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During the early 90’s the US was in a recession which meant there weren’t many buyers placing orders. Dealers were also very reluctant to order a unique color for fear of having the car sit on the lot forever. So being risk averse they looked back at what the most popular colors were for Porsches over the past 10 years and the result was a significant amount of Red/Black, Red/Cashmere, Black/Black, Black/Cashmere and White/Black, White/Cashmere 964’s. Certainly there were some special orders with different colors but no doubt it was a small percentage. It would be interesting to see actual production figures for anything other than the standard three colors.
The economy started improving by the time the 993 was introduced so you do see more of them in unique colors but definitely nothing like Europe or Japan.
Ding-ding. Winner.
Porsche couldn't move these cars with a crowbar at that time in the US .
YUGE ripple effect of the cold war's end in the US. ('92 was my first -- and only -- engineering gig layoff. How bad was it? That aerospace company is no longer even in existence!) "In times of economic uncertainty" WHO's gonna buy your dealership's 'pimp'-colored car?
Me? I LIKE the M&M-colors!
Red, Orange, Yellow, Blue, Green.. heck, even Brown!
On top of my Cobalt Blue Metallic, Tahoe Blue Metallic, Horizon Blue Metallic, are the other blue metallic colors that I like (light to medium blues, not dark).
I'll be posting more pics when I get this thing running reliably and have it more accessible for daily use. I would love to see the production numbers...
"In times of economic uncertainty" WHO's gonna buy your dealership's 'pimp'-colored car? LOL!!
First off I found the Rennbow https://www.rennbow.org/ is not so accurate regarding rarity of each color. It is hard to break that info down and many colors which are quite rare are shown as only being slightly rare, while other colors I know aren't as rare are listed as such. This also depends on body type some colors lended themself more to cabs than coupes. Maybe it has to do with US vs RoW colors.
I have a few friends who were in Porsche sales during the 90's and this is what I was always told so it is second hand info. No doubt very few cars were sold during this time period and the economy was in the toilet. As a defense contractor I have to agree that the aerospace industry was in a huge slump. Sales of parts for aircraft went from thousands of units to hundreds. SUV's were the big rage in the US and could be had cheap unlike today. I was told by several sales people that Porsche limited special order (metallic) colors to customer orders. So they needed a deposit to purchase. I know this stopped in 1994 when these optional colors were charged for vs a no cost option for the prior years. My turbo, 928GTS window stickers show the colors but show N/C and were pre ordered by a customer. The factory was also sending cars to the dealers they did not order pushing them to sell as they still do today. These cars were almost always black, red or white. Also another issue Porsche learned from was the color swatches. If you look at the brochure the tiny square swatches weren't large enough to get a feel for the color. Many did not show well and did not shift as they do in person being painted on paper. I think people bought what was on the lot to save and very few special ordered these cars. You had to be quite wealthy at the time as these were huge money in the day well above the average car buyers budget.
I will admit if I was ordering from the brochure I would have not purchased my cobalt or amazon green cars. Even when I found my turbo in early 2000's the seller said his biggest issue was finding someone to take a look at it. The color was not appreciated as it is today.
I will agree that the jelly bean colors was more a RoW thing. The US market was tough on some of these colors and I had little interest in them myself back in the late 90's early 00's. I am kicking myself as I was offered a factory sunroof delete C2 in Signal Green back in the 90's. The car sat at the dealership for years next to an America roadster in red that they could not move until the late 90's. I was offered it again years later and the color wasn't of interest to me for some reason. Today I see it differently but such is life.
Thanks for the post 911Jetta. All this time I thought they were inhaling too much of the VOC's when it came to naming some of these colors. I always found colors like my Amazon green to be more blue than green and 90% of the people that walk up to me say nice blue car.
Thanks for the take @cobalt I'd love to see your turbo in person some day. I didn't live in the US until the late 90's and was deployed again overseas from '01 to '06 so I missed living through the red/black/white times and cars sitting at dealerships for years. Not that my budget could afford a Porsche back then either but I still browsed. I bought a british racing green VW Passat in '00 and I thought I was the coolest guy on the block. 1.8T Tiptronic trans. Only had it for a year before I went away again. When I came back my foolish self had a few pennies and got into a brand new 7 series. I wish I would've bought a late 90's aircooled or 2 back then with the same money. I pondered the 996 before the beamer (same money) but I couldn't bring myself to like the weird headlights, still don't like them til this day. If we only had a crystal ball. Thanks for sharing the knowledge and the color link. Interesting reads.
03-11-2021, 05:09 PM
Cobalt
