Originally posted by TheStranger
Wow, nice car (I HAVE seen it before, but never knew you designed it)! What is/was "Dallas" anyway?
As I've mentioned this before, I've rather lazily copied it here! A brand called 'Dallas' had been registered as a cigarette and a soft drink by a sister company in the same group as the magazine I was with at the time,
Grand Prix International. There were some unusual things going on at the time... er, not sure how much I can say. I'll keep some back for other times, I think, but suffice to say that GPI were involved with Rothmans in a big way, and through that link came the GPI-'sponsored' 1000kms races in the UK. That was all paid for by Rothmans, as was the magazine's 'sponsorship' of the British S2000 championship.
Through that link we got to know David Sutherland quite well, and when he paid for a seat with Kremer for '84 he came to us. In a nutshell, he didn't want to be obviously seen as a pay-driver in a virgin white car, so we agreed to pay him 3 grand for Silverstone - for the whole car! By the end of the weekend it was extended to Le Mans and Brands. That's how using Dallas came about, and essentially I had a free hand so I went ahead and did the lot; the 956, patches for overalls etc, and David's helmet too.
As an amusing aside, I'd arranged for Doug Eyre to go over to Kremer's in order to oversee the application of the scheme on the car and once there he rang to tell me that when Erwin and Manfred first saw the design they said it was the best livery they'd ever had on one of their cars, and got so excited that they immediately sent a staffer off to the shops to buy new shirts and trousers for the entire team to match! That was nice.
Prior to that, I designed the livery of the works Alexis FF1600s and the team's transporter in 1975, and later on I designed the colour scheme of the 1982 ATS.
I did a few helmets too. For 1982 I redesigned Jo Gartner's livery, which was using the Austrian red & white on a blue backgound. Basiclly I smartened it up and made it more aggressive-looking and distinctive. It was slightly altered again for '84.
Eddie Jordan asked my to design a livery for Johnny Herbert at the start of '88. He said he'd bung me £50 if I did it quickly. I took the designs back to Silverstone the next day for approval, and after a few mods got the ok. Kenny Acheson then took the design with him to Japan and handed them over to Shoei. They duly lost them, but from what they and Kenny remembered drew it again. The first verion, IIRC, was dayglo yellow/black/white, which was wrong, and the yellow was then changed to red for the next race. They did a pretty good job of recreating my design from their combined memories, and Johnny used it from 1988 up until he joined Stewart, or thereabouts, when he ruined it!. Oh, and needless to say, EJ never paid me my fifty quid...
I did Eliseo Salazar's design for 1987 and then again in 1996 - which he's used, with a couple of slight mods on the way, ever since.
Another simple orange outline/black look, but the blend was striking. A lot better than the 1985 Sebring 962 (all-red car for Wollek/Foyt), although the Valvoline Swap Shop cars were pretty nice.
