Paint Works

Colours on cars have come a long way.

- Daryl Lee

One of the more famous quotes attributed to Henry Ford about the Model T is about buyers being able to have it in any colour they wanted as long as it was black. This is most likely an urban legend because, in the Model T’s long lifespan from 1908 to 1927, it was available in six other colours.

The point we’re trying to make is that colours on cars are hugely important and symbolic.

In the early years of Grand Prix racing (prior to the Second World War), the colours of the cars denoted the team’s country of origin. The French had blue, the Italians red, the British green and the Germans white (which later became silver). Even today, marques still reference those colours. Bugattis are often pictured in blue, Ferraris in red, Bentleys in green and Mercedes-Benz in silver. The colours have become intrinsically tied to brands and none more so than Ferrari and its famed Rosso Corsa (racing red). This colour has since expanded to include other shades of red, such as Rosso Scuderia and Rosso Portofino.

A Ferrari spokesperson did tell us that Maranello has, in recent years, made “a conscious decision regarding launch colours to differentiate between our Sports and GT cars. Certainly, clients have responded well to the increase in availability of different colours and shades”.

And it seems as though this gentle encouragement has worked. We’re a long way away from the early 1990s, when the same Ferrari spokesperson said that almost 90 per cent of cars sold were red. That being said, even in 2019, nearly half of Ferraris sold was in a shade of red. This all goes to show how inextricably linked that colour is to the house of the prancing horse.