Covid-19 has brought with it plenty of the ‘blues’ and it seems this has also had an impact on the car market, notably in the UK, where blue has dropped out of the top three colours sought by car buyers.

Analysis by the online car supermarket BuyaCar.co.uk reveals 2020 has seen the motoring world turning monochrome, with black, white and grey now occupying the top three places for cars sold to – and searched for – by consumers.

While it’s 21 years since blue was the most popular car colour of all, blue consistently remained in the top three choices until recently and BuyaCar.co.uk’s number crunchers say the gap between the monochrome group of colours and blue is widening fast.

Blue dropped out of the top three colour searches and sales for most of 2019, but managed a rally at the end of the year as the third most frequently chosen shade of car. However, when the coronavirus crisis brought the car market to a virtual standstill, blue fell out of favour and shows little sign of recovering.

The resurgence of the market in recent weeks has seen growth in searches for blue cars dwarfed by those for black, white and grey. It means that between February and May interest in cars from the monochrome group of colours or shades has grown at three times the rate of that for blue cars.

While blue is now firmly replaced as a top three colour choice by grey, the battle for top spot is still not settled between black and white. Although black consistently came first for searches and sales throughout 2019, white has returned to top sales position since March this year on BuyaCar.co.uk.

Locally, white still remains the buyer’s favourite colour with silver in second place ahead of grey, blue and red.

White and silver are both practical colours for the South African climate and likely to stay in those positions for a while yet.