This tasty pairing made me crave something sweet and gooey, perhaps with a sweet caramel center. Are you a member of the Brown Car Appreciation Society? Ever had some chocolate love?
I have, the 1980 Audi 4000 that I owned in college, it (the color) was named Merion Brown, I loved that car. Mostly anyway, when it behaved. I think that’s the only one though so far but there have only been fifty or so others since then…
I’d have another brown car if the right opportunity or shade presented itself. How about you, have you had one, what was it and do you know the name of the color? Would you have another?
Brown? Absolutely. All shades of brown shown here (would that be 4?) are quite tasteful. Plus, each is hands-down better than white or silver.
That said, I’ve not had one but have experience with them. My parents once had two brown cars simultaneously (a ’73 Torino and a ’77 Volare) during the time my grandparents owned a brown ’77 Impala.
A 79 camaro in dark brown metallic. I occasionally see an interesting brown on a newer car but black/white/gray definitely rule the roads now.
I had a 1982 240d In Magenese Brown. My current truck is a GM Forest Metallic Green my wife swears is brown. I like interesting colors, of any sort, so anything but the generics that have dominated the last few decades is fine with me.
1972 Plymouth Gold Duster in metallic brown and tan vinyl roof. 318 V8, Torqueflite, air conditioned. Beautiful looking when clean in bright sun, and a pleasure to drive. I think the color name was Chestnut Iridescent.
I think the closest I ever came was my 71 Scamp, but it was as much gold or green as it was brown.
Some browns are better than others, and the only one I can remember from my youth that I really loved was the 1977 Newport 4 door hardtop owned by my car mentor Howard – the color was Coffee Sunfire Metallic. I have seen a few newer cars that have had a similar shade of that deep, really rich brown and still really like it.
I have craved many cars, but only one color, a one-year-only 1966 Mustang color called Emberglow. Not quite brown, and not orange, but sort of a metallic cinnamon color.
Emberglow is a great color
Nice. I had a ’71 Fury in what looked like Tahitian Walnut.
I am just now remembering the first brown car I spent any time around at all – my neighbor/mentor Bill would periodically borrow his brother’s 1964 Studebaker Commander sedan when an extra car was needed. It was Bermuda Brown, and remains a shade of brown that I like – sort of like dark chocolate, which I like too.
Handsome trucks. Both of them. The 71 Town and Country of my youth was a brown very much like the Newport JP just posted. Perhaps the same brown. It went well with the di-noc that car also had. But other than that, I’ve never had occasion to purchase a brown car. Still, I would very much rather see a brown car than one of the ultra-boring silvers or whites that are so popular nowadays.
Ahh, the earth tone colors so popular in the late 60s through the 70s. Brown and green. Many cars and trucks painted shades of these colors back then.
The only brown vehicle I’ve owned was a 1983 GMC Sierra in Mahogany Metallic (code 68). A beautiful color, it actually had some red and gold highlights, maybe in the metallic flakes. By the time I owned it the horizontal surfaces were a bit dull, but applying a little Pledge made the hood and roof shine like a new penny…at least until it rained. It appears that GMC has reintroduced this color name within the past five years, but I’m not certain that the actual hue is the same.
The car in which I learned to drive belonged to my parents – a 1974 Ford Maverick in Saddle Bronze Metallic (code 5T). But I’m not sure it quite qualifies as brown, since it was more of an orangey/russet/rust shade.
Finally, my dad had an ‘84 Fleetwood Brougham in Woodland Haze Metallic (code 62), which again I’m not sure qualifies as brown, being more of a “geriatric beige metallic” hue. But interior had yards and yards of deep brown leather and vinyl.
You got more brownie points in your recent Ford truck photo than I got in mine (below). If you count tan as a browntone at all, this pairing only gets about half a point.
I like brown cars, but have never had one. Come to think of it, I’ve owned seven cars, and five have been in the silver/gray/black spectrum. One red, and one champagne.
Seems like ten or fifteen years ago, brown had a mini-resurgence, but after a few years, it faded away. Too bad; I guess I’ll be waiting a while for my first brown car.
I’m going to call the modern Ford a 2012, as that is the same year as mine. That brown / gold combo was reasonably popular, and I thought it very sharp, especially on the Ford Expedition, where it was also offered.
My first experience with a Colonnade Cutlass was a black vinyl over dark metallic brown 1973 Salon sedan. It had color keyed wheel covers, and was very sharp – and brand new, it belonged to a neighbor. Ten year later, my first car was a 1973 Cutlass Supreme coupe, in the same colors, color keyed super stock wheels, again, very sharp.
Some dull shades of brown on plain / stripper cars can lead to some derogatory references to said cars. But, I think it looks great when everything comes together on the right car.
