Inspiration can strike at any moment and come from the most unique of places. This is part of what makes car detailing so special; a vehicle is as much an expression of its owner as it is a way of getting around, and people who have wraps, detailing or decals are saying something clear about themselves.
Sometimes this can be relatively subtle, such as the pursuit of perfection that comes from a restomod, the silent performance of a Q-car or understated accessories such as alloy wheels or chrome exhausts.
In other cases, it can be far more vibrant, outlandish and expressive, something that has become far easier with better wrapping technology, skilled detailers and painters.
However, some liveries have become particularly popular and emulated, and with that in mind, here are just a few examples of the most copied car wrap designs and why they have become so popular.
Subaru World Rally Team
Often known as the Impreza WRC racing colours because of just how often it is found on Impreza and Legacy cars, what makes this particular colour scheme so memorable and notable is just how quickly it was everywhere.
The Subaru racing colours, famously found on the World Rally Championship winning cars of Colin McRae, Richard Burns (despite being perhaps better known as a Mitsubishi driver), and Petter Solberg), were originally the colours of their main title sponsor, State Express 555.
As with other tobacco-based liveries, the car manufacturer largely got around it by calling their rally car the Impreza 555 in 1993, but even as the British American Tobacco brand focused more on their Formula One efforts, Subaru kept the colour scheme until they withdrew from the WRC in 2008 as a result of the global financial crisis.
Even that was not enough to truly end the legacy, as Subaru technical partner Vermont SportsCar continues to use the design for Rally America, hill climbs and rallycross competitions, whilst owners clubs are filled with a wash of midnight blue and yellow with gold alloys.
Gulf Racing Colours
Outside of national colours, one of the single longest-running car liveries ever is the famous blue and orange of the many Gulf Racing teams that have emerged over the years, although what is most fascinating is that the Gulf Racing colours are not the colours of the Gulf Oil Company that sponsors them.
Gulf Oil, now part of Chevron but part of a range of complex franchising and branding arrangements, uses dark blue and orange as its corporate colours, but when the company partnered with John Wyer for the famous Ford GT40 Le Mans cars, they opted for a brighter powder blue instead.
The design has endured ever since, even technically outliving the original Gulf Oil thanks to a partnership with McLaren, and due to being used for such a wide range of cars, the iconic orange and blue has been replicated on nearly every type of car one could possibly imagine.
Lotus Green/Lotus Black And Gold
Team Lotus, as led by the enigmatic Colin Chapman, was one of the biggest innovators in the history of motoring, particularly when it came to the use of aerodynamics. However, he also was a pioneer when it came to the power of image and iconography.
There are two famous Lotus colour schemes that have not only been replicated by thousands of admirers but also by later revivals of Lotus themselves due to the extremely complex lineage of the team.
The first was a variant on the classic British Racing green, which added a yellow stripe down the middle to set the cars apart from the likes of Aston Martin, Jaguar or the various British Leyland sports car marques.
This was popular enough to be reused by the first revival of Team Lotus in 2010, used under licence by Tony Fernandes (Owner of AirAsia and later owner of fellow British car maker Caterham), with the design striking enough to make people forget how poor the team’s performances were.
However, arguably the most famous livery was the John Player Special, the black and gold scheme that clad the Lotus cars of Ayrton Senna and represented the golden age of Team Lotus between its stumbling beginnings in the 1960s and its extremely bitter end in the 1990s.
Once this look was replaced by the bright yellow Camel liveries, the results began to disappear, at least until the design was brought back when the Renault F1 team (Previously Benetton) became Lotus F1 before it returned to the Renault name in 2016.
Because it is not only clearly a championship style but also relatively understated, it has become extremely popular both in and out of the world of motorsport.
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