The Ford model T was available in any color, so long it’s black. Surprisingly for a land that is passionate about automobiles and requires 31 flavors of ice cream, Americans are very conservative about car colors, the most popular being white, silver and black.

My own is a dark metallic green, a color apparently favored by only 2% according to the DuPont color survey. Car makers like Audi or BMW offer a fraction of the color choices in the US that they do in Europe. I just don’t get it.