Henry Ford famously said: "You can have any colour you like as long as it's black." Now, if you go for black, you may find yourself in the red.
Black is the new silver so the industry decrees that you must pay extra for it. Practically every new car that hits the road these days has metallic paint, be it black or silver.
It follows that metallic must be the routine paint run on the factory production lines. So why does the industry persist in classifying this mass production item as an optional extra and charging a hefty bundle of euros for it?
Going through a few price lists at random, we noted:
If you settle for non-metallic you are offered an extremely limited selection: a couple of unattractive colours such as Smudge Brown or Duck Egg Yellow.
Metallic paint should be as standard on cars as the rear view mirror or spare tyre (which is increasingly being replaced by a tin of foam spray).
Making it an optional extra is a throw-back to the bad old days of local assembly in the Republic just after the Second World War when vehicles were put together from imported kits. Then there were long waiting lists for new cars, any car, and the local assemblers did not have to bother too much with quality.
Their paint shops were about the size of domestic garages and the colourings were applied by hand sprays. Leaks, rust and breakdowns were common place.
At one St. Patrick's Day Parade in Dublin an irate motorist managed to sneak his rust-spotted car into the procession from a side street.
He drove unhindered down O'Connell Street and past the saluting stand at the GPO, belching a cloud of exhaust smoke and trailing a banner which proclaimed: "Heap of rubbish assembled by . . ."
And, of course, they charged for optional extras galore. A heater was a hefty additional item. A basic radio was a luxury. Lucky that metallic paint hadn't yet been invented.