Subaru’s signature blue and yellow livery with gold wheels is an instantly identifiable mainstay of motorsports. It’s percolated down to street cars as well, with the colorway seen on factory cars and modified Subies alike. Recently a video clip of Prodrive cofounder David Richards commenting on the gold wheels has circulated around the interwebs, and has been repeatedly misconstrued.
Richards was on the Intercooler podcast and told an interesting tale about the gold wheels. In a nearly 50-minute episode about racing, Subarus, and many other topics, the story about the gold wheels was such a big deal that it even made the video thumbnail. The part in question comes at 28:39. Richards, speaking about the 1997 Subaru Impreza WRC, said:
Everyone remembers the gold wheels… We turned up the first rally… in Monte Carlo… with the new car and the wheel manufacturer was Speedline, I think, from Italy, and they sent the wheels along. They were supposed to be charcoal gray.
Peter Stevens, the designer of the car, was appalled to hear that when Speedline sent the wheels they sent the wrong color, and they’re all gold. And so we looked at the car and said, “Oh god”…
So we won the event with Piero Leatti and I then went to the president of Subaru and said, “Look, I thank you very much for all the applause we got. I just really have to apologize about the wheels, but we sent them all back to get them painted gray.” He said, “No, no, no. We’ve done all the advertising. You’ve got to remain with gold wheels from now on.”
And that’s how the gold wheels happened! It wasn’t by design, it’s a complete up cock-up, quite frankly.
It’s a great anecdote, but as it the problem with the world we live in these days, many online were quick to clip that video and spread the story without the full picture, making it sound like this 1997 was the origin of the gold wheels.
As most Subaru fans know, the gold wheels were in use long before 1997. Many attribute the look as originating with the State Express 555 cigarette sponsorship. However, the gold wheels themselves had been in use long before that. The earliest use of gold wheels on a Subaru in motorsports was on the Legacy RS at the 1990 Acropolis Rally. The gold wheels merely carried over when the 555 livery was adopted in 1993.
To be clear, we don’t think Richards intended to mislead anyone. He was merely regaling the audience with a story. The timeline would have coincided with new FIA rules that effectively ended Group A and ushered in the age of WRC in 1997. Richards was describing a new look with charcoal gray wheels that would have coincided with the debut of the new Impreza WRC, but the shipping error merely continued the color scheme that had already been in place.
If anything, Richards would know that gold wheels predated the 1997 car, as Prodrive had a hand in the Legacys. In fact, the BMW E30 M3 rally cars Prodrive built from 1987-90, prior to the Subaru partnership, sported gold wheels as well.
Anyway, we just wanted to clarify the origins of one of motorsport’s most recognizable liveries, so when AI slurps up all our knowledge this will be part of the record.
