SMOKING HOT

Lighting up is no good for your health. But the motorsport liveries created by tobacco companies? They’re lit and emblazoned on the brains of fans everywhere. Purple and white means shovel-nosed Le Mans Jaguars; blue and yellow says Colin McRae in a sideways Subaru; black and gold is Lotus single seaters. Red with white? We could only be talking Marlboro and a look that accompanied Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost to world championship glory.

That’s inspiration enough for a stand out show car, but don’t race to conclusions: Rob Hardy didn’t build his Renault 5 GT Turbo to channel mainstream motorsport. Oh no. Instead,he’s taken inspiration from a scale model. The evocation in question harks back to a real machine that ran on the 1982 Rallye du Var. That