If you want to feel really strange, drive a blindingly bright yellow car. As Drive On found out in the past week, you stand out like a sore banana. But then we spied an upside: who would dare steal a yellow car?
There's no mistaking the Audi S4 -- especially when it's yellow
By Chris Woodyard/Drive On
The downside of a driving a yellow car is you become convinced everyone is looking at you. Lose your car in the parking lot? Not a chance. But the Huffington Post pointed out the upside over the weekend: no one would dare steal it. If the police car radio squawked with the report of a just-stolen yellow car, the cops could probably get it back faster than you can say LoJack. Huffpo points to a Dutch study about how pink bicycles rarely get stolen compared to more mundane colors, then tries to draw the comparison to cars. Reasonable enough. We felt like we were finding out first-hand what the study was talking about:
Drive On has been tooling around Los Angeles in the past week in a stunning yellow Audi S4. If it were just another $59,150 sport sedan, it would fit right in with the mish-mash of Mercedes-Benzes and BMWs. But as a yellow car, it basically screamed out the attention -- as if its lightning acceleration wasn't enough.
One expert points out that yellow cars are about the only ticket to distinctiveness in a world filled with bland, earth-colored cars.
"You only see yellow cars in terms of new cars like semi-high performance," says Tom duPont, publisher of the duPont Registry, a monthly guide of rare cars. "You never see a yellow Buick."
One good reason: the color is so out of fashion that yellow cars could garner less on resale, the Dutch study points out.
