What ever happened to simple race car liveries?

Appleseed said:

They need to ask: What would John Player Special do?

Those are actually why "Bandit" Trans-Ams are the color they are.  Pontiac came out with the JPS paint scheme the year before, '76.

My crown vic beater :)

In reply to Lof8 - Andy :

Petty Blue, kinda? And, yeah, looks clean. 

David S. Wallens said:

In reply to Lof8 - Andy :

Petty Blue, kinda? And, yeah, looks clean. 

haha!  Thats the look I was going for and as close as I could get at the Lowe's paint selection wall.  My wife and I rolled it on with house rollers and brushes :)  Petty was my favorite as a kid!

Lof8 - Andy said:

My crown vic beater :)

It needs an STP sticker.  

SSpiffy said:

As a flagger, what I want to see is something in a large, simple font, with a wide stroke, and good contrast with the background color. If I can't read it as you go by 100 feet away at speed, it does me no good.

I have this thought about commercial vehicles I see out on the street.  If I can't read the name of the company or the website or phone number printed on the side of your truck, it's wasted advertising.

In reply to Lof8 - Andy :

Very cool. Did you also do the mustache? 

My race cars all have simple liveries but that's mostly because I'm cheap.

In reply to stafford1500 :

A classic. 

My son Scott's Spec E46...

Famed artist/sculptor Alexander Calder styled a 3.0 CSL for LeMans that Sam Posey put on the pole in class. They were leading the class and 5th overall when they had a driveline failure.  BMW still has their first "Art Car".   This is our authorized tribute... all paint, no wrap.  Mike Joy

TIL:  Mike Joy peruses the GRM forum.  

Not calling Brumos' legendary white with red and blue stripes livery as busy, but it was a deliberate choice by Peter Gregg to help the car stand out in the era of black and white photography.

With the current sponsor environment, a car (as a rolling billboard) now has to meet every individual sponsor's requirement.  Your primary sponsor likes a navy blue and silver scheme, but 2 of your associate sponsors like orange and pink.  Want the money?  Make it work.  

In reply to jmabarone :

All the cool kids hang out here, right? 

At a recent event, the starter relayed a message to me: Timing and scoring says thank you for the large numbers. 

And some of my influences:

To make the meatballs work, personally, I think you have to go big. 

Sometimes simple works so well.

Sorry funny/sad is that I'm also considering some new numbers for the Miata. I can picture it in my head and just need to make it happen. 

Loved the Monza!  If you can find one, there are excellent race-converted chassis for the era.  With more backing from GM they could have chased some championships... but the Comaro... :(

In reply to cgrace12 :

FWIW, my parents had a Starfire–silver over red, V6, a five-speed and those body-color mags. 

Old school livery works all the way around for me. And apparently timing and scoring prefers it for ease of recognition and since my only sponsors are my inflation riddled retirement fund and social insecurity checks, I'll keep mine simple and cheap. Magnetic numbers in contrasting colors to the car's colors and whatever class designation is appropriate for the car and event. Cheap effective and if i bend the car, they peel off and can be reused if and when the car is repaired. You pays your money and takes your choice...every dollar i waste on frivolous livery is dollars that could have been spent on entry fees or upgrades to running gear to keep the car under me. So at my level its an easy choice to make.

jmabarone said:

Not calling Brumos' legendary white with red and blue stripes livery as busy, but it was a deliberate choice by Peter Gregg to help the car stand out in the era of black and white photography.

It never occurred to me that older liveries would have been designed to look good in black and white. 
I've barely finished breakfast and I'm already learning stuff today. 

In reply to 1SlowVW :

Not to get too off topic, but as one of the legends goes, Gibson's TV yellow color was designed to make its guitars look "natural" on black and white TV. An actual white guitar would look too white. 

I actually came here because I'm searching for old liveries to get inspiration from for a 92 Celica GT4 model that I'm building. I want it to be red as my old one was, and back in the day I wanted to do a race rep before its diff went, back before wrapping and I pretty much only found Bastos at the time.

I still am struggling to find something I want so am choosing some brands I believe in and doing a very basic plain red body with sponsorship decals. The Budweiser top image really does inspire me and harks back to the Beer and Backy old school liveries I grew up seeing. As I'm into crypto I was also thinking of MicroStrategy and looking for other Red logos to turn white that would go with it. Any help would be appreciated.

Fuel I'm torn between Total and Shell, as both work on red, tyres are Michelin as have the logo and tyreman decals, I like MOMO and the yellow would go well woth the red.

Still undecided as to whether go for diagonal stripes from the 90s or maybe the Toyota GT1 stripes, or BASF BMW M1 rings, or even Zinsser Bin, which I found has a Nascar race but can't find sponsorship decals for reference. As you can tell, a lot of thought is going into this build.

And following on from the original Carlos Sainz senior who gave his name to the car, I want Carlos Sainz name to adorn it, but maybe a Ferrari logo next to the Smooth Operator's name,  hinting to Sainz junior.

Thanks for all the articles relating to race car liveries...p.s. I'll be going for Meatballs too.

Here's my old Celica with "sponsor decals" in back window, SPAX and EBC as I had that suspension and brakes, didn't believe in having stickers of something that wasn't on the car. Also had number 07 in the top of the window as is my lucky number and I owned the car in 2007

And a version I made in Forza Horizon 4

Welcome to the forum and, yes, so much goes with red: white, black, silver, yellow, etc. 

In reply to David S. Wallens :

Thank you for the welcome.

I'll be sure to update with pics once complete. Still undecided.

Watching the Goodwood Members Meeting to get some ideas too