Our ’85 Cherokee was brown metallic, and I was very fond of that color.
I had an ’83 Chevy Silverado short wide, two tone in Light Bronze/Almond with tan interior. I thought it looked great but my friends thought it looked like an old man’s truck. It looked similar to this one.
Great find, that brown was very common on the older one but the new one is quite uncommon. I have seen one of those in the wild and had to do a double take since I didn’t realize Ford had offered the F-150 in brown in that era.
I did have an Econoline from the early 80’s with a similar two tone paint job as seen on the 70’s truck, can’t say I ever looked up the color.
I also had a Pinto in the darker brown or at least one that was close. I think it was called Medium Chestnut Metallic.
Finally my 75 Electra Limited was a dark metallic brown with a beige vinyl roof.
One of my co-workers has a 2013 F-150 that is Kodiak Brown. It’s a very dark metallic brown that looks black when it’s cloudy. It’s actually a really nice color when the sun is out.
My old boss liked the color so much that she bought a Bronco Sport in that color, and her’s the only one I’ve ever seen in that color.
Surprisingly when I was out driving this afternoon guess what pulled up along side of me but a F-150 in that brown, though it wasn’t two tone like the subject above. Yes it looked good in the sunlight.
I’ve owned at least 3 brown cars, including a ’72 Torino wagon and a ’77 Mercedes 240D.
But I’m most proud of having owned the Mythical Beast of the Internet, a brown, manual, RWD, Diesel station wagon, the 1985 Volvo 245. You should read about it here:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cars-of-a-lifetime/coal-1984-volvo-245-diesel-the-rwd-diesel-stick-shift-brown-station-wagon-mythical-beast-of-the-internet/
We’ve never owned a truly brown vehicle, but have had three (one still in our fleet) that were on the spectrum from gold to greenish brown. Not my favorites, but very good at hiding dirt. And since I hate washing cars, that’s a good thing. Of those, our Land Cruiser had a dark brown interior, upholstery, carpeting, dash – everything. That was REALLY good at hiding dirt. I recently saw some new car in a dark purplish-brown, root beer shade that was just stunning. So distinctive it distracted me from what kind of car it was.
Interesting that you found two brown Fords parked next to each other. I always felt that Ford trucks, with their angular lines, look good in brown, whereas RAM trucks, with their big rig styling do not. To my eye, brown would be a welcome addition to the color palette available on most new vehicles, especially trucks and SUVs.
My current vehicle, a Honda Passport, is Black Copper Pearl, which is clearly a dark shade of brown in daylight. I specifically sought that color after driving either black or white cars for nearly 20 years.
I would in a heartbeat but being my age that color on new or used cars was NLA. I always thought the brown/gold Trans Ams were among the best color combos
My dad bought a demonstrator ’69 Impala in the spring or early summer of 1970 that was Burnished Brown metallic. It resembled this one except that it was brown on top without any vinyl and it had full wheel covers instead of rally wheels. I remember he, my brother and I waxed it using original formula Simonize paste wax. Man, that stuff was hard to buff off, but the car was beautiful after we finished.
Brown 62 Ford 2dr Galaxie white convert top. Brown, meh? Perfect parade car, a real slug, 352, 3spd auto. Slightly weird exhaust note because of the dual exhaust without an H pipe.
While we are on the topic of color what the hell was Ford thinking with the color of the 2024 Mustang in the debut video. This blue/gray clay color that I’ve been seeing lately on various vehicles, the new blech.
I did notice the other day while parked overlooking a good size parking lot at the strip mall only two cars out of thirty some cars that weren’t white, black, silver or gray, both were red.
I frequently do a walk at lunch and will attempt to count the colors. It’s usually 80% grayscale
Brown? Yes, and I’d be happy with another brown vehicle in the future.
Mine was a 1972 Ford Ranchero in “Light Ginger Metallic”. I called it “baby poop brown”.
My wife also had one brown Ford: 2015 Explorer in “Kodiak Brown”.
Definitely. My (used) Cortina was Copper Bronze, with a Saddle Tan interior.
I didn’t go looking for a brown one in particular, it kinda found me.
I’d forgotten how much chrome you guys slathered on those old Ford pickups; they might as well have chucked the whole tailgate in the chrome vat! They were much plainer here.
I personally have not owned a brown car, but I would gladly have one if one came along.
My parents did, though. In the 1980s they had a brown 1984 Plymouth Voyager. I believe Chrysler called the color “saddle brown”.
Ah! I forgot about that – my parents had a brown ’84 Voyager too. Theirs was Mink Brown, which was the darker of the two browns that Plymouth offered that year.
Now that’s funny — today we’re lamenting the demise of brown cars, while back in 1984 Plymouth offered not one, but two shades of brown.
