How the colour green changed the face of motorcycle racing.

 How the colour green changed the face of motorcycle racing.

 Written by Oran Scully 29.02.25

Daytona Speedway 1969 emerging from the heat haze a brightly coloured motorcycle comes into view, 

a blur of lime green and white a psychedelic paint scheme at high speed its riders chin on its petrol tank, so tight that no light dared escape. 

Artistically this bike, the Kawasaki A7R and its unique painted livery would change the face of motorcycle racing, 

and set a course that would lead to a revolution where the hands of the engineer would be joined to the hands of artistic expression.

Kawasaki A7R 1969                                                                            Author : TOKUMEIGAKARINOAOSHIMA

But just a few years earlier it was a completely different story , with the ubiquitous black racing leather suit on the shoulders of the riders and simple paint scheme on the motorbikes. Motorcycle racing was a blank canvas waiting for some artist to colour it in. 

That artist was the American Rollin Molly Sanders, a design consultant for Kawasaki who managed to convince its executives to repaint their racing machines from their usual standard red to that of an eye jolting lime green colour.

It was a remarkable achievement from a psychological point of view , convincing the Japanese Company to give up their Crimson Red a colour reminiscent of the red armour of elite Akai Ono Samurai of Japan. 

and it was also a stroke of genius in his ability to convince its riders to not only race a bike in the colour green, but also to get them to wear one piece leather suits in the colours of green and white.

Racers are a superstitious lot and green is always considered an unlucky colour in racing.. The addition of a white psychedelic design to that of the lime green may have been a compromise to these superstitions. 

 It also really popped. Kawasaki adopted and refined the colour and patented the name Kawasaki Racing Green for all its bikes ,and in so doing shocked the racing world with the bright paint scheme.

It not only shocked the public it shocked rivals Yamaha , who quickly sought out Sanders to begin fingerpainting on their behalf. 

Soon Yamaha would have its own nature inspired warpaint, that of lemon yellows and tomato reds and with the addition of a black and white track stripe , a sort of abstract chequered flag, the aesthetics of Yamaha's race machines took on a more aggressive meaning 

with echo’s of the yellow and black combinations found on bees cheetahs and snakes, and the scarlet red found in plants and animals warning of danger to any potential predators.

Yamaha OW35K                                                                                                                       Author : Tony Hisgett 

Sanders had done something remarkably avant garde with Kawasaki in 1969 and later with Yamaha. He created an experimental genre taking a racing motorbike and elevating it to a higher level, to that of a piece of abstract art. 

Creating a new aesthetic he went even further than the machines themselves. He designed brightly coloured leather suits and customised helmets for Kawasaki and later Yamaha riders. 

In so doing he created a blueprint for a new visual language for motorbike racing , that would bleed colours into the decade that followed the 1970s.

It could be said that Sanders was an artist that had the unique ability to tell the story of Kawasaki and Yamaha.. Taking what really was a play on their broken narratives he completely reinvented a new aesthetic for these motorcycle companies. 

This new visual literacy was taken on a new journey and proved inspirational for another motorbike manufacturer who wanted to completely change its image , that manufacturer was BMW.

By the end of the 1960s the BMW motorcycle division was in severe decline. Sticking to the old formulas in believing , that the excellence of its engineering was enough to sell their motorcycles. 

They did not entertain the notion that aesthetically their bikes were looking quite antiquated , and it fanned the flames that threatened to consume the division. BMW were metaphorically speaking burnt out. Whilst psychologically speaking management seemed apathetic almost burnt out, its engines certainly were not.

In 1969 BMW produced the R75/5, its sportiest bike yet. While aesthetically it was found wanting , what purred within its heart was a great engine, that would allow it to to challenge its all conquering Japanese rivals. 

In a negatively charged environment there's always the inevitable positively charged response. Behind the doors of BMW Test dept such positivity was buzzing , as hands were put to work on designing a racing boxer for the newly introduced Formula 750cc engines.

What emerged from behind the doors of the workshop was what BMW had been waiting for, a purpose built racing machine. 

