Yet again Mark Simmons has pointed me towards some interesting information. I have taken the following from the “CAR LOGBOOK” site which offers details of every car with a valid MOT. There are several hundred additional Barchettas that are SORNED but these 518 are the ones with a current MOT.
Of the 30,965,874 cars on UK roads our 518 represents 0.00167% so no wonder we don’t often see another car like our own. It is even more unlikely that you will spot a car of the same colour.
Silver or grey is by far the most common colour together totalling 175 cars.
SILVER/GREY 175 CARS 33.8%
BLUE 101 CARS 19.5%
RED 88 CARS 17%
YELLOW 64 CARS 12.4%
BLACK 44 CARS 8.5%
GREEN 24 CARS 4.6%
ORANGE 21 CARS 4.1%
PURPLE 1 CAR 0.2%
So our cars are pretty rare in the UK. I suspect that lone purple car is Colin Stovell’s aubergine car?
Martin Garrad
My Green Barchetta R74KGF is now residing in France
Nice car you bought mark ,hope you kept the steel wheels on . Mark
Hello Mark, Whereabouts in France are you? We live in the Limousin. Kate
Sorry for my tardy reply, yes the car is as I bought it with its steel wheels and is an ongoing project.
The car is now in 82160 Castanet and used a much as possible.
I help organise a little group of like mind people and we try to get together once a month, more details, http://www.lespetrolheads.com, https://www.facebook.com/lespetrolheads and email lespetrolheads@gmail.com.
All the Best, Mark
I see that, in the time since this was published, the number of orange cars has fallen from 21 to 16 while the total number remains at 518. Are people respraying the unloved ginger car to something less offensive?
The unloved ginger car? – sorry Joe but I can’t possibly agree! Mine is blue, residing in South West France but I have always thought that orange is the best colour for a Barchetta
You’re right, Richard, it is the best colour. I bought my first “tangerine dream” in 1997, and kept it for seven years and 100K miles, and I’ve recently acquired my second (24 years old and only 39K on the clock). But, I recognize that it’s not everyone’s ‘can of Tango’ from comments I received in the past.
I was curious about the numbers as the orange count was falling while the total appeared the same. Looking further it seems that there is an annual wobble in the numbers between licensed and SORNed; I don’t know if people are really going to the trouble of SORNing over winter or whether these are different cars being retired and resurrected at that time of year.
According to howmanyleft.co.uk there does seem to be a general decline in numbers, and there are not many of the early cars first registered in the UK left. So I think my ginger car (and I can say that because “Only a ginger can call another ginger ginger” – T Minchin”) may be fairly rare.