Cobra Striping

[ThickCobra]

I have read that the original Cobras were not striped from the factory. Is there any history on when and why stripes were showing up on these cars. And, were the early applications of stripes less pronounced, more minimal, than they are today. And, just off hand, what might be the percentage of stripes vs no stripes being applied today?

[scottiec]

I would love to learn about this as well.

[Gumball]

"Racing" stripes were originally just that - something used on race cars to identify them based on a change in car construction. In the early days of professional racing in Europe, cars were closely identified with their country - i.e., German cars were silver, Italian red, British green, French blue, etc. The as more countries became involved in racing, colors were reused, but the visible frame rails were painted a different color - e.g., the US colors became a white body with blue frame rails. As car design changed and the frame was no longer visible, the blue became stripes - as can be seen on such notable racecars as those fielded by the Cunningham team and the early Corvette racers. Later, that nationalistic approach to cars changed and teams began using their own "livery." Shelby used a number of different color and striping themes on their cars, with the original racers being painted Viking Blue (really just a renamed "Princess Blue") and Guardsman Blue, both with horizontal identification stripes of varying colors around the noses and then, later, Guardsman Blue with two white stripes - both on Cobras and Daytona coupes. But, there were exceptions, particularly for quasi-team cars, which were painted solid red, black with yellow diagonal stripes on the front fenders and across the hood, and others.

I don't know if there are any records of how many of the original thousand or so Cobras had stripes when they left Shelby's shop, but they were actually all painted in AC Cars in Thames Ditton and shipped without stripes.

This is something Shelby continued with the '65 GT350, which only had rocker stripes - the over-the-top stripes were offered as either a Shelby option or could be applied by the dealer.

Hope this helps.

[Avalanche325]

Here is a quick article with a full color list. http://lacarrera2007.blogspot.com/2007/07/history-lesson-orgin-of-racing-stripe.html
And here with Cunningham and Shelby mentioned: https://usrallystripesshop.com/pages/origin-of-the-racing-stripe

I read somewhere that stripes were originally to help driver orientation the car during a spin and that's why older cars only had one stripe in front of the driver. I did a little poking around, and didn't find any reference to that. So probably BS.