First Picture: The new 2008 Honda livery.....or is it a BMW??

[Giuseppe F1]

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/64887

http://www.autosport.com/gallery/photo.php/id/92980

http://www.autosport.com/gallery/photo.php/id/92982

http://www.autosport.com/gallery/photo.php/id/92973

[Mark]

Looks much better than last years nonsense!

[Giuseppe F1]

Better pictures:

http://www.pitpass.com/fes_php/pitpass_gallery_display.php?fes_gal_id=826

[ASCAR24/7/365.5]

im not sure on it, i like it but teh red looks wierd, it would be far better if they replaced it with green or blue

[Dzeidzei]

Better pictures:

http://www.pitpass.com/fes_php/pitpass_gallery_display.php?fes_gal_id=826

Parts of the new Honda look like they are made of legos :)

[Azumanga Davo]

Im thinking more along the lines of the old BMW Williams.

Although it proves they have commited for the Earth Dreams project, which was a worry for me.

[millencolin]

due to my colourblindness, its gonna be a bitch to tell apart the honda and the bmws as well as toyota and super aguri from a distance... bugger!!!

[harvick#1]

the earth livery looks cool, but the blue and white, gonna get confused real fast with BMW and Honda, oh wait, Honda is in the back of the field anyway :p :

[woody2goody]

Yet again another stupid colour scheme from a supposedly intellectual Formula One team.

Nobody is going to know which cars are which.

They shouldn't be allowed to put a livery on their car if it is not noticeably different to another car from a distance.

There will no doubt be confusion between the honda, toyota, bmw, super aguri, force india and possibly even mclaren in some instances.

After last year, you'd have thought Honda would have come up with something better than this. At least last year's car was distinctive.

[jonny hurlock]

still looks horriablbe, earth sponsorship why? another point they should call it green bwm sauber lookie like. bring back tobacco sponsorship. at least they woundn't have stupid liveries like these.

[woody2goody]

After looking at it again it's not as bad as i thought but will still clash with the BMW Sauber. It would look quite nice if there weren't 10 other cars like it.

[dime3]

From a distance it will clash, but I do like the way that they’ve incorporated the “my earth dream” into a standard F1 livery.

[Osella]

Is anyone else thinking A1GP?...!? That's what is looks like to me.
Honda - Team Earth ;)

[I am evil Homer]

More like "this is costing us the earth and I can't see any rewards...."

It's not a terrible livery just quite dull.

[Bagwan]

You guys have no taste whatsoever .
I like it .

The only part that doesn't flow with the design is that aero thing that looks like a paper shredder attached to the sidepods in the earth dark colours .
It might have been nice to see the design with a contrasting colour background so we might have gotten a better view of the overall shape .

Now , put batteries where the engine would normally sit , and electric motors for each wheel .
That's what the dream should be .

[truefan72]

just horrible. I reslly liked last years color scheme. It took a while to grow on me but it was distinctive and very different. The strong green also was unique. This abomination is just plain bland and is all over the place. They shouldhave kpet the same color scheme from last year and moved forward. Those colours played no impact on their performance last year.

This is by far the ugliest looking car in the field.

[jonny hurlock]

it also looks like if stobart wrc team came into f1 aswell

[Bagwan]

I especially like that proud #17 on the nose .

[gloomyDAY]

Looks good to me! Let's hope it can perform.

[jens]

When I read those posts in this thread, then it automatically reminded me a phrase from ioan. :p :

As I posted in another thread most of the people around here have little knowledge of what F1 is really about, all they know is what color the cars are painted and who drives them. So all they can comment about is the drivers and the livery! :D
:p :

Everyone in their posts has concentrated on the livery here, although as Honda has already shown their new car on the race-track, then probably the more important aspect of that presentation was to acquaint the new colours.

And if I'm going to talk about my impressions about the livery... Well, I don't have actually any notable emotions. Doesn't look weird, unbearable or strange to me. And doesn't bring me into exaltation or enjoyment while seeing in. Just another new solution of putting the colours on the car.

