A Dutch study of car theft data has found that brightly-colored cars are less likely to be stolen than their more commonly-colored counterparts.
Ben Vollaard, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Tilburg, analyzed car theft data in the Netherlands and found that colors like silver, black and blue were stolen at a much higher rate than rare colors like yellow or pink.
Black is the most commonly stolen color, although Vollaard partially attributes this to the popularity of black as a color for luxury vehicles like Mercedes or BMWs. Interestingly, a pink car has not been stolen in the Netherlands in the past three years.
Vollaard concludes that thieves steal brightly or uncommonly colored at an average rate of 40 percent less than other vehicles – about the same as a LoJack or other antitheft system.
The study speculates various reasons for the discrepancy, the strongest being that cars are often stolen for a specific export order, as was the case with a recent New York used car theft ring that was exporting stolen vehicles – specifically silver ones – to buyers in Senegal. Another possibility is that police could quickly spot a thief in a yellow car.
However, the bright color does come with a price. While it won’t cost anything extra at the dealer, a color like yellow can drive down a car’s resale value by about $1,000 dollars, according to the National Auto Auction Association.