Which was the first "original" colour of Ferrari ?

I am sure in painting the F1 car the sponsor has some say, but what do you think happened to Bud and FedEx colors sponsoring Williams cars? They must not be as big as Alliantz (sp)??

Matt

 

Yes that is exactly how I think it goes. Saying that I always (I think now incorrectly?) thought that the Williams were blue and white because that is the BMW colours ...

Anyway my understanding is that every team has their primary sponsor and they have a big say in the colour/paint scheme of the car ... all other sponsors are minor deals.

Marlboro are pouring fncken huge money into Ferrari and MS ... and I guess RB.

Pete's opinion

 

That is what I had thought intially as well. Isnt blue white the colors of compaq? Or HP or whatever?

 

Lets get back to the original question, the original colour for ferrari was yellow

 

There was an article about htis in FML not that long ago. Red. Lots of shades of red.

--Dan

 

Please explain where you get this from. Like I have already said the 815 which is the first car made by Ferrari's team (after Alfa Romeo) was painted red. Where does the yellow come from?

Are you talking about the first Ferrari 125s?, because I also understood they were red.

Pete's curious

 

Let's get this straight.

Ferrari's entered by the factory (Scuderia Ferrari) have always been red in varying shades. When Ferrari ran Alfas in the 30's they were red too. As stated red is the Italian racing colour. I believe the colours did change very early on (190x?) but that was before Ferrari entered any cars.

Originally, Ferrari-entered cars were a darker red. This got a bit lighter over the years and we now have a sort of Marlboro *** packet orange for obvious (financial) reasons. In the Seventies, for reasons that are unclear, they had white strips on the sides around the cockpit.

Ferraris have been entered in F1 in other colours, but not directly by the factory. At the end 1964 NART entered what was effectively the factory cars for Surtees and Bandini in the last couple of races, carrying US white and blue racing colours, because Enzo was in dispute with the Italian federation (I've forgotten the exact reason just at the moment). Quasi-factory cars have also been entered in yellow (for Belgium) in the fifties and sixties with the likes of Paul Frere and Olivier Gendebien driving but again these where, at least in theory, entered by Ecurie Francorchamps and not the factory.

Of course, Ferrari himself raced before setting up his own team. It may be possible that he raced in cars of colours other than red (maybe this is where the yellow comes from in earlier responses in this thread), but these were not cars he entered.

 

Okay penny has dropped ... very funny .

I think he is refering to Enzo Ferrari having jaundice as he was a weak baby when born. Jaundice makes a baby look yellowish. Thus the correct answer to the question as it is, is skin colour or yellowish (if he did infact have jaundice as a baby).

To correct this threads title, it should be:

What was the "original" colour of the first Ferrari?

Pete's slightly amused
ps: If I have jumped to the wrong conclusion then so be it ...

 

Very well said! This is the correct answer to this question.
Clearly some of the replys belong to persons who don't know what they are talking about. The first Ferraris (125, 166) were painted a type of dark red, a bit like Rossa Barchetta. Official Ferrari factory cars were NEVER painted any other colour, apart from some exceptions like the NART entries mentioned above. By the way, this was because of the fact that Enzo was mad at the motorsport federation for not homologating the 250/275 LM cars as a successor to the 250 GTO.

Yellow was the Belgium racing colour of those days, the Belgium importer (Ecurie Francorchamps) entered a number of cars in races only a few years after Ferrari itself was founded. But those were not factory entrants.

@PSK: The Ferrari F1 team was namded Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro from 1997 on instead of 1996. The F310 Schumacher and Irvine drovbe during 1996 were still the "correct red", it became Marlboro red on the F310B from 1997.

 

Nearly all the photos I've seen of restored 1930's Alfas (with the Scuderia Ferrari badge) show a color close to what is now known as Rosso Barchetta, as does the Vettura 815 (in effect, the first Ferrari) and the 166 that won the 1949 LeMans 24 Hours (and from which the Barchetta part of the color's name comes from).

But can someone tell me the difference between Rosso Corsa and Rosso Rubino? To me they look identical.

 

Rubino is ruby red (not as orange as the current Corsa)

The original Ferrari red was Rosso Corsa, unfortunatley it seems to have been getting lighter and contain more orange over the years since the Alfas / 815 /125, the original Rosso Corsa is now of course Rosso Barchetta, I've compared the touch up paint tin (or more the splashes down the side) from a 51/52 225 Sport with a modern 360 in Rosso Barchetta and they are almost identical

 

I just saw an earlier F355 (I think it was a 95) in Rosso Barachetta before Ferrari went to PPG paint and the color was very different. I could not tell if it was Barachetta until I read the paint sticker. Especially since my point of reference has been the 360s and later 355s. It looked darker than a Corsa without the maroon/purple shade. Here's the color of the earlier Alfas:
Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

OK - here is one for the racing historians - and I do not know the answer.

I think we all agree that Scuderia Ferrari cars - that is, cars entered in a race by the Ferrari SpA team - have always been some version of red.

