The Classic Machines

Colors of Racing. Part Four – The British Moss Green.

When the UK joined the Gordon Bennett Cup, all the most popular colors were already taken, even yellow was unavailable since it was given to Belgium. The only option on the table was green and the color actually fit perfectly since the UK was one of the leaders of the industrial revolution in the late 1800s and the beginning of the 1900s and olive green was already a trademark for British trains and farm tractors.

The Brits proved they were not fooling around, the first year they came to the Cup, in 1902, Selwin Edge drove the green Napier 6.5 liter to victory. Actually, the British car was the only one to survive the race, all others broke down along the way.

According to the rules, the winner nation should host the next year’s race and that means for the first time the Gordon Bennett Cup would happen outside France.

The only problem was England had banished car races and the team had to choose somewhere else in the UK.

Ireland was the chosen location for the 1903 edition of the cup and the Irish people couldn’t be more proud of it. Some historians say this race still holds the record of the biggest sports event in Ireland when more than 150.000 attended to see cars crossing the finish line. Even though the home team was beaten by the Germans, the 1903 Cup was considered a spectacular success, and to honor the hosts the British team decided to paint the cars on a darker shade of green, similar to the national Irish Emerald Green.

As time passed by, the UK became a superpower in motorsports and the unofficial “Home of the Formula 1”. Most of the teams that disputed the 2019 F1 season have their headquarters in England. Since the 1960s, every year dozens of young drivers flock to the old island hoping to climb all the way to the top of the sports pyramid. Pretty ironic for a country that had banished car races in the early 1900s.

Some of the most iconic British automakers, wearing the “Moss Green” on their cars, contributed to build this heritage.

These automakers, at some point, went through some serious financial turmoil and were forced to sell the brands to foreign companies. Fortunately, the new owners are trying as much as possible to keep the legacy alive and very often we can have the satisfaction of watching them competing on the most prestigious races around the World. Here I will try to talk about the achievements of four iconic British automakers.

Bentley

The super luxurious brand was born in 1919, in Cricklewood, North London and it has been racing ever since.

The company’s founder, Walter Owen Bentley, attended Le Mans’s inaugural race in 1923 and he was very skeptical about the idea of endurance competition: “I think the whole thing’s crazy,” he declared. “Nobody will finish. Cars aren’t designed to stand that sort of strain for 24 hours.

The 1924 Le Mans-winning team pose for a photo with WO Bentley in the middle with drivers Frank Clement, left and John Duff and the 3 Litter Bentley
in the background

Nevertheless, just a year later, Bentley had put together a fine race team that leads his car to the podium of the 1924 Le Mans edition. Bentley’s victory turned out to be an epic event considering that the automaker with 1 year in business had beaten the most traditional brands in the most traditional auto race.

The 1930 Le Mans winner, 4.5 litter, supercharger Bentley

The team would win Le Mans again in 1927, 1928, 1929, and 1930. The 1930 edition will always be remembered by the brutal battle against the 7 litter “Kompressor” Mercedes-Benz.

Jumping to modern times, in 1998 the Volkswagen Group acquired Bentley and it didn’t take long for them to push the brand back to the race tracks.

In 2003, Bentley was once again at Le Mans, with a 1-2 victory. The cars were painted in Moss Green and wearing the same numbers (7 and 8) as the original winners of 1924.

The new car was powered by a twin-turbo Audi V8 engine, producing 600 HP.

Jaguar

Jaguar is another fairly young British automaker, founded in 1922 in Whitley, Coventry, England and also has a solid tradition in motorsport.

Le Mans was and still is the natural target for any brand which wants to “win on Sunday and sell on Monday”. Race still is one of the most important in the world and consequently a fantastic showroom for the automakers. Jaguar won there for the first time in 1951 with the legendary XK-120C (“C” stands for competition), the car was equipped with a 3.4-liter twin-cam, straight 6 engine producing between 160 and 180 bhp and a more aerodynamic body than the regular production XK-120. In the early 1950s, the competitors were swiftly changing their car at Le Mans, from the modified touring models to a more purpose-built sports car.

1951 XK-120 C at a classic car meeting in Brazil, 2014. Photo by The Classic Machines.

Jaguar won Le Mans again in 1953 with a lighter version of the 1951 car and the team also broke the 100mph average speed barrier at the track. To make 1953 even more memorable, all four factory Jaguars finished the race.

The replacement for the XK-120c was nothing less than legendary, the “D Type” was Jaguar’s first car to use a monocoque body, it was lighter and more aerodynamic and obviously faster than the XK, even if it was powered by the same inline 6 engine.

