Martini Racing

Cars


We’re always interested here in the definitive elements of what makes a car cool. Sometimes it’s that elusive little something – the angle of a raked pillar, the hunkered down detail of a rear end; the air of gracefl poinse with which a particular car corners – that makes us sit up and take note of a car and pick it from the throng of steel on our roads and tracks.

But sometimes, its just really cool stripes.

The latter is certainly the case when it comes to cars which have borne the blue, red and white livery of Martini Racing. More often than not it’s been a Porsche upon which this totemic colourway has been emblazoned. But there are Lancias and Alfas that have at some time or another raced with some sponsorship from the globally recognisable bland of Vermouth.

The branding recalls something essentially European, and the marketing has reflected that. You couldn’t imagine say, a Ford Escort Mexico rocking those colours.

The TV ads in the UK were great too, featuring notable comic performances from the likes of Leonard Rossiter and Joan Collins being extremely sophisticated and European.

If you’re a child of the seventies you may associate Martini with your mum’s drunken mates at parties, and you probably did the ‘all spirits in one glass’ cocktail thing laced with Bianco or Rosso on some pubescent New Year’s Eve.

But if you’ve got a soul sensitive to automotive aesthetics you will at the same time be reminded of Porsche 935s at Le Mans and the 037 Lancia scoring unimaginable air, coated in this ultimate paint jobs.

Not sure how it would look on my Volvo.




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4 Responses to “Martini Racing”

  1. vipertruck99

    you missed the 936 black widow.most amazing car to ever grace the colours….go on pop it in.people need to see it…also what about the hippie 917? it was martini even if not trad colours

  2. Absolutely the coolest livery there has been for racing. I’m definitely in the Lancia camp too, 037 and group B S4 deltas, often with bits of body work hanging off, so classy.

    Red Bull racing totally stole the concept and look too.

  3. The martini racing colours were also put on the focus wrc in the years of colin mcrae

  4. Julian le Maistre

    It was a time when Europe was reuniting for all the right reasons just twenty years after the end of the second world war. Works teams rubbed shoulders with wealthy privateers in a flambouyant, and more hopeful era between countries that had not long ago been at war. Martini was to become the perfect sponsor and summed up the spirit of the age. The film Le Mans starting Steve McQueen was made against this backdrop – the Porsche Le Mans years.

    Porsche return to Le Mans in 2014.