How the 70's were the most colourful chapter in motorsport.
How the 70s were the most colourful chapter in motorsport.
Written by Oran Scully 10.12.24
It could be argued that the most colourful chapter in the history of motorsport happened during the 1970's.
The colours of the early 1970's were loud and garish and when painted over an outrageously styled sports car like the Porsche 935 they became even louder.
But just a few years earlier it was a completely different story with the application of the colour white as the default option for the colourisation of all race cars .
Porsche 911 1969 Photo by Wayback machine
In motorsport terms the Summer of 1970 is important because it saw the emergence of artistic endeavours between artists and engineers.
Our story begins in France it is June 1970 and the pit garages of the Le Mans circuit reverberates to the sounds of a Porsche 917 race car.
Emerging from the pitlane the Porsche 917 of the Martini Rossi team caused quite a stir as its bodywork was resplendent in an amazing psychedelic paint scheme of purple and white.
By painting their factory Porsche 917 race car in a psychedelic fashion both designer's had done something to a race car that had never been done before.
It is said that the designer of the Porsche 917 Anatole Lapine was inspired to create the hippie car swirling design after seeing the psychedelic paisley design on the dress of a woman who worked at Porsche.
The Martini Rossi Hippie car Photo by Peter and Laila Flickr
The Hippie 917 Author: Peter and Laila
So fashion was a source of design inspiration for the cars livery but where did Lapine get his idea for the colour combination of purple and green ?
The late 1960s and early 1970s were influenced by nature and Anatole like all designers was influenced by nature too.
This can been seen in the colours chosen for the car with its shade's of purple and green just like flowers that can be found in any garden.
The green and purple colour scheme was a loud combination not unlike the race car itself with it's powerful twelve cylinder engine.
So 1970 was a pivotal year in that it introduced art into motorsport but not all the racing fraternity were so artistically minded.
Soon the hippie car was sold to another race car team and its amazing paintwork was quickly stripped away for new sponsors.
It seemed that many did not see the value of these artistically painted colour scheme's and were slow to encourage the use of the vibrant colours that were emerging from the pen of the artist.
Despite the frowns of some people a new colour exploded from within the confines of the artistic mind that of the colour pink.
This pink colour when heated and then subjected to the fuel of the Hippie Movement created a psychedelic atmosphere all of its own.
At Le Mans 1971 the Hippie cars were no more and it seemed that the plain white colour favoured by Porsche's Ferdiand Piech still held strong.
However although Piech was the master of everything technical Lapine as Porsche Chief Designer had the last word regarding the decoration of the cars.
For the June 1971 Le Mans event one particular car caused an even bigger sensation than the Hippie car of 1970 that car was the Porsche's 917/20 more famously known as The Pink Pig.
The Pink Pig of Zuffenhausen Art on canvas by Artistic Racer.
The 917/20 was an attempt to blend the short tailed 917K and the long tailed 917LH and it led to the creation of the weirdest and rarest of all 917s the infamous Pink Pig of Zuffenhausen.
It was not as pretty as its other sister cars but their was something about the car that appealed to the eye that of an extravagant paint scheme.
Whilst the long tail 917 hippie car of 1970 was created in house at Porsche the 917/20 was a design of the SERA Design Bureau in Paris.
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Lapine was upset with Piech as he had chosen an outside team to design the car and when Lapine saw the Sera designed car in Zuffenhausen he thought that it looked like a pig.
With such aversion to the looks of the car the design team painted the words Rosa Bertha onto the inner bodywork of the car.
What was significant is that they used pink paint to write the words this may have sowed the first seeds for the idea of the pink livery.
So what started as a joke and a bit of creative revenge led to creation of one of the most famous Porsche race cars that ever raced.
Whilst psychedelic art declined after 1972 the creativity of the hippie car designs was not lost on one particular race car driver.
This race car driver who was also an art dealer was so impressed by the psychedelic art being painted on race cars that he was to later start the BMW Art car series but that's for later.
The SHELL Oil company also got in touch with their creative side after seeing the popularity of these artistic cars
As a result SHELL Oil commissioned their own hippie car in its famous signature colour's of red with yellow.
Sponsors also began to realise that the paint schemes were making the cars more famous than the drivers or the machinery within.
Racing cars were transformed into colourful one offs with each graphic design making them look cool.
Yet as in Sven Voelker book Go Faster these design's were barely documented and not preserved.
Instead of the bodywork of these one off artistic design's being preserved their paint was simply stripped away for the next team patrons sponsors.
This was to be the fate of all the Porsche race car with psychedelic art painted on them.
The only race car to survive with its original art was The Pink Pig of Zuffenhausen today you can see this car at the Porsche Museum in Stuttgart Germany.
1975 and it would be BMW and not Porsche that came to recognise the significance of art on a race car.
Earlier we spoke of a race driver that was impressed by the art being painted on Porsche race cars let's discuss this now.
His name was Herve Poulan together with the American artist Alexander Calder they were to create BMW's first Art.
Whilst the hippie cars were not treated as works of art by Porsche BMW saw things differently.
The BMW race division came to see Calder's efforts as a true work of art and so began the BMW Art Car Series.
The BMW Art series actively sought out artists to paint their future race cars and world famous names like Roy Lichenstein and Andy Warhol all eagerly offered their talents to paint these cars.
Calder Art Car Photo by 0032 THDE Wiki Commons
In conclusion the 1970s was one of the most colourful era for motorsport a time when the most memorable race cars were painted upon by individual artists and turned into mobile works of art.
It is an era with an influence that is so strong that it has given inspiration for my own art check out my website www.artisticracer.com to explore more.
The 1970s really was a very colourful period for motorsport where race cars really were just waiting to be coloured in by artists.
What is interesting is that the ubiquitous race car colour of white was an ideal base colour for the artist to paint on.
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