When it comes to buying a car, logically colour plays an important role. Now, a choice that you might believe is so personal, is mainly determined by age or region, a study says.

An AA/ Populus research of 15,860 AA members reveals that the top region for people driving blue cars (25%) is the home region of The Blues (Birmingham City FC), the West Midlands.

With not such an obvious reason, the South, East Anglia, North East and Scotland follow closely behind with 24% driving blue cars.

Regionally the urge to buy a silver car is strongest in London (24%), Wales (23%), East Midlands (21%), Yorkshire and Humberside (23%) and the North West (21%).

According to AA members, one of the attractions of silver is the feeling that it is by far the easiest to keep clean. Some 27% of survey respondents believe it is the colour that shows dirt the least. Gold, yellow, green and white cars were voted the least easy to keep clean.

Age would be the other important factor in car colour choice, although not all end up with the desired one. In fact, only a few drivers own a car of a colour that would be their first choice. One in three 18 to 34 year old drivers would pick a black car if they had a choice but only one in six actually has it. Also, only 13% of 18-34 year olds would pick a silver car, still 22% end up having one.

Silver would be the favourite of the mature driver, being the number one choice of AA members aged 55-64 (23%) and 65 and over (30%). It seems that the desire of having a car the colour you like comes with age, since 25% of 55-64 have a grey one and 31% of those aged 65 or more.

The overall result shows that blue is the colour most drivers would choose for their car if they could, closely followed by silver and black. On the other hand, brown, gold and yellow are the most unlikely choices.

"Whilst blue was the colour more drivers wanted to own, silver clearly tops the league when it comes to the car colour most likely to sell quickly, most fashionable and easiest to keep clean," said AA president Edmund King.