Fiat has taken the bold decision to stop offering grey paint across its entire passenger car range as it tries to brighten up its image.
In an announcement this morning, the company has said that all its cars will be offered in colours that represent the Italian sea, sun, earth and sky.
The decision applies to all Fiat passenger cars sold around the world, although there’s no word yet on whether it will also apply to the company’s comercial vehicle models.
It’s a particularly brave move here in the UK, where a quarter of all new cars sold are painted in some shade of grey and it has long been the most popular choice for new car buyers.
Mind you, Fiat’s own sales may show other trends that give it confidence in ditching grey. Every car company has its own quirks – most obviously, about half of all Ferraris are red despite only 8% of new cars overall being red.
Paint choices across the Fiat range currently include orange, red, blue, green and rose gold, in a range of solid and metallic hues. However, fans of monochrome cars will still be able to choose white or black.
There’s no indication that this decision will also apply to Abarth cars, so you’ll probably still be able to get a performance model Abarth 595, Abarth 695 or Abarth 500e in grey.
The colourful announcement has been made as part of the marketing campaign for the all-new, all-electric Fiat 600e, a larger sibling to the popular 500e city car. The 600e will be revealed next week and is expected to replace the existing 500X in the Fiat range.
As of this morning, the ageing Fiat Panda was still showing a grey option on the Fiat website, but this will presumably be disappearing soon (the colour, that is, as the Panda seems destined to live forever).