Hi Owen

As a follow up in David Venables "British Racing Green"  chapter one entitled "all a matter of colour" there is a very good explanation
of why British Racing Green.
Cheers
Ed
Saskatoon (dark, cool and 30mm of rain)

P.S. Scott's Hairy Clematis is setting seed so I will collect some and send it to you.  Sorry Mike (SWS) it can not be turned into crisps ;-)


Owen Jenkins wrote:
Adrian,
You are obviously younger than some of us! The fancy colours came with cigarette advertising taking over the sport. Until that time, British racing cars were green, Italian red, German silver or white etc.
 
The famous JPS black and gold Loti were so named after John Player Special ciggies, which came in similarly coloured packets, Marlboro McLarens were similarly painted like the eponymous ciggie packets.  After years of watching fag packets flying round the circuits, ciggie advertising was banned, but the colours still told whose gaspers were behind them.
 
Nowadays the colours are usually determined by the main sponsors: nationality is pretty irrelevant, anyway, as most F1 cars are engineered and made in England, but with foreign money, Ferrari being one of the very few which isn't.
 
Owen.
 
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, July 16, 2012 8:19 PM
Subject: Re: [mogtalk2] the colour green.

BRM's were generally in green. Lotus race and have raced in Black and Gold for a while, were green earlier then green and yellow, have used red and white and all yellow. McLaren are silver and red. Jaguar Le Mans were predominantly White and Purple (silk cut), other colours have been used. Aston Martin cars have raced in a variety of livery. TVR's have raced in loads of different colours. 

Having said that the theme that most have used appears to be Green, although that does preclude the use of other colours.

I suspect dark colours back in the thirties, forties and fifties were easier to produce and cheaper hence lots of black, green and dark blue vehicles until the late fifties and early  60's/ 

Adrian

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