Much like how motorsport often influences car purchases themselves, both successful and beloved racing entries often inspire similar modifications, wraps, paints and decals.
There are countless examples of incredibly influential liveries throughout the history of motorsport, from British Racing Green and the racing stripes originally associated with American race cars, to the Subaru Racing yellow-and-blue, the Gulf Racing colours and the John Player Special black-and-gold design.
There are countless examples of designs that have become mainstays of custom decal designs, wraps and paint jobs, often becoming so ubiquitous that it is difficult to remember exactly where they came from.
On the other hand, there have also been a lot of designs that have had the opposite effect, exerting a kind of anti-influence on car design and causing driving enthusiasts to treat them not as something to copy but as a warning about the limits of colour schemes.
Here are some examples of car liveries that have had a rather repellent effect.
Zipping Up Greed
In 1999, British American Tobacco launched the first car of their Formula One team, British American Racing (later BAR Honda, Brawn and now Mercedes), but before they ended up in all sorts of regulatory trouble, their big worry was which livery they wanted to use on their car.
They had narrowed it down to the 555 yellow and blue design most famously used by the Subaru Racing team of that era (and outlived the ban on tobacco sponsorship), and the red and white design of Lucky Stripe.
Naturally, they couldn’t decide and tried to run the two BAR 01 cars of Jacques Villeneuve and Ricardo Zonta with completely separate designs.
The FIA, the governing body for F1, was having none of it and had quite clear rules that stated that outside of car numbers, driver names and nationality flags, both cars have to have identical paint jobs.
This led to the rather infamous zip design, which featured both designs on one side with a zip in the middle.
Asymmetrical car designs have never really been popular, but the sheer clash between the two sides was exceptionally egregious, making for a car that was nearly impossible to love.
It did not help that the team infamously failed to score a single point and was perhaps most famous for two infamous accidents at Eau Rouge during the Belgian Grand Prix.
BAR, and later BAR Honda, eventually stuck with Lucky Strike until they legally couldn’t, but arguably its replacement was even less loved.
Earth Dreams Become Ethical Nightmares
After BAR was purchased outright by engine supplier Honda in 2005, its first year was spent with the red and white Lucky Strike livery before the sponsorship with British American Tobacco ended.
In 2007, however, Honda would take a very different approach to their livery by having the car seemingly sponsored by the planet Earth.
Nicknamed “The Honda Earth Car”, the Honda RA107 was part of a campaign known as My Earth Dream, intended to bring awareness to environmental issues, both inside and outside of motorsport.
The problem was that Honda themselves were rather complicit in it, infamous for using a “fuel burn” tactic in qualifying that took advantage of a loophole in the rather complicated 2007 rules.
This meant that the car that was meant to be environmentally aware was taking part in a very polluting and wasteful tactic to try and gain a competitive advantage.
This, alongside its woeful performance and the ugly askew earth livery, which appeared to completely miss the back third of the car meant that no car in any major motorsport league has attempted to replicate it.
They replaced it in 2008 with a much more subtle version of the design which looked far less like someone stuck a picture of the earth from a search engine and sent it to a custom wrap designer.
A Design Fit For A Lorry
In 1976, the outlandish and unusual Hesketh Racing team were undergoing a turbulent and ultimately terminal period of decline after losing their talismanic star driver James Hunt, which meant they would take anyone going as a title sponsor.
As it turned out, the only two companies interested in putting their name on a team so infamous for its rambunctious playboy antics were tobacco rolling paper company Rizla and Penthouse Magazine.
It was perhaps, therefore, not a surprise that a top-shelf magazine would request an airbrushed painting of a woman on the front of their Hesketh 308D car.
Outside of some extremely obscure privateer entries, some older heavy goods vehicles and the itasha subculture, nothing similar to it has been seen since, in what can only be described as a victory for taste.
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