What looks interesting me that I have quite often noticed people saying "ugly" about one or another livery. Actually I can't remember any car that seemed truly ugly to me (although for example 1996 Jordan's "yellow" was clearly too "colourless" or "faded", but ugly isn't the proper word to describe it). As far as there are colours in this world, they only variegate the life. ;) And coming back to earlier quote, then yeah - liveries really are a marginal "problem" if we can call them a "problem" at all. For eyes some colour schemes are more satisfying to see and others not so much, but all in all - that doesn't change anything, does it?

[Osella]

for example 1996 Jordan's "yellow" was clearly too "colourless" or "faded", but ugly isn't the proper word to describe it).... For eyes some colour schemes are more satisfying to see and others not so much, but all in all - that doesn't change anything, does it?

Actually the 1996 Jordan livery was gold, the same colour as Benson & Hedges' cigarette packets due to their sponsorship.

And yes, it does matter. The 1969 Lotus was easily the class of the field, but it was the Gold Leaf sponsorship that was talked about as much as the wings on the suspension. Ferrari are red, they just wouldn't look the same in yellow or white, as they ran in second teams in the 60's. And it makes a difference to the supporters too; Brabham supporters (if there were any by then!) in 1992 were suddenly faced with a decade's worth of white and dark blue being replaced by blue and pink! Are you really going to buy a bright blue and pink t-shirt if the team changes it's colours? So it makes a difference in marketing, merchandising, and the 'feel' of the car.

Any sportscar in Gulf colours suddenly attracts attention, sportscars and rally cars in Martini colours get that extra 'oooh' factor, as it evokes memories of past success and amazing cars.

To my mind, Honda have made a mistake and although you get the impression that the toning-down of the earth livery is indicative of a more single-minded approach to the racing (although not as purposeful as BMW's), it also seems to indicate they they are somewhat giving up on the pretence of their 'green' F1 team too..
It just looks messy, and doesn't really give the immediate impression of a team going places, and I don't think it will do them any favours from a marketing point of view either. Let's hope for them that their odd-looking (Arrows A23-a-like) car delivers them more success than last year, or they might just as well paint the whole car black and leave them in the pits! ;)

[Giuseppe F1]

I dont understand people saying how the team have 'abandoned' their Earth positioning by changing from last years very explicit and very literal 'Earth' car by going with this new livery - theyve merely 'adapted' it and as silly and simple as it may sound, alot of this could bedown to simple logistics.

I recall watching an old video clip over at HondaRacingTV...

...the work involved in applying the 2007 Earth livery, especially when the team reverted to using a 'plastic shrinking' technique to apply the earth graphics later on in the season, was painstaking and would cost the team many, many extra man hours and cost over a season and im sure this was a factor in perhaps going with a 'simpler', less obvious/bold definition of the earth concept this year - livery-wise.

I recall a book I have which tracks the first year/set up of BAR in 1999 and theres a section showing how on the '555' side of the car - the mechanics/graphic guys had to painstakingly line-up, cross reference and manually apply hundereds of star stickers to the livery for each livery application and re-touch after races - imagine all that extra work and cost over a season where say, a Ferrari team would simply have to airbrush the car red and off they go.

The more I see it, actually think the car looks ok and actually pretty funky particularly from this angle which also does a better job than the side-view of showing the 'earth' aspect of the livery over the rear of the car:

http://www.pitpass.com/fes_php/pitpass_gallery_image_display.php


The one thing strangely that I see being an issue going forwards is none other than................Marco Andretti.


If indeed Marco wins the Indy 500 this year, I feel having conquered the Andretti Indy curse, his long expected move into F1 could come sooner rather than later and he could be groomed to replace a retiring Rubens Barrichello from the 2009 season...

...well, with the inevitable media/marketing buzz this will ensue owing to the Andretti name and the long-coveted USA star surely the amount of commercial deals around such a move would be huge, with any potential American companies/US sponsors coming along for the ride wishing to have space on the car.... and how this would work with the Earth concept.