The D Type won Le Mans in 1955, 1956 and 1957. It is well known the car was a superb piece of engineering but some facts outside the Jaguar’s reach may have contributed to those victories.

Le mans 1955

This year everything was all set to an epic battle between Mercedes-Benz and Jaguar but this race will be forever remembered by the most horrific crash in the History of motorsport. On lap 35 Mike Hawthorn pulled his Type D to the right and started to brake in order to get into the pit area, right behind him was the Austin-Healey driven by Lance Macklin who swerved avoiding the collision with Hawthorn’s Jaguar but this maneuver put the Austin on the path of the Mercedes-Benz driven by the Frenchman Levegh. With no time to react, Levegh rear-ended Macklin’s car at 200Km/h catapulting the Mercedes towards the crowd. The car flew over the fence and disintegrated when it hit the ground, throwing large pieces of debris into the packed spectator area killing 84 people plus the driver and injuring 180. The race’s director decided to keep it going despite the carnage. Later on, Mercedes-Benz’s team manager Alfred Neubauer decided to withdrawal the remaining cars from the race as a sign of respect for the victims, even if the team was leading the race at that point.

Mercedes-Benz’s chief engineer Rudolf Uhlenhaut went to the Jaguar pits to ask the team to also call their cars in, Jaguar team manager, Lofty England, declined. With Mercedes out and all the Ferraris broke down, Jaguar easily won the race.

The Le Mans organization tried to explain the reason they decide to keep the race going on: They said if the event was finished, thousands of fans leaving the race track would have clogged the streets, making it impossible for the emergency vehicles to move around.

The 1955 Le Mans winner D Type driven by Hawtorn and Bueb

The tragedy also prompted Mercedes-Benz to completely retire from motorsport until 1989.

Ecurie Ecosse jumps into the D Type #4, towards the victory in 1956.

With the Germans out of the competition, Jaguar scored two more victories in Le Mans with the D Type, in 1956 and 1957.

Raul Boesel at the wheel of the unbeatable XJR 8

Jaguar wouldn’t strike another series of victories again until 1987 when the Brazilian driver Raul Boesel won the Sports Car World Championship driving the V-12 powered XJR 8. That year Jaguar lost Le Mans to Porsche but they won 8 out of 10 races of the season, easily securing the constructor title as well.

Jaguar also won Le Mans in 1988 and 1990. This performance was a gigantic achievement considering the company was on the brink of bankruptcy. During this time Jaguar had to rely on money from sponsors and the cars could no longer wear green.

The Formula 1 years

In 1990 Ford Motor Comp. bought Jaguar and the company went through a major reorganization. In the late 1990s as part of its global marketing operations to promote the British brand, Ford decided to appeal to Jaguar’s rich racing heritage.

In 1999 the Jackie Stewart’s Formula 1 team, “Stewart Grand Prix” was bought and rebranded “Jaguar”. The name and the green color were back on a stunning livery but that was pretty much it, the car was powered by the Ford Cosworth V8 engine and there was not a bit of Jaguar engineering there.

After 4 disappointing seasons (2000 – 2004) Ford pulled the plug and the program was shut down.

E – Formula.

In 2008 Jaguar was sold to Tata Motors and once again the new owners are using racing as a way to promote sales. Since 2016 the brand has been consistently competing in the E – Formula and the green color is (kind of) back, in a pale, turquoise shade.

In the next part of this series, I will talk about two more British brands, Aston Martin and Lotus.

Colours of Racing. Part Three – Bleu de France.

Perhaps no other color in the history of motorsport was more embraced than the French Blue, most of the automakers from the country proudly adopted it for their race cars.

On this chapter, I will talk about a few of them that in one way or another made History

Bugatti

The company was created by Ettore Bugatti, in 1909, it was born with the sole purpose of producing high-performance cars.

Ettore Bugatti was born in Milan, Italy, and his company was originally founded in Molsheim, located in the Alsace, which was part of the German Empire until 1919 but after World War I the region became part of France.

The Type 35 was one of the most successful race cars in the 1920s, it was developed with the help of master engineer and racing driver Jean Chassagne who also drove the car in its debut in 1924 during the Lyon Grand Prix. Type 35 dominated Targa Florio for five years straight from 1925 through 1929.

The race driver Louis Chiron held the most podiums for the team during that time and he was rightfully honored when Bugatti named its second generation of modern supercar after him.

