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Originally Posted by venturaII
Can anyone explain why there are almost NO green cars available any more?
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There are a few reasons. Primarily, they don't sell that well. The reason? I can think of a few.
First, the classic dark green colors absorb sunlight. That's why plants use chlorophyll (which is green) to help harvest energy from light. When you put green on an object, it will absorb more light than other colors and reflect less light. Light is energy, and energy can't be destroyed, so the light being absorbed has to be converted to another form.
On a car, that form is heat. Depending on the material, some green surfaces can be hotter in sunlight than black. In the past, green paint also didn't hold up as well as some other colors because of the extra heat and UV.
Also, because green absorbs light, green cars are not as easy to see as brighter color cars. A green car doesn't look as brilliant as other cars, and the green could contribute to accidents. It also doesn't photograph as well as other colors, with the green usually appearing much darker in photographs than to the naked eye. With so many people shopping for cars on the auto makers' websites, it's not easy to sell a green car when it's difficult to show people what it really looks like.
Some folks might be willing to put up with those limitations, except that you'll notice that most of the older green cars that looked so good were also trimmed in chrome. Cars these days have a lot less chrome on them, primarily because the "chrome" on the current fleet of cars is all plastic and not chromed steel and therefore looks cheap. People would rather not have cheap plastic chrome on their cars. The auto makers have obliged and put a lot less chrome on vehicles these days.
Unfortunately a solid green car doesn't look anywhere near as good as a green car set off by chrome accents. A BRG MGB looks damned good with chrome wire wheels, bumpers, mirrors, door handles, window trim, headlight bezels and grill. A BRG FR-S with almost no chrome at all is unfortunately going to look pretty dull. And once again, with no chrome to set off the car's features in a photograph, it's going to look dull on a website.
So you'd be buying a dull-looking uncomfortably hot car that you'll drive for a few months before someone who couldn't see it easily smashed it. Not what most people are looking for.