stuven

Whenever I've shopped for a new vehicle, I've noticed that the vast majority of cars on dealer lots were either white, black, silver, or gray. This was especially true for the 2018 Q5. By the time I placed my order on June 5, most of the Q5s I'd seen had been white or black.

Recently, I found an article online at ConsumerReports.org that confirmed that this situation is the norm across the U.S. According to the article, white is (still) the most popular (23%), followed by black (19%), gray (17%), silver (15%), red (10%), and blue (8%). Of course, as the article points out, these are percentages for the country as a whole, and color preferences vary by region and by type of vehicle. Certainly, you wouldn't expect buyer preferences to be the same for Ford F150s sold in Iowa as for Mini Coopers sold in California.

The 2018 Q5 and SQ5 have a surprisingly large number of exterior paint choices. When I bought my first Q5 in 2011, I had a choice of black, white, silver, gray, and Midnight Blue. Now the the Q5 offers three blues, a red, and a green, in addition to the four most popular colors. Based on the general color preferences given above, if you want a relatively exclusive stock color, go for Azores Green. (I chose Matador Red.)

Ron.S

White % is skewed somewhat by business vehicles such as work trucks that tend to be white. Most power co trucks tend to be white.
IMO Audi as well as Mercedes blow that black % away with Black and dark grey like Manhattan Grey that's almost a black Looking at other brand dealer lots there are usually a wide selection of colors in stock inventory vs Audi/Benz. But inventory of Fords and Chevs (for example) are much larger. Black is beautiful but who wants to have the same color as everyone else.

havery

Ultimately we choose the Azores green, but early in our car search we looked at the ford edge, which had a great choice of colors, but that ultimately wasn't enough to make a deal.

Hoshtaylor

What is the 3rd Blue ?

stuven

From light to dark: Utopia, Navarro, and Midnight (or Moonlight).

Ron.S

Great choice it's a beautiful color. We were tempted but couldn't find something with that actual color to compare. I'm surprised that there aren't more dealers ordering one for inventory.

havery

Hi Ron,

It was a leap of faith for sure. We saw many videos with and just hoped for the best. My dealer sent me photos of an azores green q5 that arrived on the lot today. Im really happy we took the risk!

montclair2525

So glad that I decided on Navarro Blue. Up until my last car, a Matador Red Lexus RX400h, my whole life, l had black, white, or silver cars. Colors rock!

redherring

To a certain extent I think this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy--the dealers are going to primarily stock the colors that sell the best, and considering that a majority of people (I believe) buy the cars in stock because they a) think they get a better deal on those, or b) don't want to wait the extended period it usually takes for European cars to be ordered, they end up with those colors. If everybody ordered there would probably be a much wider range of colors on the road.

Beaglerescue

My purchase of the 2016 S5 was due largely to it's impressive color. Red. It was in a sea of gray Audi's in the showroom. In fact, when I first heard about 'Fifty Shades of Gray' I thought it was about my Audi dealers inventory. We special ordered the 2016 TT roadster in Cambridge green. Expensive and a six month wait, but worth it. So.......do silver, gray, white, black sell because they're popular or because that's what the dealer thinks sells........so, that's what they order?