Rothmans. Marlboro. John Player Special. The best liveries in motorsports come from cigarette companies, and that holds true even for distinctive paint jobs on street cars. Next time you see a World Rally Blue WRX or STI on gold wheels, you can thank State Express 555 cigarettes.
Subaru’s World Rally Blue comes from, no points for guessing, the colors of Subaru’s race cars. The current Vermont SportsCar-run Subaru Motorsports USA liveries are blue, yellow, and gold, and they harken back to the old Subaru World Rally team colors. Those colors debuted all the way back in 1993, where they adorned the 555 Subaru Legacy RS.
The blue and gold colors aren’t a Subaru original, they’re the colors of State Express 555. Those colors adorned the Legacy and later the Impreza driven by names like Colin McRae and Petter Solberg, which cemented them in history. State Express blue became World Rally Blue, not the other way around.
Even when Subaru stopped working with State Express 555, the colors were too entwined with the brand to give them up. Subaru’s own liveries now run the same blue, yellow, and gold, and the company’s high performance street cars come in World Rally Blue to this day. If they look right with gold wheels, it’s because you’re used to seeing that color combo whipping through rally stages, splattered with dirt and advertising materials for cigarettes. Next time you see a great-looking Subaru, remember to thank the tobacco industry. Wait. Maybe don’t do that, actually.