Black car. Should I get one?

[Dennis S]

vision63 wrote:
How used are you considering? I think this latest platform (4th gen) goes back to 2012. It looks good in black to me. There has to be some charcoal grey options that look snazzy. This looks badazz.

Generation 1 or 2. That's all I can afford. Gen 1 is up through 1999 and Gen 2 is 2000-2005, I think. Gen 1 lucks absolutely awful in white.

[jh]

Just a thought.

Unless you are committed to an Avalon you might want to consider at a possible better price point and possible newer model a Camry with more than the standard options if budget is a concern and you want to stay with Toyota. Both are fine cars (We own a Camry--a white one, btw) but the Avalon offers more in luxury if that is a factor for you. I would suspect you would have more choices are car colors going in that direction.

[Dennis S]

I am considering a Camry but lots of older ones in my price range really look ratty, in my opinion. I have to haul my mom around a lot and she loves the size of the Avalon.

[mrlynn]

Does it have to be a Toyota? Try an Acura, or a Buick, or a Mercury, or something?

/Mr Lynn

[Dennis S]

mrlynn wrote:
Does it have to be a Toyota? Try an Acura, or a Buick, or a Mercury, or something?

/Mr Lynn

It has to be Japanese. I wanted a Toyota but got suckered into a Buick - low miles, clean, fastidiously maintained, etc. It is an absolute piece of shit.

[davemchine]

My wife has a black car and it never looks clean. I would not recommend one unless you plan to get a membership at a car wash.

[miK.]

I have a white car (like this Ford) that really isn't that bad when comes to showing dirt.
Bug guts off the front bumper are easy with a little magic eraser and the little bit of touch
up paint from a few dings hardly shows. Doesn't get anywhere near as hot as my brother's
black Civic. My .02...

[Drew]

A black car or other glossy dark colors easily show dirt from a light drizzle kind of rain. If you have a good wax job and it rains fairly hard, the dirt washes off. But heavy dew in the morning makes your car look really bad if parked outside.

[Black]

You've got a black car.
I've got a plan to get us out of here....

[davester]

Lew Zealand wrote:
As far as heat in the summer goes, it doesn't matter what color you get. If it sits out for a half hour or more in the sun with the windows up of even cracked a bit, it'll come to a similar temp as a white one. I bought a white car to minimize this without doing any tests but a friend of mine a few years later did the test in the dealer's lot. IR thermometer to all 8 Odysseys' side windows in the lot (6 different colors including dark blue and white) in the sun for a few hours and temps were within 2°. He bought dark blue.

The IR thermometer reading is irrelevant. It's only showing you the temperature of the outside surface and is not indicative of the rate of heat absorption and the amount of heat present in the materials that make up the car's interior. What's happening to that heat on the surface is what's important. Basic thermodynamics tells us that black (low emissivity) objects absorb vastly more heat energy than light (high emissivity) objects given the same surface temperature. This is borne out by personal experience working in the desert for years. A black vehicle is absolutely unpleasant to work out of. A white vehicle vastly more comfortable.

I agree that black or dark blue vehicles look very sharp when perfectly clean. The rest of the time they look ugly as heck and are horribly uncomfortable to get into (or touch the exterior of) in a sunny climate. For that reason I always rule them out completely when buying a car. That definitely makes it tough for the used car buyer (which I have been very recently) because black has been the main color pushed by the dealerships as the "cool color to have" for the last decade.