Has there ever been a Scuderia Ferrari car, wearing the SF shields, that was NOT red?

I know of 2 - the F1 cars entered by NART in several races in the 1964-65 period that were white w/ blue stripe. But I believe these cars, even thought they were prepared by Scuderia Ferrari, wore the rectangular NART emblem and not the SF shield. I could be wrong.

The other involves my father's car, 1955 S.II 500 Mondial, 0556(0446)MD, which raced as a Scuderia Ferrari entry, with the SF shields, in the 1955 Grand Prix of Venezuela, but wore French Racing Blue - the color it was originally painted when Ferrari sold it to privateer Francois Picard. It was traded back to Ferrari when it was only a few months old and Scuderia Ferrari entered it in this one race as a team car before it was sold to another privateer, Porfirio Rubirosa.

here's a pic of it in that race (drivers Schell and Castellotti)


I know the practice of having the SF shield only on Team entries eroded pretty quickly - the west coast privateers like Ginther and Von Neumann were wearing them on their cars in the late 50s although in non-FIA events - as did the country/color practice when the sponsors got into the picture . . .

 

Sorry, I´m hijacking the thread again, but i want to say something about that stuff of "Marlboro red" and the Italian traditions going down the toilet. This is what I´ve heard:

As fas as I know, the "correct" red was changed in 1992 (I think) due to technical reasons (the original red looked darker in TV than it really is). This has nothing to do with Marlboro sponsorship and if you look carefully, you will see that the red color of the Marlboro logo wich is painted on the air intake of the F1 cars is a bit darker than the rest of the car. Other cars sponsored by Marlboro are a bit darker than Ferraris too.

Am I correct? Not sure about this.

 

O.K. the color of Ferraris changed during the 92 through 96 season. If you go to the following page:
http://www.barchetta.cc/english/all.ferraris/summary/ferraris.overview.formula.92.99.htm
You will see that Marlboro has been a sponsor since the 92 car (may be earlier) but it is hard to tell the color of those cars from the small photos. However, I know for a fact that the 95 car, the last year Ferrari had Alessi and Berger, the car looked much darker red. Marlboro was a big sponsor then, but that was the last year for Agip and 1996 was first fyear or Shell as a major sponsor. So perhaps, the red we see today has something to do with Shell's red and not the Marlboro red???? ...cause, imo the Marlboro red is a darker red than the Rosso Scuderia today!

 

From memory Marlboro first sponsored Ferrari in 1984. At the time Enzo would only allow trade sponsors on the car (i.e. those that contributed to the development of Ferraris on road or track). Marlboro's sponsorship was reconciled on the basis that they paid the drivers' wages and thus contributed to the development of the car that way!

Without seeing cars from each year side-by-side, I believe that the red lightened in 1997 (as stated by others). As far as I know Ferrari have never officially confirmed that this was prompted by their Marlboro sponsorship, but that is what is generally believed. That is not to say the current colour is exactly Marlboro red in any case. Since the races have been on TV for a long time before the 1990s I don't think anyone could seriously claim it was to do with appearance on TV.

 

Yes, there was TV before 1992, but maybe they only decided to change the color in 1992. I´ve heard that this decision was made by Luca Montezemolo, who joined Ferrari exactly that year. In any case we cannot trust what we see in photographs as the colour may change from one photo to another, depending on ambient light, type of film and processing, blah, blah, blah.

I don´t know if they changed the color in 1997 due to sponsorship reasons but Marlboro red is darker than "rosso scuderia" so I still don´t know the reason for this change. It looks nice everyway!! And my favourite colour for a Ferrari is "nero Daytona" so I don´t care.

 

It was NEVER Yellow.....Dark Red modern metallic alternative maybe Rosso Rubino ?

I concur with the SF Shield background bieng Yellow, although this was an Enzo 'customisation', original logo belonging to Fracesco Baracca was on a White Background.

Seb

 

Could be worse, they could get sponsored by Petronas with their parrot colors!

Or how about Tide, a nice orange Ferrari? Or a UPS brown? Or IBM blue?

 

My understanding from the excellent recent article on colors in FML is that the mapping between country and color was for the DRIVER, not the manufacturer. Therefore it is easy to imaging that early cars were not red if it had a non-Italian driver.

 

Also, the standard red back in the day, like, in the 60s, was called "rosso cina." It's a little different from today's rosso corsa.

 

Hello all!

The name of ALFA (never write alpha) has nothing to do with the first letter of the greek alphabet. ALFA means Anonima Lombarda Fabrica Automobili (A.L.F.A.) which would translate in "Car Factory of Lombardia Incorporated".

Lombardia is an italian region, an one of the fastest economic growing regions in Europe (the other are in Spain, France and Germany). It is situated in the noth of Italy.

The most important cities of the region is Milan, where Alfa Romeo was born. Do you remember when the word "milano" was in the Alfa Romeo badge?

Even Rome is the political center of Italy, Milano is the economic center.

The Romeo name was added later as a tribute to Nicola Romeo, an engineer that worked for Alfa.

Hope helped!

 

Well then, France rules!