Lessons had been learned , as the bike was given a beautiful makeover. The bike's bodywork was painted in the colours of gold, its frame a beautiful metallic green. 

What the test dept had done with the F750 race bike was to show how exciting the BMW brand could be , and what could be done with the new R75/5 engine.

The choice of colours the gold and the green created a new visual literacy that of a 1920s Art Deco style , that would have spoken to BMW's past and remixed it to suit the relaxed 1970s, 

a stroke of paint genius. It showed that BMW could find a way out of its own self imposed exile in the wilderness of antiquity.

BMW F 750                                                                                                                               Author: Bert Verhoeff

But it would not be enough for BMW to start finger painting, it needed a new force of energy. The energy would come from the USA in the form of Bob Lutz VP of Sales for BMW. Lutz convinced the upper echelons of BMW to lose their fears. That it should allow the artistic talent and the engineering talent a free hand. Metamorphically speaking the paintbox should remain open and that all the blueprints should be actively studied.

The arrival of Hans Muth and his eventual appointment as head of design at BMW positively charged the atmosphere of creative freedom. As the summer heat faded Autumn and its eventual successor Winter began to take hold and a strong grip on BMW ancestral home Bavaria, its forests, its mountains, its lakes, painting the entire countryside each successive day with a touch of silver.

Artists have always found inspiration from such effects yet often struggle to replicate it. In his quest to create a paint scheme for the new BMW R90s, 

 Hans Muth began to experiment with paint , to replicate the cold atmosphere of nature, its mists and its fogs in his design studio. Taking his spray gun he creates a two paint colour scheme of silver and black for the machine.

A stroke of creative genius would mean that each R90s would be unique due to the elusive nature of his smoke painting technique because each overspray would be different on each bike. Muth then taught the technique to the painters of the Berlin factory.

What he had done was remarkably creative, a form of individualism in a mass produced format. He had also created a new visual language for BMW. 

The clever integration of black with the silver spoke to its past but the use of the silver showed its transition to the future.

This visual language was taken one step further when the traditional BMW black was replaced by the colour orange . The R90s was a good looking machine but the new combination of silver with orange smoke effect was spectacular , 

echoing the Autumn orange of Bavarian Forests. 

BMW had the world's first superbike championship in its sights so the new colours was christened Daytona Orange. 

1976 was to be BMW's Annus Mirablis , equipping both its American and European squads with the R90s, this beautiful machine went on to win the Daytona 200, and a class win at the IOM TT races , and claimed overall victory in the world superbike championship.

BMW R90S Racer                                                                                                                            Author: PSParrot

Whilst the 70s were more consumer driven than the more innocent 60s , there was still a little bit of innocence left over.  

The colours of nature still held sway , and there was still a wide open space, a looseness and creative freedom. 70s motorcycle racing provided fantastic source material for graphic design, with the most beautifully styled machines, as if designed by the hand of nature. 

The bikes had a simple flow to them, a softness with curvaceous cowlings , and soft jelly mould petrol tanks that could represent the feminine curves found in nature , offered up design inspiration. 

The colours a feast of colours from nature's finest table , from which graphic designers had only to reach out and touch , enabling them to tell a brand's story.

The lime green of Kork Ballington’s Kawasaki , the lemon yellow and tomato reds of Kenny Roberts and Steve Bakers Yamahas, and the rest of the the grid made up of Suzuki's ubiquitous RG500 , 

whose own curvaceous bodywork offered up a canvas a surface , that transformed the art of the graphic designer into that of an artisan baker. or the art of the confectioner. 

Taking inspiration that could be found in the windows of a cakeshop , or a sweetshop, the Suzuki RG500 of French rider Michel Rougerie , dressed in candy striped patterns of orange red and yellow looked delicious, 

so sweet good enough to eat , that it could have metaphorically be seen as the foil wrapping of your favourite chocolate swiss roll.