I currently own a brown vehicle. A 2015 Ram 1500 in Western brown. The color was also used on the Grand Cherokee Summit and Chrysler 200 under the name Auburn. It’s a beautiful color. I would most definitely own a brown vehicle again. Unfortunately automakers are so averse to taking to many risks with colors.
My issue with brown cars is that most of them didn’t offer a brown interior that picked up on the exterior color. Usually you were stuck with a generic-looking beige or black, both of which bore me.
Near my house the is an early Audi A4 Cabriolet in brown with a tan top. It is really elegant. Another neighbour has a similar car (except it is a V6) in red with a black top. It is also beautiful but the brown one I’d subtle.
I had a few brown(sienna Aussie Chrysler products, they were good did lots of kms in them and a brown Corona that was tough little car but a brown XB falcon soured me on that colour it was a heap of junk worst of several xbs I had.
I always liked the root beer brown 1973 Le Mans Safari we bought in 1982. We needed a family hauler and ended up repainting it, and installing a full 3 seat interior out of parchment MB tex.
400 4 barrel with factory duals and a turbo 400..a great drivetrain!
We kept it until the tranny let go at 170K, sometime in 1992 or so. I still miss it and would buy another brown car if the opportunity presented itself.
Here’s a shot of some GM promotional literature showing the exact car.
Always loved the Lemans version of the Collonade. Most expressive styling I’d say.
Agree!
I’d love to have a nice 1974 Grand Am. A polarizing design, but I really liked them new and still do.
Hadn’t really thought about it before, but I’ve had a bunch of brown cars and brown encompasses a wide range of colors.
A Simca 1204 and BMW Bavaria, both similar, kind of a light tan/beige. A Dodge Colt hatchback, the 8 speed, a dark brown, metallic. A couple of E12 BMWs, one Cashmere, the other Brazil brown, again metallic. And the attached picture, an E39 528it BMW, obviously the wagon or touring in BMW speak. I think they called it Mojave beige or something, automakers get creative in color names. There are probably another couple more, I’ve had a bunch of cars, but I won’t bore you with all of them.
I think at least some of the browns are good colors, but it does seem they really need to be metallic to have some pop to them.
I’ve put 6k miles on this little brown ’66 Rambler in the nearly three years I’ve owned it. The color really matches the character of the car; in it’s day, it was just another car, but now it stands out in the monotone sea of grays and blacks.
I think my Father’s only brown car was a ’73 Ford Ranch Wagon, which I’m guessing was “Ford Ginger Bronze Metallic” since the paint code as the car is long gone. He bought it new at Eustace Merchant Ford in Manassas. As was his habit, he woke up and decided that that day was his day to buy a car, but with some forethought in why his existing Wagon was needing to be replaced…it wasn’t age, he had bought a new ’69 Ford Country Squire in green (we’re of Irish descent through my Father, and many of his early cars were that color, if offered, for instance his ’61 and ’63 Rambler Classic and his ’65 Olds F85 wagon were green. But the ’73 had other firsts, which is one of the reasons he bought it. He’d just bought a pop-top camping trailer earlier that year, and had a hitch added to the Country Squire (we had a car-top camper before he got the trailer) which the guy at the place we bought the camper chided him when he brought the Ranch Wagon to have a hitch added only a month or so after buying the camper. My Father was an impulsive buyer and didn’t always buy items in order that made most sense. The Ranch Wagon was our first wagon with trailer towing package, AM/FM stereo, power locks (but manual windows) and his first car with air conditioning, which was important since we’d moved to Virginia (from Vermont) since buying the Country Squire, and also he wanted to go down to Florida on some of the camping trips (which might have been a bit of a motivation for my sister, who wasn’t into camping at the time, since Florida seemed more “exotic” than Virginia for camping). It had medium brown vinyl interior. I think the timeframe he bought it was ripe for “earth” colors like browns, they seem a bit more common now than they’ve been for years, when they fell off the favored color pallet. I really liked the color of the Country Sedan, and even got to drive it even for a portion of the trips to Florida. I “paid” my Father back by doing all the driving during much later trips to visit relatives in the Atlantic states, from our home since ’82 in Central Texas (about 1700 miles each way) for quite a few years (probably ’90 to 2011).
His first car was a ’56 Plymouth Plaza, which he also bought new, but it was a stripper except maybe having a heater…I think it was kind of a “pinkinsh brown” but as he bought it before I was born and traded it in when I was about 3, I don’t remember. His last car, which my family still has was a 2006 Chevrolet Impala in a browninsh beige. It has a tan cloth interior (with a bench seat…which came in really handy when he became handicapped with effects of multiple myleloma in his last years).
My Uncle owned a ’84 Audi 4000, he bought it new, I think it still is one of his favorite cars