The Top 25 Most Iconic Racecar Sponsor Liveries of All Time

Ask most longtime motorsports fans what they think of corporate sponsorship in racing, and odds are favorable that they’ll tell you something along the lines of it’s a cancer on the sport, turning drivers into G-rated, emotionally castrated spokesbots and has priced the journeymen and shadetree mechanics out of all but the lowest echelons of vehicular competition. And they’d be right.

 

However, turning racecars into billboards has also helped the sport progress by helping fund technical innovations, improving its visibility, and creating some truly memorable paint schemes over the years. However, if we had to narrow that list of memorable sponsor liveries down to the 25 most iconic and recognizable, they would be the ones furnished by the following companies.

 

 

 

An oil company sponsoring racecars is pretty much a no-brainer, and Castrol has been doing it for decades. Its GTX motor oil line in particular has been on many tours of duty, particularly here in North America. From IMSA sports cars (with the factory TWR Jaguar program) to NHRA drag racing (with John Force, Pat Austin and the late Gary Ormsby) and numerous series in between, race fans have become quite accustomed to seeing white cars with thick red and green striping.

 

 

 

Among the industries that have sponsored race teams, the tobacco industry was one of the most prolific by a wide margin. And regardless of your views on the industry and its customers, there's no denying that the colors of Rothmans cigarettes are the stuff of legend. These classy colors were applied to many different racecars (and racebikes) over the years, but they are probably most closely associated with the factory Porsche 956 and 962 endurance prototypes of the 1980s.

 

 

 

Falken Tire Corporation has only been around since 1983, not nearly as long as the likes of Pirelli, Michelin or Firestone. But that hasn't prevented the Japanese company from coming up with a killer paint scheme. The aqua in front and blue in back separated by stylized scallops has shown up on American Le Mans Series GT class Ford GTs and Porsche GT3s, as well as countless drift cars.

 

 

 

Tobacco of the smoking variety wasn't the only one whose brand names used to be found on racecars. Chewing tobacco companies have also sponsored cars over the years, but arguably the most recognizable was Skoal Bandit. The easy-to-spot green and white, with the the red-bandana-wearing outlaw mascot on the nose, was used on endurance cars and Indy cars, but was perhaps best known for its appearance in NASCAR, most successfully with driver Harry Gant.

 

 

 

If, in the mid- to late-1980s, someone asked you to name the fastest stock car in the land, you would have pointed to the #9 Coors Ford Thunderbird driven by one Bill Elliott of Dawsonville, Georgia. The stunning red, white and gold colors blasted their way into history by setting what will likely be the fastest official lap ever turned by a NASCAR car, averaging nearly 213 mph in qualifying around the 2.66 mile Talladega Superspeedway in May 1987. Coors branding appeared in other series, using other colors, but it will likely always be tied to "Awesome Bill." 

 

 

 

Not about to let America monopolize the kickass adult beverage paint scheme market, Martini & Rossi has been living it up in various racing categories since 1968. The company's best known livery uses a white base (though silver, green and red have also been used) with red, light blue and dark blue striping. It saw great success on Porsche sports cars and on Lancia rally cars, and while the company is currently an associate sponsor of the Ferrari F1 team, we (and many others) pine to see 007's drink of choice return to being a full-on title sponsor of a team.

 

 

 

You literally can't make a list of iconic racecar paint schemes and omit the immortal sky blue and orange of Gulf Oil. Well, you could omit it, but you'd probably end up in the hospital. Anyway, the Gulf colors have appeared on cars as legendary as the Ford GT40 and Porsche 917, as well as more modern machinery like Aston Martin DBR9 and Lola-Aston Martin LMP. Some things just get better with age, and these two hues, when applied to a racing car, fall into that category.

 

 

 

Sometimes the colors and patterns on a car take a back seat to the actual sponsor logos, while still managing to be instantly recognizable by longtime fans. This was very much the case with Camel cigarettes, because while the cars and motorcycles on which the colors appeared were usually a plain golden yellow, the stylized Camel lettering and silhouetted Dromedary mascot consummated the visual association. We much prefer it to the later multi-colored, rather showy "Smokin' Joes" colors that showed up in NASCAR and NHRA.

 

 

 

Goodwrench - GM's former dealer service and parts brand here in the States (but still used in Canada) - was used on racing Corvettes (both the IMSA GTP of the 1980s and the C5-R GT cars of the late-'90s) and in various stock car series, but it was the late Dale Earnhardt who put the black with silver and red accents colors on the map. From 1988 to his death in the 2001 Daytona 500, the driver nicknamed the Intimidator and his #3 Chevrolets were fan favorites and often found in victory lane.

 

 

 

Though many a beer snob looks down his nose at anything made by Miller Brewing, it's hard to front on the Miller High Life colors that were carried into battle on the flanks of cars competing in a myriad of different disciplines in the late 1980s. Stars like Bobby Allison (NASCAR), Danny Sullivan (Indy car), Jim Busby (IMSA) and Ed McCulloch (NHRA) took home scores of trophies in their mostly gold chariots. We can't help but raise our glasses to the dude that came up with this livery.