That’s actually really interesting. Today you often only have a handful of colors to choose from.

Today you get 10. 3 blues, 3 grays, 2 reds, a black and a white.

Some variety. Although if you went to the Probe-E version, you get 8 colors: 2 grays, 2 blues, and one each white, black, red and orange woo hoo.

Thank you impatient buying public and the box store format for pushing 'what's on the lot' so generic it is. :p

/Go buy a wrap I suppose? Or maybe pay hella lot to paint it...

And yet when you see a vintage mustang, chances are it’s red, white, or black.

And there were 10x as many Mustangs sold in 1967 as in 2022.

Brother had a gold '67; Sister had a dark pine green '67; Oldest brother had a different deep green shade '67; Boyfriend had a navy blue '67.

Such a beautiful car.

Yep. Hope you like white gray black blue or red.

I'd probably just pick one

As someone that used to work in the paint department at car plant, I can say they must have had some insane paint booths, especially before the advent of PLCs. We had an old abandoned control cabinet from a pre-PLC paint booth and I can just say I'm glad I never had to work on it.

Even the modern (20 years ago) array of Color Change Valves (CCVs) are a bear to maintain.

There's more to it than that.

Typically we have up to 22 colors (lines) in the assembly paint shop.

10-12 of those are standard, then we have limited and municipal.

We can only maintain so many colors/lines due to space and production capacity. The amount of time and money spent on selecting even a basic shade of white is mind boggling.

Also, with too many colors, mistakes in production can be made. I could go on but anytime I talk about vehicle assembly on reddit, people get all experty even though they've never set foot in an assembly plant.

In short, there are dozens of reasons you have 8-12 colors to choose from.

From marketing studies, line restrictions, supplier constraints, cost controls, to formulation, maintenance, vat space, and design selection.

My dad had a gold one and a red one

My first girlfriend drove a Springtime Yellow 1964½ mustang. Her father owned a machine shop and restored old cars as a hobby. I drove a 1987 Grand Am. She was way cooler than me...

...about cars, anyway.

> Hope you like white gray

So many new cars look like they're wearing nothing but shiny primer.

Light blue was reasonably popular, also.

What about the matte gray cars that look like actual primer

The more obscure it was back then the more valuable it is now

What if I like silver?

Can we name the colors differently so it seems like I have a different color? Like Tidewater or Midnight?

That's because companies found that 99% of people only really picked a handful of colors.

The savings from not stockpiling 47 paint colors outweighed the lost revenue from the 1% of customers picking other colors.

Jay Leno has them all

Mine was a Springtime Yellow and her name was Carly Simon 💛💛💛

There was really only 20 standard paint codes. Which admittedly is still a lot compared to today. But the rest are special order codes and far less common, mostly they were used on special edition mustangs.

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Here you go:

https://www.uscars24-classics.de/en/facts/1967-mustang/1967-mustang-colors.php

My mom had a greenish gold one back then.

Only one at a time though

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They are great colors.

Black, white, 50 shades of grey and the occasional red or blue.

Was she u/mustang55? Lol

If I remember correctly from my days working as a ford salesman, you could get 12 colors last year, now I think it's 8.

Wow, that's impressive.

Now I want a dusk rose colored sports car...

What happened to the days of custom ordering a color that they generally didn’t do? I’ve heard how you could submit the right forms to the right department and wind up with a Cleveland engine (the racing one), other people who were able to secure options and colors not generally offered, but still “factory”, as it were

“The color of the sky when it is cold and the geese are honking” is a good color

Something to be said about how well a grey vehicle hides dirt. In my case I ran a redi-mix concrete plant and cement grey was the best choice for a truck .

Those days are gone.

I don’t count 20 though

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You should count again

1. Silver Frost
2. Pebble Beige
3. Springtime Yellow
4. Raven Black
5. Frost Turquoise
6. Acapulco Blue
7. Arcadian Blue
8. Diamond Green
9. Lime Gold
10. Nightmist Blue
11. Wimbledon White
12. Diamond Blue
13. Brittany Blue
14. Dusk Rose
15. Candy Apple Red
16. Burnt Amber
17. Clearwater Aqua
18. Vintage Burgundy met.
19. Dark Moss Green
20. Sauterne Gold

Yeah I’ve got a 60’s strat that’s this cool seafoam green, looks very much like car paint

Ahh you must have counted the pictures! I just saw the sample swatches on the single image and assumed…. Stand corrected

And for the low, low price of about $2,500.

Which is $22,215.34 today. I have one of these and I’ve had a newer one. I can see why they cost so much more today given how spartan my 67 is.
It’s like driving a machine. New mustangs have so many comforts and doodads, price adds up.

