Although pink remains the rarest of new car colour choices on our shores, the colour has seen an increase in demand in recent years. It’s seen a growth of almost 83 per cent in total UK new car sales since 2017, when 19,958 new pink cars were registered, against 22,728 in 2020, to account for 0.14 per cent of all car sales. ‘Domestic appliance’ white remains this Country’s most popular colour choice for new car buyers. An increasing number of celebrities such as Paris Hilton, Nicki Minaj and Katie Price, have had their Lamborghinis, Bentleys, AMG G-Classes, Hummers and Range Rovers resprayed in ‘luxury’ pink.
Animated stars of both the big and small screens have also turned to their wheels being pink to help capture the imagination and create a cult following. The TV cartoon Pink Panther travelled in a far-out bright pink wedged creation with a large side entry door and plush wrap-around cabin couch, devised by Hollywood custom guru George Barris in the late 1960s. International Rescue’s aristocratic British agent, Lady Penelope, was famously chauffeured by Parker in her extravagant six-wheeled, glass dome-topped pink Rolls-Royce ‘FAB 1’ in Thunderbirds and in the latter movie adaptation, a pink Ford Thunderbird six-wheeler.
Arguably though, the most notorious of all pink-painted passenger cars has to be the infamous ‘land yacht’ finned Cadillac model line-up of 1959. Shot to fame by the Bruce Springsteen song ‘Pink Cadillac’, this catchy ditty was originally released as the non-album B-side of Springsteen’s ‘Dancing in the Dark’ worldwide hit single in 1984.