Well yes, Toyota and Honda are about cutting costs whereever possible. Having fewer paint options available is cheaper.
I can get a Škoda in orange, blue or red, optionally two-tone with a black roof. That’s also a cheap model of a cost-cutter brand I looked at. Slightly bolder paint options, but also not too many.
There’s no point offering a bunch of different paints if nobody is getting them. Or you can do it like the luxury brands do, and make it possible to get absolutely anything, but it’s a high-cost extra. If you sell it as prestige, some people will pay for it because why not. Plus it’s not like anyone cares about the residual on a BMW, they’ll just lease the next one in 5 years and don’t care if they gotta pay 50 euros more per month due to a lower residual, or maybe the bank eats the cost (residuals are usually set lower than the expected actual value at the end of a lease anyway). But for cheap cars, where people are already cost-conscious, a lot of people just skip out on the cool colors because “oh it’ll depreciate so much worse” and that’s why they no longer offer them. So many car makers now offer one or two bright, showy colors per model and the rest are boring, generic, dependable.
If Toyota could make more money selling you a yellow Corolla than by not selling you a yellow Corolla, they would do it. But apparently not enough people want it for it to be an option, and not enough people want to shell out obscene amounts of cash for completely custom paints on a Toyota, for that to be an option. I wish people bought more brightly colored cars, but I don’t think it’s the manufacturers stopping everyone, it’s the lack of demand.
Well yes, Toyota and Honda are about cutting costs whereever possible. Having fewer paint options available is cheaper.
I can get a Škoda in orange, blue or red, optionally two-tone with a black roof. That’s also a cheap model of a cost-cutter brand I looked at. Slightly bolder paint options, but also not too many.
There’s no point offering a bunch of different paints if nobody is getting them. Or you can do it like the luxury brands do, and make it possible to get absolutely anything, but it’s a high-cost extra. If you sell it as prestige, some people will pay for it because why not. Plus it’s not like anyone cares about the residual on a BMW, they’ll just lease the next one in 5 years and don’t care if they gotta pay 50 euros more per month due to a lower residual, or maybe the bank eats the cost (residuals are usually set lower than the expected actual value at the end of a lease anyway). But for cheap cars, where people are already cost-conscious, a lot of people just skip out on the cool colors because “oh it’ll depreciate so much worse” and that’s why they no longer offer them. So many car makers now offer one or two bright, showy colors per model and the rest are boring, generic, dependable.
If Toyota could make more money selling you a yellow Corolla than by not selling you a yellow Corolla, they would do it. But apparently not enough people want it for it to be an option, and not enough people want to shell out obscene amounts of cash for completely custom paints on a Toyota, for that to be an option. I wish people bought more brightly colored cars, but I don’t think it’s the manufacturers stopping everyone, it’s the lack of demand.