For more than a quarter-century now—half my life—there have been blue cars in my driveway with my name on the title. Rarely have I sought them out, but always they have come. Now, I have come to believe that blue is the only good and right color on any car, particularly one that I’m paying my own money for.
Why blue? I should start by bemoaning the general lack of color in any new car these days. For decades now, solidly 75 percent or more of all new cars sold in America are black, white, silver, grey, or some combination thereof. There’s nothing from my childhood demanding this. Dad’s ’85 S10 Blazer was as much silver as it was blue (and I certainly don’t pine away for one today); nearly everything else my parents drove for the last 35 years was white/black/silver/grey/yawn.
Photo by Jeff Koch
My blue run started with my poor old ’70 Montego, a West Coast ex-rental two-door hardtop that was Pastel Blue (but which had turned chalky and near-enough to white) with a blue bench-seat interior. I wasn’t about to start changing out the interior, beyond bucket seats supplanting the bench or replace the dashpad with a Cyclone Spoiler pad with the gauges arranged inside, so I needed something to match my blue interior. Black? A pain to photograph. White? Not very visually arresting. And so the search was on for the best shade of blue I could find. Competition Blue, an available color, was fine, but I wanted something more modern, something with a little more razmatazz. It came in the form of a then-new Ram pickup color that had dazzled me in the L.A. sunlight, Intense Blue Pearl. It worked. I was thrilled.
Photo by Jeff Koch
When it came time for me to buy my first new car with my own money, I also felt hamstrung, but for a different reason. In 2002, the WRX was available in a whopping five paint colors: white, black, silver (none of which were moving me), a sort of cinnamon red, and WR Blue, the dare-I-say cliche Subaru color used on their world-championship rally cars. (The special limited yellow one wasn’t available at the time.) Interiors were black with a bit of blue infused into the seat cloth, which suggested blue. The red looked oddly sedate to me. The blue really popped; inside I quietly groaned at the growing cliche of a hot blue Subaru, but I’ve overcome my initial reticence and driven it 210,000 miles and climbing.
Photo by Jeff Koch
In 2007, in between baby duty and my growing photo needs at Hemmings, I bought my in-laws’ 2001 Dodge Grand Caravan. The dealer wasn’t going to give them a reasonable trade-in, so I bought it for the same money. It was grey, so I list this one with an asterisk, but the interior was blue and durable. (And uncomfortable.) One of the last not-black-or-grey new-car interiors I’d had the chance to sit in.
Photo by Jeff Koch
In 2012, having taken it over the 200,000 mile mark, I sent the Grand Caravan on its way and honed in on a vehicle bought new by a friend in the Pacific Northwest and which was now surplus to requirements–an 88,000-mile 2006 Mazda5, which plunked a van body on a Mazda3 chassis. It was even a five-speed stick, and was the closest thing I’ve ever owned to a perfect daily-driver vehicle. (Nothing another 50 horsepower couldn’t cure, anyway.) Was it Phantom Blue or Strato Blue? Hell if I know. This one I bought for what it was, and the color was entirely accidental if not displeasing.
Photo by Jeff Koch
In 2016, I had been nosing around to find myself a Nissan S-Cargo, a funky Japan-spec van built in the late ‘80s. They were all done in pastel colors like pale pink or orangey-yellow, but most of them were just white, in keeping with their inner-city delivery-van function. It was roomy, despite using the chassis and powertrain from a first-generation Nissan Sentra, and just the sort of thing I wanted for my side hustle of selling Japanese diecast cars. My thought was, why not have a Japanese car—a real JDM-spec oddball—that looked like a toy? I wouldn’t even need to paint a business name on the side. I was pointed toward someone on the East Coast who had four or five of them available; the one I ended up with was chosen for me and, wouldn’t you know it, it was blue. Never regretted it for a second. The white-painted dash was a glare-full nightmare, however.
At the end of 2017 the Mazda had north of 200,000 miles on its odometer, and although it was perfect for me and my needs, Mazda no longer made a 5, and I was (shall we say) encouraged to get something new. NEW new, no used cars. In the Venn diagram of budget and space and the ability to haul either people or stuff, or sometimes both, Dodge’s Grand Caravan was square in my sights. Which leads to the inevitable question: color. Seven choices were on the paint chart that year; Bright White, Brilliant Black Pearl, Billet Metallic, and Granite Crystal Metallic were all out. That left Velvet Red Pearl, Jazz Blue Pearl, and Midnight Blue Pearl, which was described as “Contusion Blue” (its name when applied to the Challenger) on the dealer website. I might have gone red, except the mother-in-law’s last two or three Mopar vans were this same color, and there’s no way I’m getting my crate confused with hers. That left two blues, and because I want nothing to do with jazz in any form, even in name on my van, Midnight Blue Pearl won the day.
Photo by Jeff Koch
Others in the fleet have been other colors. My bought-new ’92 Nissan NX2000 was white for the laziest of reasons—I was pressed for time, Freehold Nissan in New Jersey only had two, both were white, and one had the five-speed. (Black and red were the only other colors that year; a pretty blue hue came into the paint chart for 1993…alas.) My wife’s Fiesta ST is Molten Orange, but only because she couldn’t find an ST in that funky lime green when we were shopping. The dark blue they offered, like the one I wrote about for Hemmings Muscle Machines all those years ago, was a little too dark for my liking. Our ’31 Model A coupe is Earl Scheib green, and has been since before it entered my wife’s family in 1969; it’s unlikely that it will change. My ’64 Dart convertible was bright red from the factory, which suited its optimistic post-war nature. My R32-generation Nissan Skyline GT-R is … well, I looked for a blue one but they’re exceedingly rare, and the NISMO version I lucked into were all painted grey from the factory. As it’s tripled in value in the time I’ve owned it, I’m not about to spray it–hell, I’m scared to drive it. But its sibling, wearing its best-known racing livery, and twice Group A touring-car world champion during the GT-R’s unprecedented and undefeated run at the track? Sponsored by Calsonic, whose white letters and wheels look dynamite when contrasted on a field of … well, you can guess the rest.
