Is Toyota’s 80s and 90s Castrol livery becoming the next Gulf? The Gulf Oil blue and orange gets plastered on everything these days, even cars that never wore those colors originally. Two new race cars mark the third (and fourth) times we’ve seen the red-and-green-on-white Castrol warpaint revived on non-Toyota cars.
This specific Castrol livery was introduced on the Toyota Celica GT-Four ST185 rally car in 1993. It won the WRC championship that year wearing that graphics scheme, and repeated the feat in 1994 in the same outfit. The design was ported over to the world of touring cars on the A80 Supra, which won JGTC in 1997 and 1999.
Now the colorway will return to Japan for the first time in a quarter-century, in partnership with Tein suspensions and decorating Takuma Kamada’s Subaru BRZ. Kamada is competing in the 2025 All-Japan Dirt Trial Championship, a series which Kamada won several times before. It’s may seem odd that the colors don’t appear on a Toyota GR86 instead, but Kamada has been competing in the series with Subarus for over 10 years, winning the series in both a WRX STI and previous-generation BRZ.
If you think seeing the livery on a Subaru is strange, Kamada’s car for the All-Japan Rally Championship is even stranger. He’ll be driving a Skoda Fabia R5 in Castrol colors with co-driver Yuichi Matsumoto for eight rounds this year.
Castrol’s distinct colors were last seen in Japan on the JGTC Supra in 2002. Last year, we saw them on Ford Mustangs in NASCAR and Australia’s V8 Supercars, on a GR Yaris that won the British Rally Championship, as well as a one-off GR86 built for SEMA. What kind of race car will it adorn next?
I am good with it. The Breeze looks good except for the unnecessary and overly large racing wing. Wouldn’t take much to integrate a designed smaller wing like the original Celica GT-Fours had.