Posted 12 November 2000 - 11:43
A lot of interesting postings on my thread, but most of them handle the situation in the US or that in Europe and Australia in the 60’s, but only very few about Europe in late 40’s or early 50’s, which was my question. The photo of the Cooper 500 is quite interesting, as the Mobil pegasus confirms that advertising obviously was allowed.
Don, shocked about Ferrari and sponsorship? No, not at all, the fact that I’m busy with this “early Ferrari” research does not mean that I’m a Tifosi. The interesting point is that for the 1948/49 Temporada Ferrari sent only one single car to South America, and for 1949/50 – most probably with the financial help of Fernet Branca – the whole Scuderia with 3 cars was present. After that season there was no Temporada works entry, except when the Argentine GP and the 1000 kms became WC events. Probably this means that the Fernet Branca deal was a kind of trial only, as it obviously was never repeated.
Another strange thing is the Carrera Panamerica, an event with really heavy advertising on the cars, even Mercedes-Benz took the chance and placed a giant MB logo on the bonnets of their cars. However, the 1953 Carrera was part of the SCWC, a championship under the control of the FIA, and still there was advertising allowed on the cars.
Besides the ACA, the Automobile Club of Argentina, who bought competitive European race cars and entered them for promising Argentine drivers in the Temporada but also in European races, the second driving force in the Argentinian motor sport scene was YPF, Yacimientos Petroliferos Fiscales, the national state-owned oil monopoly. They worked in close cooperation with the ACA by sponsoring major national events. Believe they invented the event sponsoring in general, where every participating car had to fix such sponsor’s stickers, as this was part of the entry regulations. Earliest photos I have are from 1947, I really wonder whether these YPF stickers can be seen also on cars at pre-war events, but my archive of this period is rather small. There was also organizer sponsorship by YPF for the famous “Gran Premio Internacional” long-distance road races of the 60’s, and also for the Argentine Rallye of the more modern era. Don’t know how the recent takeover by Repsol influenced these activities. Remarkably is that YPF (in the 50’s and 60’s) had no commercial reason for such advertising, as they had the monopoly on fuel and lube oil in Argentina, so one really can call it sponsorship in the original meaning of the word.
Returning to Ferrari, Fernet Branca, and Europe. For sure Ferrari was short of money especially in those early years, so the Fernet Branca deal made sense. Treefaces’s argument about the economic situation in Europe in my opinion not really counts, because if advertising money is spent overseas, why not in the home market or other European countries? And, btw, the golden rule of advertising people is that your budget must be always higher in bad times.
So again the question, what was the reason that race car advertising in Europe in the 40’s and 50’s was more or less absent? I do not believe that no interested advertisers / sponsors could be found, as especially in the booming economy of the 50’s advertising in all forms was practised. If prohibited by FIA, why the rolling billboards of the 1953 Carrera? And if rejected by the teams, why only in Europe and not in South America? Or was it banned by the race organizers, meaning the large automobile clubs?
