Amphicar Color Breakdown Comparison - What Color is Really the Rarest?

[Mark Richardson]

Over the years I have seen and heard many theories about the rarest color of Amphicars that were produced and sold.

While doing research into the cars sold by Bearcat Motors, I compiled the colors of the 48 cars he sold in 1967 and then looked at the car colors listed in the club website to see if the small Bearcat sampling matched the larger sample of the club. (Note: there are other colors listed on the club website such as yellow, black, and various other shades of blue and green which were omitted in this hasty analysis) Here is what I found.

	Club	Percent	Bearcat	Percent
Red	205	34%	19	40%
White	160	27%	18	38%
Blue	140	23%	10	21%
Green	93	16%	1	1%
Total	598		48

The winner of the prize for being the rarest color Amphicar produced is Green, followed by Blue, White, and the most popular is Red.

One reason I did this was because Bearcat only sold one single Green car, which was 1% of his sales, while the club records show that there are 15% of the total which are Green. Bearcat should have sold 7 Green cars to be consistent with the club numbers, but I know he hated the Green color and would not order them for his dealership stock. I have no idea how that single Green car he sold ever made it to his lot, but it did.

At least the order was the same for both data sets, and provides another look into this topic.

What do you think?
Is there data somewhere that would support another theory?
Let me know what you think in the comment section.

 

[amphi]

Over the years I have seen and heard many theories about the rarest color of Amphicars that were produced and sold.

While doing research into the cars sold by Bearcat Motors, I compiled the colors of the 48 cars he sold in 1967 and then looked at the car colors listed in the club website to see if the small Bearcat sampling matched the larger sample of the club. (Note: there are other colors listed on the club website such as yellow, black, and various other shades of blue and green which were omitted in this hasty analysis) Here is what I found.

	Club	Percent	Bearcat	Percent
Red	205	34%	19	40%
White	160	27%	18	38%
Blue	140	23%	10	21%
Green	93	16%	1	1%
Total	598		48

The winner of the prize for being the rarest color Amphicar produced is Green, followed by Blue, White, and the most popular is Red.

One reason I did this was because Bearcat only sold one single Green car, which was 1% of his sales, while the club records show that there are 15% of the total which are Green. Bearcat should have sold 7 Green cars to be consistent with the club numbers, but I know he hated the Green color and would not order them for his dealership stock. I have no idea how that single Green car he sold ever made it to his lot, but it did.

At least the order was the same for both data sets, and provides another look into this topic.

What do you think?
Is there data somewhere that would support another theory?
Let me know what you think in the comment section.

Nice analysis Mark!

I know of no other data or records to use.

Your conclusion looks solid.

Maybe Gordons has some record of colors for existing customers. Idk


I have owned two cars. My first was red and the last was white.

 

[Mark Richardson]

For the "other" colors on the website, there was one black, one dark green, 6 yellow, 2 dark blue, one orange, and one royal blue. The color choices available when adding your car were open to any shade of blue or green and had to be standardized after I put it all together.

There are obviously cars that may have had a color change as well. I have seen several in person and on the internet that had an original color hidden under another on top. Have no way of figuring that out or whether the black ones had more than the one listed (thanks Paul R).

What a niche larger sample tells us is the overall ranking of popularity of colors. But, as with Bearcat, a dealer preference can impact smaller sets of numbers to skew the results. Interesting that the order did not change in spite of that.

If we knew where more cars were located and what the colors are, this result might change. The data used only represents 16% of the total production. With the white and blue numbers so close, that could change and blue jump into the second spot as most popular.

The VIN code project was a really great idea and the work that was done by John, Allan & Marc valuable and appreciated. I think we need to continue to update and maintain that database and those who did not add their car need to consider it. I know there are more cars out there stashed away.