10 of rallying’s best black liveries

As you can imagine, we quite like black cars here at DirtFish Rally School.

Our fabulous fleet of Subaru WRXs and BRZs all rip up the gravel and hurl the dirt dressed in black – as does our own Josie Rimmer when she takes on ARA rounds like Olympus and Oregon in a race-spec BRZ.

Oddly enough, factory rally cars have rarely run in a black livery. Until now. Congratulations Toyota!

That’s not to say there aren’t exceptions. The much-missed Ken Block, for example, truly Monstered the black color scheme across pretty much everything he drove. But if it’s an All Black approach, you’ve got to head south to see Hayden Paddon’s Hyundai New Zealand i20s.

New Zealand’s no stranger to a black livery; the Kiwis were treated to Valentino Rossi’s stunning matt black Subaru Impreza WRC on the 2006 Rally NZ.

Through Group B, there were semi-official Lancia 037s and, of course, Fabrizio Tabaton’s exquisite Grifone-run Lancia Delta S4 – a car beautiful enough to win the 1986 European title on looks alone.

Ari Vatanen was no stranger to black beauty, the nickname given to the Ford Escort Mk2 he campaigned on various British rallies in the early Eighties. The Flying Finn was also found in another black Ford at the other end of that decade (along with Stig Blomqvist) driving a Texaco-decaled Sierra RS Cosworth.

In terms of factory cars, Saab ran predominantly black 99 liveries for Blomqvist and Per Eklund in the 1970s. More recently, M-Sport Ford ran an uber-cool ‘testing’ livery on the 2011 Rally de France.

Two years on and Citroën was doing the same thing in Alsace. Remember Sébastien Loeb’s celebration dress for what was supposed to be his sign-off WRC round? It ran with the big numbers from his career (led by nine, in terms of titles won), but sadly ended the event upside down.

What’s your favorite? Let us know on social.