My 67 has like 5 circuits. The most technologically advanced part of the car is the tires. Very little sound deadening. It’s just a big stamped metal box with some paint and vinyl

How many colours do they have on contemporary cars? Black, white, gunmetal grey and maybe red I suppose.

Also called a herd

Yea a lot of things get worse, but also a lot of other things get better

We had one of these the same light blue color but it was a mercury cougar 1967 xr7

I mean most of those aren’t great. Looking at that it makes sense the blues, reds, and blacks are the common colours today because those are the nicest colours from that list.

Or maybe most of those 47 colors were ugly and hardly anybody bought them? Why blame the consumers for buying colors that they actually like. Yeah, if you want your car painted puke green, maybe accept that you’ll need spend $1000 or so to get it painted at an aftermarket shop.

Lol a good chunk of the audi community just got offended. Nardo gray is worshipped over there.

OMG, please tell me you write for a living (if those are your words). They are lovely words. I can SEE that sky.

No I couldn't, I wasn't born until 1994.

That color was soooo good. There was one for years by my high school growing up and always wanted to buy it. Haven’t seen another.

I had a brown 72 Mustang back in the mid-80s.

I have never understood the appeal of matte on vehicles. Always looks like they're unfinished to me.

“A customer can have a car painted any color he wants as long as it’s black” (Henry Ford)

It's a small percentage to be sure but some cars look fucking bad ass with a matte finish. Mustangs indeed are one, depending on the year and if it's been fucked with. And there are some more modern classics (90s Celica?) that can look hip in matte.

Probably only available in red, blue, grey and white now

There is a blue getting around that looks like primer too. I think its a subaru colour

More then likely was from gm seeing as dupont owned them

By the time the mustang came out it was henry ford Jr. The OG's grandson, running the show. He must've learned to be a little more lax on color palletes

Why would you want a 47 coloured Mustang?

I was gonna say....I used to have a light grey/silver vehicle and boy do I miss that....

All the computer iPad shit in cars now, and so many electric motors it would make a 1970s Cadillac blush, but YOU MUST CHOOSE between always-looks-dirty white or black, or some boring ass blue, gray, or red that looks like every other car.

It's not cost of paint, dealers say every other color sits on their lot forever. What are we, Amish?

What irritates me is browns and tans are perfect for trucks and SUVs but they've all vanished like woolly mammoths.

A couple of my hard used mountain bikes are gray. On fast descents knobby tires pick up rocks and sling them at the frame, knocking out chips of paint, and also crashes now and then add their scrapes.

The gray bikes look so much better after many miles than my blue one, which looks like a worn consoomer product. Planned obsolescence encouraging you to buy a new one?

Otherwise why not just clear anodize aluminum frames? Since we're talking about cars, some bodies are aluminum, like Ford F-150s, mail trucks, and old Land Rovers. Why not clear anodize those? It would be like having a stainless Cybertruck except lighter.

> Anodizing is a method for changing the surface chemistry of metals and other substrates. It protects against corrosion, enhances aesthetic qualities, resists scratching and is one of the most durable surface finishes available.

Gotta catch 'em all!

Tell me more ^honk ^^honk

but not commas.

White actually is a very good colour for looking clean.

Now Ford makes 47 different trim levels for each vehicle and 5 colors

How does BMW (just as one example) handle the production of their huge Individual colour selection?

Today’s boring cars all look alike anyway, so white, black, and silver are a perfect boring match.

$1000? That might get a very low quality respray in a very similar color.

I wish! My first car was a bright orange Opel Rekord. So awesome.

Today it's all grey, black, white, and if you're lucky one red (had the same problem with finding a colorful E-bike).

they charge more

Bmw employee here, the equivalent is Brooklyn Grey for us 🥴

Safety parts are expensive. New cars are much more safe than old cars in an accident

Bought a 2004 Mach 1 Mustang and loved the fuck out of it. Was such a fun car to drive. I’ve had a RX7, RX8, and the Mach1 and I loved the Mach1 the most with RX7 a very very close second.

The RX8 was pure garbage.

They charge a 5 grand fee pretty much for custom color, BUT you can only get certain colors on certain styles/models still. Two of my favorite colors come on M cars, but I could never get them on the X1 or X2 that I want :/

Pine green like Steve McQueen’s mustang in Bullitt? I always liked that color on a sports car because it’s badass like black but it isn’t black. Iconic color for a mustang.

Any chance that it was champagne beige like this one?

https://imgur.com/a/qgiJLYm

Did someone in the family own a Ford dealership?

No - my father liked Fords and thought that that particular car was a great first car for his kids to start out with.

Well those days are not over like bk has said but rather that a lot of manufacturers have recognized that there are only a few customers who would spend money on a 1 of 1 car so it isn’t profitable for them. Which is why this is mainly now a thing which luxury brands offer. Porsche‘s Exklusiv Manufaktur comes to mind.

