it is to be stolen, a new study from the Netherlands shows. For example, none of the pink cars used in the study were stolen.

Researchers from the University of Tilburg in the Netherlands found that the most popular colors of cars bought in most European countries are black, blue and silver/grey. In recent years, car buyers have become more conservative when selecting the color of their car, the study noted.

Worldwide, black, blue, white and silver/grey cars made up 86 percent of new car sales in 2009, according to DuPont, a major manufacturer of car paint. The remaining 14 percent of sales included colors such as green, yellow, red, orange and pink.

Economist Ben Vollaard of the University of Tilburg compared these figures to the rates of stolen cars in the Netherlands between 2004 and 2008. Vollaard focused on the cars most likely to be stolen – those of the fifteen most popular makes which were no older than three years.

The most frequently stolen cars were black, blue, and silver/grey, with uncommon colors less likely to be stolen, the study found.

So why are thieves so wary of stealing a more unique, brightly-colored car?

While it may be suggested that cars in popular colors are more likely to be stolen simply because there are more of them on the road, or that unusual colors may attract more unwanted attention, Vollaard found that resale value is actually a major determining factor in car theft.

Simply put, the more "out there" a car's color, the lower its resale value. Thieves most often steal cars in order to resell them – 85 percent of all car thefts are in this category, according to the study.

"Differences in theft rates between cars in common and uncommon color suggest that resale value is on the mind of car thieves," Vollaard noted in the study. "We find evidence that it is indeed the resale value rather than the fear of getting caught that is driving this difference."

The possibility that thieves avoid brightly-colored cars because they don't want to attract the attention of the authorities also didn't seem to be case, Vollaard's research shows.

Red - which obviously attracts attention – was popular in Netherland during the early 1990s, when around 25 percent of all new cars were red. But the color fell out of popularity over time, and now only about 5 percent of new cars are red. The decline was a worldwide trend, according data from DuPont.

But thieves did not seem care much about being spotted in a bright-colored car, as there were higher rates of theft for red cars in the 1990s, the study found. Therefore, the popularity of red in new car sales is tightly linked with the prevalence of red among stolen cars, as Vollaard's diagram shows below.

Vollaard's Netherland study shows that there is a direct correlation bewteen the the popularity of a car's color and its risk of being stolen.
CREDIT: CBS/RDW. Provided by Ben Vollaard.

View full size image

"If the aversion to driving a car in an offbeat color is not too high - or if someone actually enjoys it - then buying deterrence through an uncommon car color may be at least as good a deal as buying deterrence through an expensive car security device," Vollaard advised. “Pink is the perfect deterrent.”

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