British Racing Green

[orangecurry]

just spotted this for sale (no connection etc)....

1989 BMW 3 SERIES 325i Motorsport Saloon Special Eds,
92,000 miles, . In British Racing Green....

...........was that really a BMW colour?

[c76jon]

i know they used it on e36 m3gt model

john

[Simon]

Doubt it, probably something the owner made up, it's probably a malachite green 325i saloon with an is lip spoiler!

[keith52]

British Racing Green i believe is a colour used from way back ( early 60's) on the now non existant groups of companies which later formed British Leyland

[Hyperion]

thats a cool colour. espcially on a Jag. the e30 most probaly has malachite green, or it has been resprayed. either way its a cool colour

[orangecurry]

British Racing Green i believe is a colour used from way back ( early 60's) on the now non existant groups of companies which later formed British Leyland

it comes from a lot further back than that; around 1900 - when cars first started racing, and the first governing body was formed, a colour was allocated to each participating country
green to the UK, blue to France, red to the USA, yellow to Belgium and white for Germany

[Rich_W]

green to the UK, blue to France, red to the USA, yellow to Belgium and white for Germany

I wonder what colour Italy was?

[orangecurry]

no colour... no italian cars!

*sorry I should have said '...then', as racing Fiats appeared just after? 1905?

[kidsinister]

I had a Rover 214SEi in Metallic British Racing Green; only good thing about about the whole car...

[keith52]

Thanks for the info, i've had a couple of Triumph's in that colour, really nice imo

[orangecurry]

I've been searching the internet for when/why Italy adopted red. Here is the only thing I've found so far.

......Italy, for example, wanted to be blue, its national sporting colour (it should be noted that the colours of the Italian flag, green, white & red were not chosen by Italians, but by a Frenchman, Napolean Boneparte). France had taken blue already though and weren't giving it up. So they took red as a second choice, despite the fact the red had already been used by the United States. White was Germany's colour, although Japan would adopt it later. Germany was later to adopt the silver look but that was coincidence as the Mercedes and Auto Unions weren't painted to save weight.

British cars have always tended to be green. Rob Walker once had some fast explaining to do at a German Grand Prix why his dark blue Coopers weren't green. The explanation he barely got away with was the dark blue represented Scotland. Orange was used by Bruce McLaren for his cars because he liked the colour, not because it was New Zealand's (which would surely be all black?). The first Brabhams were a powder blue before later adopting Australia's national sporting colours of Green and Gold. Lotus were putting yellow stripes on their green cars further confusing the issue. Canada had an interesting scheme featuring red, white and black.

But there were never any real hard and fast rules about national colours, at least not consistent ones.