Rainbow motoring: The most popular vehicle colours on New Zealand roads revealed

New Zealand's most popular car colours revealed - who takes the checkered flag? Photo / Dean Purcell

The most popular basic vehicle colours in New Zealand have been revealed and Uber might have something to say about it, one expert says.

Silver took the chequered flag with a comfortable lead over white-coloured vehicles, meanwhile, blue was third-most-popular some distance behind.

Motoring expert at Driven, Matthew Hansen, told the Herald ride-sharing companies - many of which have silver coloured cars - and some New Zealanders not embracing a wide array of colours were behind the results.

"It's worth considering the increase in ride-sharing outfits like Uber, and the slew of silver Toyota Prius' that have flooded the country to fuel that industry.

"It [also] says a lot that we're the nation that favours using black and white as our national colours instead of what actually sits on our national flag.

"Cars with neutral colours appeal to those 'quintessentially Kiwi' buyers because they don't stand out and carry a reputation for being better for resale values."

Title Here

The numbers were provided by the NZ Transport Agency and represented the total registered fleet of vehicles in New Zealand.

Any vehicles deregistered from the Motor Vehicle Register (MVR) were not included, as well as vehicles never registered in the first place.

Meanwhile, the love for bland colours could be on the decline shortly, Hansen said, as motoring companies look to entice millennial-consumers.

"Plenty of car brands have been on a crusade to bring back some of the hues of the '90s ... Teal is the popular choice, and could possibly make an appearance on future iterations of this list," he said.

"A fascinating element with modern motoring is how often brands will use wild colours for their latest products in marketing material, even when it's the subdued colours that sell in the greatest numbers.

"It's a process of 'luring people in' with the image of standing out and being unique, and then landing them as buyers with dependable colours that are most familiar to them."

Elsewhere, the most popular basic colour of tractors was green with 16,096, followed by red and blue with 13,835 and 7996 respectively.

Typically, motorcycles were painted black with 50,219 registered, 33,104 were red, 21,424 blue and 12,968 painted white.

Meanwhile, mopeds followed the exact same trend with 8287 painted black, 6962 red, 5209 blue and 3165 white.