Fashion Fever: Motorsport’s Top 10 corporate colour schemes

Alitalia

With that slippery shape and that wailing Ferrari V6 lump mounted amidships, the Lancia Stratos was as futuristic as it was fever. And those striking red-white-and-green stripes of Italian airline Alitalia made it look even better. The shape, the colours and the noise created one of the most evocative machines in competition history, let alone 1970s rallying. The Alitalia colours even made Fiat’s 131, whose slab-sided flanks they later adorned, look cool.

Elf

A household name in French racing circles, closely but not exclusively associated with Gallic drivers and cars, the Elf fuel and oil company’s colours were eye-catchingly simple. The correct blue background (anyone know the Pantone reference?) and that bold-white, lower-case lettering stood out a mile away. Check out a classic Elf Tyrrell 006 from 1973, with the distinctive crash hat of charismatic Frenchman François Cevert poking out from the cockpit, and you’ll know what we mean. 

Gitanes

How lucky for fans of the fabulous Ligier JS11, the car that blitzed the opening two Grands Prix of 1979, that it should be clothed in the ultra-cool blue-and-white corporate colours of Gitanes, the gritty French tobacco firm. And, of course, the evocative 1970s sight of Jacques Laffite or Patrick Depailler puffing on a filterless Gitanes while waiting to go out and qualify makes the brand even more cool. It wasn’t just the JS11 that featured Gitanes branding; it was the default identity of Guy Ligier’s eponymous team for several decades.

Gulf

Nothing sends the needle on the Feverometer past the limiter as fast as the sight of a racing car painted in the powder-blue-and-orange colours of the Gulf Oil Company. For the majority of the Aesthetic Appreciation society, the Gulf-liveried JW Automotive Ford GT40 or Porsche 917K would always come very close to the top, if not the very top, of a list like this, and it’s hard to argue. It’s an identity that has stood the test of time, too; the Prodrive-run Gulf Aston Martin DBR9s caused nostalgic gulps when they appeared in 2009. After all, if king of cool Steve McQueen approved in the early 1970s, who are we to argue?

Jägermeister

Who’d have thought the colours of a German herbal liqueur brand would make for one of the most memorable racing liveries. The stag-antler logo on a brown background, combined with a scratchy font on a lairy orange basecoat, looked fantastic on all manner of single-seaters, sportscars and saloon racers – think March in F1, Porsche in Group C and BMW in the European Touring Car Championship and you won’t go wrong.

John Player Special

In an era when smoking was perceived, through blissful ignorance, to be safe and motorsport considered lethal – before its modern-day downgrading to dangerous – Imperial Tobacco’s ‘John Player Special’ brand ruled the roost. The sight of Mario Andretti and Ronnie Peterson sliding their black-and-gold Lotus 79s on huge, tortured Goodyear slicks, Cosworth DFV V8s on full song, is as iconic as it comes. And the same applies to Emerson Fittipaldi in a 72 and Ayrton Senna in a 97T, too.

Martini

Running the Gulf livery extremely close for greatest-racing-colours-of-all-time honours, the legendary Martini stripes have made – and continue to make – everything they’ve embellished look fabulous from any angle. Take Lancia’s LC1 and LC2 endurance racers and 037 and Delta World Rally weapons, or Porsche’s 917, 908, 935 and 936 World Sportscar machines, for example. All luscious. And the same is true in Formula 1: the Brabham BT44B of 1975 remains one of the best-looking F1 cars ever assembled, thanks to its unique shape and those stripes. Almost 40 years on, remember the outpouring of excitement when Williams landed Martini backing? It still resonates today.  

Parmalat

Replacing Martini as Brabham’s main backer for 1978, the Italian dairy product giant had big shoes to fill. Turns out it all fitted like an old slipper. The twin-blue stripes on a red BT46 looked ace, but the switch to blue-and-white with the advent of another Gordon Murray classic, the BT49, in 1980 made for an even more memorable look. For proper 1980s F1 cool, the image of Nelson Piquet’s tear-drop-design helmet in the cockpit of a Parmalat Brabham between 1980 and 1984 takes some beating. And you know it works when, as a child, you insist your mother buys Parmalat cartons in the supermarket so you can cut the logos off and stick them to your Scalextric barriers.   

555

Rallying fans of a certain vintage will never forget the sight of Colin McRae at all manner of exuberant angles in a 555-liveried Prodrive Subaru Impreza. To many, it’s as evocative a WRC partnership as Sandro Munari in an Alitalia Lancia Stratos or Henri Toivonen in a Martini Lancia Delta S4. The British American Tobacco brand adorned the Subaru World Rally cars from 1993, at the same time as McRae put himself and the farmers’ pick-up maker from Japan on the map. That blue-and-yellow livery stood out a mile away and spawned endless merchandise and road-car replicas among the ‘Scooby’ cognoscenti. 

Warsteiner

‘Eine königin unter den bieren’ claimed the German ale producer. And it was certainly a king among racing car paintjobs, too. The black-and-gold colours looked mighty on Arrows’ F1 cars for several seasons. It’s funny how a great colour scheme can mask the poor performance of a car – the adage ‘if it looks quick it usually is’ doesn’t apply in the case of a Warsteiner Arrows. The scratchy-font beer brand later appeared on the works BMW E30 M3 touring cars, but was overshadowed by the superb BMW Motorsport corporate stripes.

Other memorable motorsport colour schemes

7-UP, BASF, Bastos, Blaupunkt, Budweiser, Gold Leaf, Gösser Beer, Hawaiian Tropic, Kouros, L&M, Marlboro, Miller, Pennzoil, Quaker State, Repsol, Rothmans, Silk Cut, Skoal Bandit, STP, Texaco, UOP, Yardley.

Images courtesy of LAT