Did you ever notice that nearly all high end cars are black, white or gray – or the weak browny tan that might as well be gray?

Mercedes Benz, BMW, Lexus, Porsche Cayenne, Infinti, Range Rover, Escalade, Navigator, Audi, even Jag-you-are. Colorless.

Why?

My guess is that since they’re all status symbols, there must be some kind of status inherent in colorlessness but I can’t imagine what it is.

Black, white and gray are not color choices, they’re default lack-of-color colors. Maybe they’re a disguise, a way to hide, for the uncool pretending to be cool. If so, they’re way off.

Cool is the powder blue 1955 Porsche that parks near me in the condo garage. Cool is the red 1963 Shelby Cobra that lives just down the street or the brilliant yellow 2009 Corvette that races past me on the way to work most mornings.

Most people who spend a lot more money on a car than they have to are gray, I guess.

Maybe that explains the commercial with a guy racing along a twisty mountain road downshifting and upshifting like a race car driver only he’s using something called paddle shifters and he doesn’t have to bother with a clutch. He might as well leave his transmission in D and make zoom zoom sounds like the kid in the Mazda spots.

Maybe people want to be seen as upscale “players” but they want to blend into the upscale background and that’s why they buy (lease probably) Beemers and Cayennes when they really need nothing more than an Impala or a Taurus – that they could keep for 8 or 9 years.

There’s an upsell idea in here somewhere: the pointlessly expensive and colorless appeals to a certain mindset.