The GP grids of the 70s seen with the mind's eye could be seen as baked masterpieces. The bikes baked to show their delicious array of colours by their graphic designs, 

thanks to favourable climatic conditions that mirrored that of the long hot summer especially 1976 , led to a ripening period with the secret ingredient of individualism, and the freedom of space. 

All heated by the blue smoky atmosphere created by two stroke engines.

Suzuki RG500                                                                                                                        Author: Rikita

The look of motorcycling and its racing grids began to change in the 80s especially from 84 onwards. 

In contrast to the 70s artistically the bikes endured a cosmetic makeover, which gravitated away from Minimalism and towards a Maximalism aesthetic of excess. 

All the elements that made the GP bikes of the 70s so attractive were slowly taken away.

The bikes bodywork became more masculine more angular. Whereas previously the bikes design had a more eye pleasing feminine quality imbued with more softness and curvaceousness, 

the bikes began to lose their stylish magnesium alloy wheels which gave the bikes an almost jewel like quality, their golden hues a perfect complement to the bikes colours and graphic schemes. 

The bikes had completely lost their unique delicacy and their quite elegance , with the overuse of colour that paid no heed to nature, that did not look to nature for guidance in its application. 

Only one ingredient remained and that was the individualism and the uniqueness of the riders themselves.

Whilst before the broken narratives of bike manufacturers allowed graphic design, the freedom to colour in the storybooks of marques like Kawasaki and Yamaha and Suzuki, 

there now came a reverse in the polarity away from the machine and towards the riders. It is at this point of the story that we see the entrance onto the stage the emergence, of motorcycling’s most colourful partnership that of the artisan Aldo Drudi and the 500 GP rider Graziano Rossi.

Drudi became motorcycle racing's premier storyteller and its colourist, he began to reshape the visual landscape of motorcycling racing grids. 

 Drudi began adding colour to the black and white storyboards of each individual rider. He began to address the excessive use of colour , which had saturated the aesthetic of the bikes and their riders, 

By reducing the colours in his paintbox he began to employ the use of primary colours and the simpler graphics of the 1970s in his works.

By reducing the colours he paradoxically brought out the colourful character of the riders that he worked with. For Graziano Rossi he painted a fairytale Castle rainbows and a suit that resembled a red striped t-shirt like that of a gondolier and a set of jeans just taken out of a wardrobe.

For Kevin Schwantz he created an abstract take on the Texan flag, with a bright yellow starburst . 

Later using colour to evoke emotion he would tell the story of Valentino Rossi. Drudi drew inspiration from the energy of the rider and his personal story and coloured it with the nature inspired palette of the 1970s.

Kevin Schwantz                                                                                                                                     Author: Rikita

Whilst the art cars of BMW became a part of the modern art scene motorcycles were largely ignored. Only one noted group of artists based in Italy were interested in using the machine as its subject matter, the Futurists of the 1920s and 1930s who captured its energy on canvas.

However whilst the motorbike may have been ignored by the art critic and the gallery , in the public gallery of the 1970s it thrived. 

The race tracks gave great freedom for artistic expression from the pens of Sanders, Muth graphic designers and Drudi. Together they blended art , storytelling and fantasy in realised design.

It could be said that they were neo-futurists who continued to be inspired by the energy of the bikes and its riders.

The artistic GP bikes of the 70s may have faded into the mists of time but in my mind I cannot help but see a sculptural feminine flow in the styling of the modern GP bikes especially from 2010 onwards to this day. 

Art is relevant in racing the 2020s, noting the racve bikes of the Pramac Racing team which had the paint brushes and colours of Spanish artist Miquel Caravaca applied to them.

Nostalgia for the past is everywhere exemplified by the new wave custom scene. 

The R Nine introduced by BMW in 2014 has a 1970s race bike style to it , offering customiser’s the ultimate canvas for their fantasies to become reality. 

This all reaffirms the notion that the race bikes of the 1970s were aesthetically superior to that what replaced them in the 1980s.

BMW R nine T                                                                                                            Author: Matti Blume

Their designs were very attractive because they were balanced compositions that spoke to the person's eyes and to a person's imagination drawing a person in like a piece of great art.