Motor racing’s most iconic liveries (with a Kiwi connection)

It struck me as I read through the comments section on my column last week.

In it I talked about the effect the iconic ‘Shell Racing New Zealand’ sticker and the money ‘The Shell Company’ (as it was universally known at the time) invested in the local motorsport scene had had on me.

I then compared and contrasted my own direct experience of how sponsorship can influence a consumer’s brand choice, with the ‘Wild West’ approach to the subject I have experienced in a subsequent lifetime trying to leverage my knowledge to try and fund my own and other local drivers’ campaigns.

Because it’s a subject I am obviously (still) very passionate about I didn’t pull any punches; using real-world examples to underline the sheer self-interest, nah venality, of some of the decisions made by the high-powered, and (obviously) very well remunerated ‘sales and marketing ‘professionals’ I had the misfortune to deal with.

Not all, obviously, were tarred with the same brush, but sadly, more were than were not.

What struck me after reading the Comments, however, was the passion many of you have for the actual liveries (a flash word for ‘paint jobs’) of cars resulting from sponsorships.

Then, when a quick Google of ‘the 10 most iconic motor racing liveries’ turned up 9,040,000 results in just 0.46 of a second I knew I had a subject for my column this week!

Not surprisingly, Red Bull (arguably a company which knows more about both the role and value of sponsorship in the ‘selling stuff’ scheme of things than almost any other) was the first company Google came up with, a story on its website titled ‘Ten of the most iconic liveries in motorsport, ’ coming up with the following list.

Speaking strictly personally here I think their list is a bit ‘Euro-centric.’ That’s not to say, that I didn’t instantly recognise each one; from the white base/yellow trim HB cigarettes-backed Group B Audi Quattros which took Hannu Mikkola and Stig Blomqvist to consecutive World Rally Championship titles in 1984 and 1985 (#10) through to the powder blue base with contrasting orange stripe of US oil company Gulf Oil (#1); which most fans will associate with the Porsche 917 driven by actor Steve McQueen – as driver Michael Delaney – in the seminal 70s racing movie Le Mans.

In-between was a fascinating mix of pretty much every colour, logo and immediately recognisable combination of same, you or I could imagine.

For a start there is the white base and rich royal blue of the Rothmans cigarette brand (think the late Ayrton Senna’s Williams F1 car) and the white base and light/dark blue and red stripes and oval ‘belt buckle logo of vermouth brand Martini & Rossi, (Group B Rally and Le Mans sports cars).

Then – of course – there is the absolutely distinctive black and gold of Lotus sponsor, John Player cigarettes, the similarly outstanding (as in ‘standing out’) white base with dayglo pink ‘chevron’ of Marlboro (think the matching McLaren MP4/4s of Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost in the late 1980s) and who cannot recall the deep, ‘Subaru’ blue and contrasting yellow 555 logo of the British American Tobacco (BAR) company’s popular Asian cigarette brand best remembered thanks to the other-worldly efforts of the late, great Colin McRae in  ProDrive-built Subaru Impreza WRX.

The Red Bull list also identifies some oddities. The only ‘factory’ car company livery, for instance, that makes the cut is BMW’s white base and red, dark and light blue ‘M’ series one, made famous by the company’s big, brusque, be-winged and blister-guarded 3.0 CSL our own Chris Amon got to drive in rounds of the European Touring Car Championship (alongside regular pilot Hans-Joachim Stuck) in 1973.

Actually, that’s not quite right. It also includes the MV Agusta motorcycle marque, making much of the fact that the bloke who owned the company (Italian nobleman and big-time industrialist) Count Agusta was happy paying all his bills and preferred to run his World Championship-winning bikes in his own ‘red, silver & gold’ colours with nary a petrol, oil, chain or tyre company’s logo to be seen.

Speaking of which, with sponsorship (or, as I’ve referred to in previous columns, ‘faux-sponsorship’ aka ‘adults playing dress-ups’) having such a key role in pretty much every main-stream national-through-international series these says, the sight of a 100% decal-less, appliance white WRC car running in the top 20 in the NZ round several (probably 10-15) years ago, got me wondering.

Initially I figured it was some sort of official ‘course car’ but, no, upon asking around the press room it turned out that it was being driven by some sort of mega-rich owner of a petrochemicals business from Italy or Switzerland who prided himself on his amateur status.

So much so that he was happy both to pay one of the top teams to provide him with a car and a group of mechanics to run it, and to pay the organisers of the WRC the fines they apparently ‘had’ to levy him for not running the necessary series and event windscreen banner and usual cluster of sponsors logos! 

If anything, however, his presence proved just how important it is to have a field of brightly coloured cars with distinctive sponsors’ logos running round in front of you and your eyes for how ever long the race or event lasts.

