Farrell: 'Guy in White Van' at least has some taste in car color

We all know about the Guy in the White Van.

We are often told to be on the lookout for this guy, because he is a kidnapper, a pervert or a man who hauls drugs and people.

I recently read that he is also a fat-shamer.

This summer, an overweight 26-year-old British jogger wrote an open letter to the Guy in the White Van to let him know how uncool it was for him to start singing a "sarcastic rendition of Mika's 'Big Girl (You Are Beautiful)'" when she was just trying to exercise.

Now, I had never heard Mika's "Big Girl (You Are Beautiful)" before, but it was pretty clear that even though this song sounds like it contains a compliment, it does not.

Here is a sample of the lyrics:

"Walks into the room

Feels like a big balloon

I said, 'Hey girls, you are beautiful'

Diet Coke and a pizza please

Diet Coke I'm on my knees

Screaming 'Big girl, you are beautiful'"

Of course the Guy in the White Van would sing something like this, I thought after listening to the song on Spotify. Of course he would. That woman was just trying to get in shape, and the Guy in White Van couldn't let her do it.

The thing I can't figure out about the Guy in the White Van, though, is why he made that car choice. And why isn't there an automatic alert sent out to the Feds whenever a guy buys a white van, the same way it does when a guy checks out "The Anarchist Cookbook" from a public library?

I get the van part. He could live in it if he had to. And he can easily move his candy, guns and hostages around in it. Also "Guy in the White Hybrid" doesn't sound as sinister.

But the color? Way too chic for this one.

For a long time, I've been obsessed by car color choices.

There's a particular car color that I called "Gettysburg Blue" because, as I found in a highly unscientific study, seven out of 10 residents of Gettysburg, Pa., and northwestern Maryland, from 1993 to 2003, seemed to have asked for it.

I had to call it "Gettysburg Blue" because there was no other appropriate modifier for it. This blue wasn't a shade of blue. It wasn't cerulean or navy. Nor was it cornflower. It was simply blue. I imagine that's all it said on the can, too. "Blue."

I drive a white car now, but back when I was married, my husband insisted that the first new car we were buying together be gold. I insisted on silver. He won.

That is, until we went to pick up the car, and he discovered our new car was, in fact, silver -- because sometimes wives make secret phone calls to dealerships from their guest rooms.

In Beaufort County, I've noticed that most cars are typically new and typically white.

For the past few years now, I've imagined this meant we're a particularly classy, sophisticated people. That we're optimists. And we like pristine, modern possessions.

I even got metaphorical about it: The white car is our blank page. It represents a new start, in which we'll take our vitamins, finally write that book and get oil changes exactly when the manufacturer says we should.

Alas, the South Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles doesn't keep track of the color of our cars, which is sad because I wanted to know for sure.

Do Beaufort County drivers choose more white cars than the average American?

I really think we do.

But it turns out we don't. Not exactly, anyway.

The No. 1 selling car color in 2014 across the United States, was and continues to be white, according to Forbes and sales managers I talked to locally.

So Beaufort County is just contributing to the trend.

In my mind, though, we're leading it.

Kim Wells, the sales manager at O.C. Welch Ford Lincoln in Okatie, where white is a top seller, backs up my theory.

"White is where we live," he said. "All you've got to do is look in a parking lot or at the next 10 cars beside you at a stop light to see it. People think it's the coolest color."

Actually, white might literally be the coolest color.

"You know 'MythBusters'? They proved it on that show," said Will Richards, sales manager at Vaden Nissan in Hardeeville.

White cars don't heat up as fast as black cars. If fact, if you let both color cars sit out all day, by mid-afternoon the white car will be 10 degrees cooler. I could certainly see this being a selling point down here.

"Of course with seat coolers, people don't have to worry about that as much," Richards said.

At Stokes Brown Toyota in Beaufort, sales manager Michael Blume said white is also their No. 1 selling color, except there they call it Blizzard Pearl.

"You know, it's usually the least amount of washing. It kind of hides dirt. And it's always been known as a safer car," he said. "It's more visible."

More visible?

Huh.

I wonder if the Guy in the White Van knows this.

Follow columnist and senior editor Liz Farrell at twitter.com/elizfarrell and facebook.com/elizfarrell.

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This story was originally published September 22, 2015 at 5:11 PM with the headline "Farrell: 'Guy in White Van' at least has some taste in car color."