White/white pearl is South Africa’s most popular car colour for the second year running – this according to the 2012 DuPont Automotive Colour Popularity Report.

South Africa has the world’s highest market share of white/white pearl of any region or country that DuPont analysed in this year’s report, with these vehicles representing more than a 38% share.

Silver followed, with a 20% market share in South Africa, and black/black effect and grey tied in third place with 13% of the market each. Red and blue each represented 5% of the South African market.

South Africa’s premier car colour choice yet again mirrors global trends. White/white pearl also dominated the overall global automotive colour popularity ranks, representing 23% of the global market in DuPont’s 2012 report.

It moved to the top of the ranks in Europe this year, and also led as the most popular car colour in North America (US and Canada), Japan, South Korea, Russia and Mexico.

Over the past decade, white has ranked high in automotive colour popularity. During this timeframe, white’s popularity has been highlighted across all vehicle segments, though historically, it had been most popular among the truck segment.

Past advancements in pearl- escent whites enabled this colour to break into the luxury segments.

“Today, white tri-coats are more readily applicable to the global manufacturing base and evoke quality and value among a variety of vehicle segments,” says DuPont colour marketing manager Nancy Lockhart. “Solid whites have been seen in vanilla shades, stone shades and the current preference of bright whites.”

Black/black-effect led among vehicle colour popularity in China, but took second place in the global ranks with 21% of the world’s share of automotive colour.

Silver rounded out the top three global colour choices, topping the ranks in South America, Brazil and India, but slipped four percentage points to just 18% of the overall global the automotive market from 22% last year.

“Silver peaked during the start of the digital age between 2000 and 2006,” notes Lockhart. “Vehicles painted black/black-effect are seen as luxury status symbols in several key global markets.”

Red, grey and brown/beige each gained a percentage point since last year’s report, while blue maintained equal share from the 2011 rankings.

The top global vehicle colours in DuPont’s report are white/white pearl 23%; black/black-effect 21%; silver 8%; grey 14%; red 8%; blue 6%; brown/beige 6%; green 1%; yellow/gold 1%; and others at 2%