When I got my little white Toyota I was surprised at how every little puddle painted a Pollock on the side of it. Nature's canvas. Eventually I just ignored it and let it stay dirty, because it looked dirty again right after washing.

My gray vehicle doesn't show dirt unless it's actual mud instead of gray road grime, but of course it's as boring as a galvanized nail.

Back in my day, if you had the blue mustang and your buddy had the red one...you could breed the dang suckers and out popped a purple one! And that's how Pokemon got the idea!

'You can have the Ford model t in any color you like... as long as that color is black.' Henry Ford

EDIT: For esthetics to sell better, maybe clear anodize then cover with a wrap? When the wrap fades or gets scratched up, just remove and replace, or go bare metal if you don't want the cost.

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Another reason is that good colorful paints became very expensive when they banned many of the chemicals that made them bond well and endure weather. Today's colorful paints wouldn't be expensive anymore but people just don't want colors that stand out anymore.

"You may have white, slightly less white, white mixed with some black, and red."

Can confirm, dad has powder blue one

What ever color you'd like so long as it's black. -Racist Nazi sympathizer

TBH I kind of wish it were the standard just because of all the shiny reflections blinding me in the late afternoon

So in the early 1910’s, Henry Ford lived on the same block in Detroit as Rabbi Leo Franklin. The two of them struck up a friendship, and in 1913, Ford asked Albert Kahn, one of the congregants of Franklin’s synagogue and a former Ford employee, to ask Franklin if Franklin wanted a car for use in his rabbinical duties (e.g. visiting the sick). Franklin accepted, and for the next seven years, Ford provided Franklin with a new car every year.

That lasted until 1920, when Ford started publishing “The International Jew” in his newspaper, The Dearborn Independent. This was a highly antisemitic series of articles that promulgated hideous lies regarding the role of Jews in the world. The American Jewish community was horrified, knowing full well that spreading such vicious lies about Jews had historically led to mass murder of Jews. Knowing Ford personally, Franklin was ideally suited to try and convince him to stop publishing the articles — and make that attempt he most certainly did.

Unfortunately, he didn’t succeed. Ford kept running the articles, and Franklin responded by returning the car Ford had given him. Ford was shocked by this, and called Franklin on the phone, wondering why a “good Jew” like Franklin would have any issues with what was being published in The Dearborn Independent.

Ford kept running the articles in the Independent for the next seven years, and when slapped with a libel suit, chose to close the newspaper rather than defend himself. He also kept publishing The International Jew in book form after that point. He only stopped in 1938 after his acceptance of Grand Cross of the German Eagle from Nazi Germany led to a firestorm of protest that negatively impacted sales of Ford cars.

In the 90’s/00’s seemed like there were a few more colors, teals, purples, some deep rose colors. Dang!

This is my dream car, as in i plan to buy one eventually, good to know I’ll have options lol but I only want yellow 😤

I had one that was black but it was actually a copy of The Grapes of Wrath.

They had one in the movie?

Looks about right. Good job.

I’ve got one. Highly recommend. r/classicmustangs

Didn't know they were that progressive back then!

My mom had one…it was “Dusk Rose” which is kind of a pale pink. I was later given this car to drive to High School. Let’s just say if you are a dude, driving a pink car to HS is a great way to learn about life’s trade offs.

They had to keep enticing secretaries and assistant managers to buy them.

And it's usually blue, red, and like 7 slightly different neutral colors. (Sometimes they make it interesting and add yellow)

Those look like old Hush Puppies. There is no joy in the colors of new cars these days.

Now you can't buy more than 4 colors for s car.

To be honest, that sounds unmanageable. Even if the colors were made using a small number of base colors, it won’t be easy to do and maintain.

My thoughts exactly… who wants a tutti-frutti colored car? That doesn’t seem very manly at all.

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Mustangs were cheap cars back then. They didn't have some premium as sports cars, they cost less because they had 2 less doors, less interior space, and other than the engine really they were just overall less materials and time to make. They used a bunch of common parts from other Ford cars also of course.

:edit:just looked it up, the list price of a mustang on launch was equivalent to 20k today. Not an expensive car at all

gottem

Cheaper Chevys have the best colors. Vibrant and unusual, and usually very pretty. Problem is they’re on Chevy cars.

Later on, I reply.. :)

I totally get what you're saying. But you didn't see my list of 'options', which really aren't when you get down to it. Blues, Grays and Reds. White and black are really gray scale colors, so it's more like 5 grays, 3 blues and 2 reds. Which is woeful.

I totally get the reasons and all that but c'mon. Mustang's more exciting than that paltry list of color options.

Yeah, that’s true. But it's really curious why Henry Ford chose only black. There's a theory that black dried faster than any other color. This fact influenced a lot in boosting production.

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