In 1937 edition of Le Mans, the drivers Jean Pierre Wimille and Robert Benoist won the race driving the “avant-garde” Type 57, painted in two different shades of blue.

Veyron and Wimille pose for photos after winning the 1939 Le Mans.

Two years later a supercharged 3.3 liter Type 57 came victorious at Le Mans, Jean Pierre Wimille was once again at the wheel but Robert Benoist was replaced by Pierre Veyron. The odds for Bugatti were dismal in 1939, the company was going through some financial difficulties and they were able to bring only one car to the track, a few spare parts, and not a lot of cash. The 1939 race was the last one before World War II and it wouldn’t happen again for ten years. This emblematic victory will always be the most remembered for the company.

The first supercar unveiled after the brand was bought by Volkswagen in the late 1990s was named after Pierre Veyron. It was the first-ever production car to break the 1000 HP barrier.

Renault

The French automaker is one of the most traditional teams in Formula 1 with more than 20 years on the tracks and two World Championship (2005 and 2006) on its belt but they never seemed to embrace the blue color.

The 2005 R25.
(Photo credit PATRIK STOLLARZ/AFP/Getty Images)

Even the 2005 Season champion car was, let’s say, only half blue.

But was the marriage between Renault and Alpine that produced one of the most popular French sports car, the A 110. From the beginning of the production in 1961 to the end in 1977, the car had a legendary career on World Rally Championship.

A 110 in action during Monte Carlo Rally, 1973

During its time, the A110 proved to be a formidable Rally car, lightweight, fast and reliable, The Alpine team conquered the 1971 and 1973 World Rally Championship.

The car was also a regular on race tracks around the world as well.

In 2017, to celebrate the 50 years of the A110 victories in WRC, Alpine released a modern interpretation of the classic, equipped with a turbocharged 1.8 liter, 4 cylinder Renault engine. Again, blue is a very popular choice of color.

Matra

During the 60s and 70s, Matra enjoyed its pinnacle as a sports car maker and race team. In 1967 the company started competing in Formula 1 and only two years later, Jack Stewart won his first Championship driving the Matra MS80. The team also won the constructor championship.

The only thing missing on this achievement was a French engine because the S80 was equipped with a Ford Cosworth V8.

Without a doubt, the most unforgettable part of a Matra race car is the legendary 3-liter V12 engine, it was born with the sole purpose to compete in Formula 1. The V12 powered most of the Matra F1 cars from 1967 to 1972 and also became the choice of other “Blue” French teams like Ligier, from 1976 to 1979 and Talbot, from 1980 to 1982.

In the 1977 Swedish Gran Prix, Jaques Laffite drove his Ligier JS7 V12 to victory and that race became the first “Triple French” (car, driver, and engine) achievement in Formula 1.

If Matra career in Formula 1 was something less than thrilling, the brand did a lot better in the sports-prototype races.

The V12 MS 670 proved to be an amazing race car and the team won in Le Mans in 1972, 1973, and 1974.

In 1972 the team even managed to finish Le Mans in 1-2 victory with the two cars crossing the finish line almost at the same time, repeating what Ford did in 1966.

The outstanding performance of the MS 670 was enough for Matra to score the Constructors World Championship in 1973 and 1974.

To be fair, race teams like Ligier carried on the “Bleu de France” tradition well into the 1990s but I would like to finish this chapter with this phenomenal campaign of Matra-Simca.

“Absolument fantastique”

Next chapter we will visit the heritage of the British racing “Moss Green”

Colours of Racing. Part Two – The Germans

As you can see in the previous post, some of the national racing colors actually changed hands before becoming traditional, but Germany is the only one to have two choices.

The Silver Arrow or the Simple White?

The color given to German racing teams was white, pure and simple. The traditional powerhouse brands, Mercedes-Benz and Auto-Union (which later became Audi) followed the trend, and later on, Porsche and BMW did the same.

But around the early 1930s, the Germans pushed for a second choice of color, Silver. This option came not as a paint per se but actually as a lack of it. Around this time, some of the official Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union cars started to show up at the tracks completely stripped of paint, proudly showing the bare, polished aluminum body. There are a few theories for the real reason the German teams adopted this “no paint required” procedure.

The most accepted theory goes like this, in the early 1930s, German engineering was able to come up with very powerful engines allied with streamlined, aerodynamic bodies and that made the Mercedes Benz and Auto-Union terrifyingly fast. The International Grand Prix Racing Organization had to put some limits on the speed of those cars and they came up with a clever way to do so; instead of putting limitations on the size of the engines, they decided to put a severe weight limit of 750 kg on all race cars.

