Heritage
Liveries
A livery is not a picture of a car. It is a colour system and a set of angles, applied to a shell — which means it can be reproduced exactly, in flat vector, with nothing lost. Each plate below is the stripe geometry of a period competition scheme, drawn to its real proportions, with the palette named and specified. The five plates here are the schemes worn by the current issue, the BMW E36 M3.
Colour and geometry only. No sponsor logotype, wordmark, roundel or emblem is drawn anywhere on this site.
| Band width | Held as a proportion of body height, to scale |
|---|---|
| Rake | Angles measured off period photography, not eyeballed |
| Chips | Every colour named and given a hex value |
| Deliberately absent | Shell outline, glasshouse, wheels, sponsor marks |
| Inclusion | Any scheme of genuine heritage value, tobacco and alcohol sponsorship included |
The five schemes it wore
E36 M3 — the American campaign
Blue and red swept into a forward chevron on white — the works colours restated in an American accent.
E36 M3 — the waving flag
A checkered flag caught mid-ripple. Two-thirds of the shell left empty so the last third can do all the talking.
E36 318i — the STW champion
A magenta disc on a white shell, held forward of centre. The loudest single element in the archive and the most disciplined use of one.
E36 M3 — the blue Eifelblitz
Two white number panels on a mid-blue shell. An endurance livery designed to be read at night, from a distance, by a marshal who has been awake for nineteen hours.
E36 M3 — the white Eifelblitz
A green lower third rising toward the nose, and nothing else. The car that won the Nordschleife outright, dressed like a dealership demonstrator.
A livery plate is published with the issue that car belongs to, not ahead of it. The schemes below are researched and committed; the geometry goes up when the issue does.
| Issue 02 | BMW E30 M3 — five studies |
|---|---|
| Issue 03 | Toyota Supra Mk4 — one study |
| Issue 04 | Nissan Silvia S14 — two studies |
| Issue 05 | Mercedes-Benz 190E Evo II — two studies |
| Issue 06 | Ford Sierra RS500 Cosworth — three studies |
| Issue 07 | Alfa Romeo 155 V6 TI — two studies |
Something handed
down to you
A livery was never a decoration. It was an issue — a thing dispensed by a household to the people who belonged to it. The paint came last, by six hundred years.
The oldest English sense is an allowance: bread, wine, candles, cloth. The Black Book of 1483 sets out what each man was owed for his livery at night — half a loaf, a quart of wine, a gallon of ale. Clothing was simply one more thing on that list, and because it came from one household it was cut and coloured alike. That is the whole of it: the uniform was evidence of the allowance.
The colours came earlier than the word’s modern sense. From the twelfth century a great man’s colours were worn by his soldiers and his followers alike — usually two of them together, combined differently according to rank, and often changed from one year to the next.
Two colours, held in a fixed relationship, read at distance, identifying whose car it is, revised every season. Motorsport did not borrow the word by accident. It is still being used correctly.
livery
|ˈlɪvəri| noun · plural liveries- c. 1300An allowance handed out by a household — “household allowance of any kind (food, provisions, clothing) to retainers or servants.”
- Early 14th century“Distinctive clothing given to servants.” The sense that survives: what you wore was issued to you, and it said whose you were.
- Mid-15th centuryProvender for horses. Now obsolete, except that it left us the livery stable, recorded from 1705, and eventually the American livery vehicle — a car you hire rather than own.
- Modern, chiefly British“An identifying design (as on a vehicle) that designates ownership.”
- Modern“The paint scheme of a vehicle or fleet of vehicles.” The earliest dated example in Wiktionary’s entry is a railway one, from 1961: rolling stock self-coloured in “the standard B.R. maroon livery.”
- LatinliberareTo set free. The same root gives us liberate.
- Old FrenchlivrerTo dispense, to deliver, to hand over.
- Anglo-French, late 13th c.livereAllowance, ration, pay — originally the clothes delivered by a master to his retinue. Old French livree, modern French livrée.
- Middle Englishlivery, livereeWhence the modern English word, unchanged.
Senses and dates after Etymonline, Merriam-Webster and Wiktionary; the 1483 allowance and the twelfth-century colours after Wikipedia. Quoted glosses are the dictionaries’ own wording.
How the plates
are drawn
Each study is built from the scheme's real geometry: band positions as a proportion of body height, rake angles measured off period photography, chevron depths and stripe weights in the same ratio they were sprayed. What is deliberately absent is everything that is not geometry — no shell outline, no glasshouse, no wheels, and no sponsor identification of any kind.
Palettes are given as named chips with hex values so the scheme can be specified, not just admired.
| Reproduced | Colour and stripe geometry only. |
|---|---|
| Not reproduced | Sponsor logotypes, wordmarks, roundels, emblems, numbers and typography. |
| Inclusion | A scheme earns a plate on heritage value alone. Tobacco and alcohol liveries are recorded, because the history does not read correctly without them. |
| Not an endorsement | Recording a period scheme is a historical act. Nothing here advertises a product. |
| On apparel | The plates are our own artwork, and they are made up as garments. What is printed is the colour system, the geometry and the written specification — never a sponsor’s mark, and never a drawing of the car. |
| Ownership | All team names, marques and marks referred to remain the property of their owners. |