BEST GO-FASTER STRIPES

摘要

Goodness knows what people made of the 3.0 CSL in 1972 when It first took to the streets. The wraparound tricolour stripes alone made the Batmobile more Seventies than Noddy Holder riding a Raleigh Chopper in platform shoes and flares. Ask your parents.Ferrari's 'Challenge Straddle' was in effect a street-legal version of the 360 Challenge racecar, so painting a thick white line over the top did at least have a dash of track-born pedigree. Naturally, you had to pay extra for it - just like on any striped Ferrari since.Good on Dodge for morphing the Viper into a track day weapon. The ACR broke the Laguna Seca lap record for a road legal car with this wingshod special. The offset colour-contrast stripes add a dash more menace to a car that already looks like evil with door mirrors.Some cars provoke fierce debate over the application of a go-faster stripe. But with the latest Ford GT, we're still not quite sure. Does the Le Mans class-winning V6 spaceship wear speed lines quite as handsomely as the 2005 V8 Ford GT - or the classic Sixties GT40?The GT is far from being the only Ford proudly decked out in stripetastic liveries over the years.A Mustang GT350 - whether the latest version or the iconic original - would somehow look naked without them. Plus, having brightly coloured,easy-to-spot stripes is a useful safety feature.One of the best looking and greatest named pony cars of all time, Plymouth's early Seventies effort also sports a quite exquisite collection of stripe options. There were solid stripes, thin stripes, staggered stripes and huge wing-covering megastripes. You couldn't go wrong.