With new rules in place, all the players had to build new cars format. At the debut race for the new W-125 Mercedes, in Nurburgring, the car weighed exactly 751Kg, the team had no idea what to remove from it since, as we know, a race car only has what is absolutely essential for its performance. The chief engineer decided to remove the only unnecessary equipment, the white paint, and the primer. The decision brought the W 125 to the allowed 750 Kg and also gave it a menacing, high-tech look. It didn’t take long for Auto-Union to adopt the same idea.

For some people, this story is absolutely true and among them, we have Mr. Alfred Neubauer, Mercedes’ racing program principal during those years, he even wrote about it in his 1958 memoirs. Mercedes Benz itself assures it is the true version of how the German racing cars became Silver.

But for some historians, this is nothing more than a colorful make up a story that became true after being told over and over again throughout the years. There are evidences of German cars in either bare metal body or even painted in silver even before 1934.

For those people, the idea of the cars racing in bare metal bodies was nothing more than the Germans showing off their superiority in the aluminum manufacturing.

Hitler always saw the races as a perfect way to show the world all the technological advances in the German industry in peacetime and the Nazi party became a sponsorship for the teams. Mussolini did the same with Alfa Romeo and Maserati.

In one way or another, the Silver became a tradition for the German race cars.

Porsche also wasn’t ashamed to present his first-ever car in shinning bare aluminum.

And even BMW, which came a big latter to the racing playground, adopted the color.

But as years passed, BMW tried to distance itself from the other German brands on the race track and the white color became the standard for their official cars.

A powerful statement.

For the old school aficionados, like myself, the first picture that comes to mind when we think about the McLaren F1 team is a car in the red and white Marlboro livery. Under those colors legends like Fittipaldi, Hunt, Lauda e Senna became World Champions.

The 1984 World Champion Niki Lauda at the wheel of the Porsche powered McLaren.

In 1995 Mercedes Benz started to supply engines to McLaren and since day one, this partnership was meant to be more than just commercial agreement, the British team became a “semi-official” team for Mercedes, paving the way for their full Formula 1 team in a near future.

In 1997 McLaren replaced its main sponsor, Marlboro, for another tobacco brand, West, and for the first time in 23 years, their cars would be racing in different colors.

The Silver was the color of West tobacco but we all know who the Brits were really pleasing.

In 2010 was the year Mercedes Benz officially came back to Formula 1 as a team and this new generation of the “Silver Arrows” started what is now almost a decade of dominance in the sport.

Colours of Racing. Part One

The modern universe of motorsports holds most of its original core: The talent of the drivers mixed with the technology of the cars and the ancient human need to dare themselves and compete against each other. But there is one key ingredient that came along a little later: The sponsorship.

The money from the sponsorships brought the sport to far corners of the globe, made the financial life of teams a lot easier, and some driver millionaires.

Every square inch of the area must generate revenue.

But, as many other things in life, motorsport was a lot simpler, in the beginning, most of the money came from the manufactures and even from the drivers, as many of them were from wealthy families.

As a result, the cars were “clean” and the only graphics were the numerals and that created a problem, race cars were (as they also are nowadays) very similar in shape. Even if they were built by different automakers, without the sponsor’s liveries over the cars, it would be very hard for the people on the stands to identify them.

In the beginning, the rivalry between the automakers on the race tracks was immensely increased by national pride, so it was common sense to differentiate the teams by their nationality.

Wolseley 90HP at the 1905 edition of the Gordon Bennett Cup.

The auto clubs around the world came up to a color scheme to help to identify the nationality of the cars and it was applied for the first time during the “Gordon Bennet Cup”, a racing event held between 1900 and 1905 and was created by Gordon Bennett Jr, the millionaire owner of the newspaper “The New York Herald”.

This is how the collours were assigned for:

Germany: white, France: blue, USA: red, Belgium: yellow. It took two years for the Brits to join the competition and they didn’t have many choices for the color other than green.

The Rosso Corsa.

Perhaps the most traditional color in motorsports is the “Rosso Corsa” or the “Racing Red” that has become a trademark for the Italian high-performance cars, in and out of the race track, but how did they end up having the color that was intended for the Americans?

By early 1900, the automobile was considered more as a hobby than a necessity, and based on this principle, the aficionados were in constant pursuit of new challenges. The Parisian newspaper “Le Matin” on its January 31st, 1907 edition, published the following challenge: “What needs to be proved today is that as long as a man has a car, he can do anything and go anywhere. Is there anyone who will undertake to travel this summer from Peking to Paris by automobile?“

Around 40 contestants accepted the task but only 5 teams were actually able to ship their cars to Peking There were 3 French teams, one Dutch and one Italian.

