The urban legend that red cars are more expensive to insure most likely comes from the assumption that red cars are more likely to get pulled over and ticketed for speeding.
It stands to reason, right? Red is a high-visibility color which would attract the attention of any nearby officers lurking with their radar gun.
The fact is, the color of vehicle that gets pulled over most frequently is… wait for it… White!
This makes perfect sense, however, since white is the most popular car color. Red does come in second place, however, followed by silver and grey.
Is a red car more expensive to insure?
To put this myth to rest once and for all, it DOES NOT cost more to insure a red car over a white, black, silver, or blue car.
There are contributing factors to the misconception that red cars have higher-priced car insurance. If you look at different types of vehicles and colors that are preferred by young (primarily male) drivers, you’re going to find a lot of modded Honda Civics, Subaru WRXs, and Volkswagen GTIs.
And what’s one of the favorite colors of younger drivers? Red, obviously.
So if you combine a driver with a higher tendency to speed and drive recklessly with a sporty car that has a higher probability of being painted red, then you’re going to have a higher incidence of moving violations for red vehicles.
And if a young male driver, who already has extremely expensive car insurance rates, gets a speeding ticket or other citation, guess what happens to his car insurance rates (or his parent’s car insurance rates). They go up and they go up a lot.
But for your 78-year-old grandmother who wouldn’t trade her red Buick Park Avenue for the world, it will not cost more for car insurance simply because it’s red. Now, the fact that she’s a terrible driver is an entirely different issue altogether.
That’s where people get the idea that red cars get more traffic tickets, and hence cause the cost of insurance to be higher on red cars.
Are red cars more expensive to repair?
Car insurance pays to repair your vehicle when damaged, so is it possible that red paint just costs more than other paints? It’s a possibility, but not to the extent that your car insurance company would charge more just because your car is red.
Some finishes do in fact cost more than others to repair. Multi-layer paints and pearl finishes take more time and care to match and blend, and will cost more to repair. But that’s for all colors, not just red.
Silver and blues tend to be the hardest colors to match in auto body repair, especially if they have a high metallic flake content to give it that “shimmer” in the sun. White pearls are also especially difficult to match and often require painting the entire panel or side of a car to prevent noticeable differences.
Body work repairs on black vehicles must be extremely precise due to how the color black shows every imperfection in the surface.
The easiest paints to match are solid, non-metallic colors, especially white.
So to conclude this fact versus fiction session, we can confidently proclaim that the answer to “Are red cars more expensive to insure?” is: No, red cars do not have more expensive car insurance rates than other color cars.