Who knows, maybe it would work fine and any new sponsors resultant from a Honda-Andretti-F1 link up would buy into the Earth concept and opt-out of on car branding as have other blue-chip global companies ala Ray Ban, Universal, Seiko, Fila, Gatorade etc..

[Stuartf12007]

The best part of it is the Red 'H' on the nose otherwise its a crap livery.

[Hawkmoon]

Well, I think it's better than last years livery. But then again, last years was so bad that almost anything would have been an improvement.

Overall I think they've done a decent job of marrying Honda's traditional white/red with the Earth theme. I like the stripes up the nose and the large numbers. At a glance it may be easy to confuse it with the BMW but I doubt there's ever been a season that didn't have a livery clash between two teams.

What's more interesting is the overall shape of the car. The very angular front wing and barge boards look like they've been simply tacked on so that they could present the car. The front wing in particular looks very rudimentary and I it will be on the car come Melbourne.

[Sleeper]

I'm going to be aone in this but I much preferec last years livery, and that was one of the best out there. Theres just too much white on the new car.

[wedge]

Horrible livery! As bad as the Lucky Strike/555 livery!

Last year's was better, it was like the car was sponsored by Google Maps!


There will no doubt be confusion between the honda, toyota, bmw, super aguri, force india and possibly even mclaren in some instances.

Like British Racing Green, white and red are the traditional racing colours of Japan, white being also the original colour for Germany.

[ShiftingGears]

Nice! :up:

[Cozzie]

It seems rather mismatched. I don't hate it, it's just bizzare!

[cy bais]

It seems rather mismatched. I don't hate it, it's just bizzare!

i think so too.

[wmcot]

I think it's alright. Not the best, not the worst and certainly better than last year (although we didn't see much of last year's car on TV except for the brief moments when they were being lapped!) Still, as many have pointed out, the colors are too close to BMW and if Williams goes with the blue and white like last year, things could get really confusing during long camera shots!

[RS]

I guess it looks cleaner than last year but kinda like the earth melted down the side of the car. Overall, I don't like it, nor the "earth dream" thing which I find all a bit poncey. I'd prefer some partnership with a carbon-offset company like Minardi had a few years back or the messages from Dubai printed on the side of the Jordans.

[wmcot]

The problem is that from a distance, the whole earth livery looks like the inside of Mark Webber's helmet from Japan last year! ;)

[BobbyC]

The Renault looks like a Dutch car with Dutch colours -- but it's natural, with Internationale Nederlanden Groep as its sponsor. (I have them for my IRA.)

[Malbec]

I get the distinct impression that someone at Honda looked at last years car and said "thats fine but where's the Honda in that?" to which someone responded by adding a lot of white with a bit of red to keep them happy.

I'm not usually bothered with liveries since I've yet to come across one proven to shave tenths off laptimes but I do wish Honda would abandon the path they've chosen to go down.

BTW Someone raised the point about how long it takes to prepare the cars with the stuck on liveries. I think thats a very good point.

[Speedworx]

I rather like the Honda.

[DimitraF1]

so you start this thread because you cannot understand if its honda or bmw?

[jso1985]

even if it's look better than last year, I still think it looks horrible as at first impression, the earth painted on the car looks actually like barf.

[cy bais]

i can't believe i'm saying this about last year's Honda livery, it's better in that it doesn't confuse me for BMW's livery.

[Civic]

The 1996 Jordan-Peugeot was initially a mustardy yellow, before switching to B&H gold.

The 2008 Honda looks like a Super Aguri from far away.

[DimitraF1]

oi en san to aggouri tou ppinkou

[SGWilko]

The 1996 Jordan-Peugeot was initially a mustardy yellow, before switching to B&H gold.

The 2008 Honda looks like a Super Aguri from far away.

I think it was the other way round. When MB had his crash in the B&H Jordan in Melbourne, I remember it was gold, but they changed to yellow as the gold did not come across at all well on the telly.

IIRC,CMIIAW

[leopard]

gold is expensive, you must not make the whole car in gold.

[WSRfan82]

its better than last seasons but its still the worst livery in f1. white,blue,red and green strips....yuk