The race started in front of the French embassy in Peking on June 10th, 1907. After covering 9,317 miles, the Italian car, driven by the Prince Scipione Borghese and Ettore Guizzardi, was the first one to arrive in Paris, on August 10th, 1907.

The Italian Prince was so confident he would be the winner, he even decided to take a detour from Moscow to St. Petersburg a dinner that was offered in honor of the team, and later headed back to Moscow and rejoined the race.

The car that gave the victory to the Italian team was a 1907 Itala, equipped with 4 cylinders, 7,433 cc (453.6 cu in) able to produce 45 HP and yes, the car was painted in red.

Prince Borghese and Ettore Guizzardi became national heroes and the red Itala was the symbol of the superior Italian engineering. After that victory, every Italian team competing around the world wanted to have their cars associated with the Borghese team.

The Rosso Corsa became the most traditional color in motorsports, actually not only on the track but on the streets as well. For us, gearheads, it hard to picture a classic Ferrari or Alfa Romeo in any other color.

No more red but white and blue.

After the Italians took over the red, another option was presented to the Americans, the white and blue. When we think about this combination only one name comes to mind: Shelby.

The racer/builder Carrol Shelby is, perhaps, the most iconic persona in the American motorsport scenario. He will be forever remembered for making the Ford GT 40 good enough to beat Ferrari 4 times in a roll in Le Mans but even before that, his cars had already defeated the Maranello boys in 1965, in the GT class.

Shelby himself said the biggest achievement in his career was the 1965 GT class Championship and that pretty much made the blue with the white stripes a trademark for his team.

No, it doesn’t get any more bad ass than this.

And the colours, on the other way around, also became legendary.

But before Carrol Shelby, there was another racer/builder who proudly painted his cars in white and blue, his name was Briggs Cunningham.

Born into a very wealthy family, Cunningham started his passion for speed while racing boats and during this period, he also started to show some talent in the engineering field when he created the “Cunningham Downhaul” an aerodynamic innovation to increase the speed of his boat. By 1940s he was already modifying street cars for racing and 10 years later he brought two Cadillacs to compete in Le Mans.

One of them was a slightly modified 1950 Caddy Serie 61 coupe. But was the other Caddy that became a legend, not so much for its performance but for its looks.

Briggs Cunningham even had the help of the Grumman Aircraft Corp.to develop the new body for the Cadillac. The car certainly isn’t pretty but since the panels are aluminum it is a lot lighter than the original Serie 61 and obviously way more aerodynamic; all that paired with the new powerful small-block Cadillac V8, the first American V8 with overhead valves. But the Frenchs were unforgiving with the design and they nicknamed it “Le Monstre”.

On the second lap of the race, Mr. Briggs lost control of the car end got stuck on a sandbank, it took him 30 min to go back to the race.

At the end of the race, the coupe #3 finished in 10th and the le Monstre in 11th.

But his most popular creation is the C-4 Roadster, especially the “R” (racing) version. Between 1951 and 1954, Cunningham pursued the victory of an American car in Le Mans and the C-4 was the best bet, the elegant roadster was equipped with the hottest V8 of its time, the legendary Chrysler Hemi.

At the team’s peak performance, a C-4 won the 12 Hours of Sebring in 1953, and in the same year a C-5 won on class in Le Mans.

In one way or another, the white and blue tradition lives on. There are many small companies that produce replicas of the Shelby cars and this combination of colors is still very popular.

The renewed Shelby-Ford partnership in the early 2000s has brought us the modern interpretation of the Shelby GT Mustang and the old colors scheme is again a winner combination.

In the next post, I will talk about the colors of Germany, France, and Britain.

About “The Classic Machines”

Machines are created with one primary mission: to make our lives easier, but it is inevitable some of them will fulfill other gaps in life. Some machines will provide status, arouse passion and make life not only practical but thrilling.

All this love for the machines can be seen on thousands of blogs and videos that pop-up every day on the internet, I can’t promise this blog will be a lot different or better than the others, I can only promise I will try to express all my admiration not only for cars but for motorcycles, airplane, and some other machines that make life more interesting.

I am the third generation of my family that is involved with cars, as a hobby and professionally as well. All this experience gave some knowledge and lots of memories I would like to share with you.

Rubens Florentino Junior.