Yesterday’s post featured a car with Le Mans racing stripes, so I thought today we’d have ourselves a little exploration into all these stripes and decals on cars. Sometimes, decals are just for decoration or to advertise. Additions like stripes and decals are often used to enhance the look of a vehicle. Sometimes, you’ll see a pin stripe running down the length of a car just near the belt line to accent the shift in plane as the sheet metal work folds up and over at the fenders and transitions into windows at the passenger compartment. Other times, decals are overwrought and just look horrible. But did you know that some stripes and decals actually serve a function?
The little green Mustang featured in the photo is my old 6 cylinder pony. It was painted a color called Electric Green that was only offered for a couple model years. Regardless of whether or not you like the color, this car attracted lots of attention at the gas pump and while driving around. Once, I was trying to park it in a lot near a car show in Des Moines, and the guys at the show waved me into the show grounds and told me to park it for display -mind you, we’re talking about a totally stock V6 Mustang that had a bullet hole/ding in the driver’s side door (which is how I learned the hard way not to do street parking in Minneapolis’ Northside). There was nothing particularly special about this Mustang other than its paint and stripe, but when I was trying to leave that show, I had to shoo away a group of guys who had gathered at my car so I could get it out of the show grounds. Elsewhere, people would frequently ask if it was a custom paint color, and one guy at the grocery store even hit me up for the paint code so he could have his box Chevy painted that same color. I’ve seen other Electric Green Mustangs, but only one other time did I see one with a white rocker panel stripe like mine had. That stripe makes a huge difference in how the green pops and is perceived by viewers. With very vivid colors, I find that a contrasting rocker stripe can really enhance the look of the vehicle and keep the paint from being overwhelming. Of course, in this case, the stripe is purely aesthetic.
Other types of decorative stripes would include what’s called a “hockey stripe”, like what you see in the photo of the red 1973 Mustang convertible. It’s called a hockey stripe because it’s shaped like a hockey stick. Like all other stripes, it can function to distinguish the look of a car from the others around it, but is otherwise decorative.
What about Le Mans stripes though? They’re the ones that run over the top of the car from the front to the back and are also called racing stripes. They came about in the 1952 Le Mans 24 hour race and were used by the Cunningham racing team to distinguish their cars. Often times, racing teams would apply stripes like this to their vehicles to make them easy to spot on the track. Le Mans stripes usually are centered on the hood of the car in a pair with a bit of space between them. They had another function other than identifying the car at a distance, and that was to help the driver aim the vehicle around the track and quickly get back on course after a spin out that could discombobulate the driver.
Stripes also offer a contrast, and were sometimes used to identify a racer’s country of origin. When dealing with the “Code Sportif International” -or the International Sporting Code as we would say, nations were assigned colors for their vehicles. For example, Red was for Italian cars, Green for British, Silver for German, White with blue stripes for the US (see the original mustang concept car from the Ford Museum in the photo) , and red with white stripes for Canada.
You’ve probably seen stripes on street cars though. They can signify a nod to racing heritage, and often people just get them because they look cool. When a car with no performance modifications or high performance elements to it wears racing stripes, they’re called “Go Faster” stripes. It’s kind of a condescending way to say the car is made to look fast but doesn’t have the goods to back it up.
Another thing you’ll see often not just on race cars, but on tuner vehicles -sometimes called “boy racers” which are typically tuned up (or sometimes just made to look like they’re tuned up) imports or small cars -is a grocery style list of parts makers and brand names on the door of the car. Usually, like with the blue Mitsubishi featured in the photo, this denotes what bits and pieces have been added to the vehicle to modify its performance, so you’ll see things like Borla (exhaust), Holley or Edelbrock (carburetors), or some performance tire manufacturers like Pirelli or Yokohama, etc. Sometimes, this just denotes what stickers and decals the owner of the car managed to get their grubby little mitts on.
Some other stripes you may see on cars would be a couple of small stripes on the driver’s side front fender of a car -usually right above the wheel well, like the white Corvette pictured (available for sale at Ellingson Classic Cars, BTW). These were often used when a team had a few cars that were otherwise identical. It made it easy to differentiate which car was which by applying different colored stripes to the fender. It also made the car easier to recognize as it rolled in for a pit stop and served to indicate which side of the vehicle the steering wheel is on.
I was trying to find a picture of a race car with rondels -the round white spots that adorn the hood or doors of a car and usually display that car’s racing number. Rondels will sometimes be referred to as “Meatballs” or “Gumballs” due to their round shape. Sometimes though, they’re square rather than round. The best I could come up with is what’s pictured here, because apparently, I managed to delete a bunch of my car photos when I updated the operating system on my phone -bummer.
You’ve probably seen cars with all kinds of company names plastered all over them -like in NASCAR races. And that’s just straight up advertising for companies that pay to sponsor the driver in exchange for exposure.
Personally, I like it when I see people have added stripes or decals to their cars… even when done in poor taste, because it shows that they’ve made that car their own. I don’t mind “go faster” stripes. To me, it’s all fun. There is, however, something to be said for keeping a car stock, which shows respect for its original design and aesthetics. So, as drivers start to pull their summer cars out of storage for the season, and you start to see them on the streets of wherever you are, we all know a bit more about why some of them look the way they do.
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