As much as I think the Red Bull list is a little ‘Euro-centric’ several US-based ones Google found for me included some liveries that I had a vague recollection of but that I’d hardly rate as iconic.

Apple (the computer company) apparently sponsored a Porsche 935 in the 1980s making much of its distinctive rainbow colourway and stylised ‘apple-with-a-chunk-bitten-out-of-it’ logo….

But really. Compared with some of NASCAR’s instantly memorable (STP on any Richard Petty car, Goodwrench with the late, great Dale Earnhardt, DuPont & Jeff Gordon, M&Ms & Kyle Busch, Pennzoil & Joey Logano etc etc paintjobs I don’t think it rates that highly.

I promised, in the headline, or course, to include a ‘Kiwi’ connection, and interestingly enough I don’t have to limit myself – say – to the neon-pink STP livery that made Graham McRae’s Leda LT-27 (GM1) such a stand-out during the heyday of the Tasman Series in the early 1970s.

It’s a little known fact – in fact – that the Lady Wigram Trophy race meeting in Christchurch in 1968 was the first major international motor racing meeting (put on fake Jeremy Clarkson voice) ‘in the world’ to be won by a car wearing the colours of a sponsor rather that those of its country of origin.

Prior to it the Lotus single seaters of race winner Jim Clark and teammate Graham Hill would have been presented in British Racing Green (with contrasting yellow wheels if my first slot car, a Lotus 33 F1 car was anything to go by!)

Lotus owner Colin Chapman had been working on a deal to bring in a commercial ‘naming rights’ sponsor for the better part of the 18 months immediately prior, and so happy was he to seal the deal for the ’68 F1 season that he offered to ‘kick it off’ early with his two team cars contesting the Tasman series.

Jim Clark sealed the deal with a win in that race in his Lotus 49 (see main picture) wearing the new red, white and gold colours of cigarette brand Gold Leaf and Team Lotus, and in Australia a month later, his third Tasman Series title.

So, that’s my first iconic racing car livery with a local connection.

My second – and this is one I simply can’t work out why all the big US and even Euro websites and magazine lists have missed is the simple but utterly memorable and therefore effective Papaya Orange of the Reynolds Aluminum-backed Can-Am McLarens of Bruce McLaren and Denny Hulme.

Sure the orange was a ‘team’ rather than a specific ‘sponsor’ colour but I will forever associate it with what became known at the time as ‘The Bruce & Denny Show;’ from the first – smooth almost delicate M6s of 1967 through the brutish high-wing M8Bs of 1969  and the ‘Batmobile’ M8D (so-called because of the way the rear bodywork rose to encase the rear wing).

Even as the tide turned on the McLaren teams dominance and Gulf came on board as a sponsor, the company was able to retain the orange as its base colour for the last-in-the-line M20, simply added a dark blue contrast to the nose, sides and rear wing element.

The third ‘iconic livery with a Kiwi connection has indeed got to be the eye-searing neon pink of Graham McRae’s Leda GM1. The mercurial McRae ha already won his first Tasman Series title in 1971 behind the wheel of his much-modified but in stark contrast absolutely conservatively liveried, black Crown Lynn-backed McLaren M10B.

A year later he was back, however, in a car – largely – of his own design, the Leda LT27, complete with major backing from high-profile US motorsport personality Andy Granitelli’s STP oil and petroleum additive company.

McRae won his second Tasman Series title behind the wheel of that car in 1972, and his third driving one of his new eponymously-named McRae GM1 models – again with STP as the major sponsor of the bright neon pink car – in 1973.

And yes, I could go on and come up with 7 more iconic motor racing liveries with a Kiwi connection.

For instance, I always liked the Yardley ones Howden Ganley ran on his BRMs then Denny Hulme ran on his McLarens in F1. And I think the Marlboro ‘chevron’ used on successive Holden Commodores by the late, great Peter Brock (with period co-driver Jim Richards providing the key Kiwi link) was out-standing (again, as in standing out).

However, I run the risk here of repeating myself, so instead I’ll stop and hand it over to you.

Remember, we’re talking truly iconic in that the liveries you nominate have to have stood the test of time, and just mentioning the sponsor’s name triggers a picture of the car – or cars – in your head

One I haven’t mentioned but which I wrote about recently and which fits the bill is German liquor brand Jägermeister (with the Kiwi connection provided  by Bruce Miles and the distinctive orange-livery BMW Supertourer he runs in the Archibald’s Historic Touring Car Series here.

Then there is Paul Radisich’s ‘Ford Blue’ BTCC Mondeo in which he won one of his two World Touring Car Cup titles in……and, and, hang on I’ve written more than enough already.

There must be literally hundreds more liveries which have left a big impression on you….so let’s hear about them – and why they resonate with you, in the Comments section below!!