No manufacturer has a richer livery history at Le Mans than Porsche. Nineteen overall victories across six decades, and almost every era defined by a colour scheme that became as recognisable as the cars themselves. The Gulf 917. The Pink Pig. Martini stripes on the 936. Rothmans blue on the 956. The Apple Computer rainbow on the 935. These are not just paint jobs. They are the visual language of Porsche's Le Mans story. This is how each one came to exist.
New to Porsche's racing history? Our guides to the Pink Pig livery and the Porsche 935 K3 cover those cars in more depth.
1. Gulf Oil: Porsche 917 (1970-1971)
The blue and orange Gulf livery is the most recognisable colour scheme in motorsport history, and the car it is most closely associated with is the Porsche 917. John Wyer's Gulf-sponsored team ran the 917 at Le Mans in 1970 and 1971, and the combination of the car's extreme speed, dramatic flat-12 engine sound, and the vivid Gulf colours made an impression that has never faded.
The pairing of powder blue and vivid orange against the 917's low, aggressive body created a visual impact that was entirely accidental by design. Gulf's livery had been developed years earlier for GT40s and Ford Mirages, but it found its definitive expression on the Porsche. The 1971 Le Mans film starring Steve McQueen immortalised it further. A Gulf-liveried 917 is the single most reproduced image in Porsche's racing history.
Pedro Rodriguez drove the Gulf 917 to a lap record at Spa that stood for years. Jo Siffert and Brian Redman won multiple races in it. The car is inseparable from the livery, and the livery is inseparable from the car.
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2. Pink Pig: Porsche 917/20 (1971)
The 917/20 was a one-off aerodynamic experiment at Le Mans 1971. Porsche commissioned French firm Sera to produce a body combining the best properties of the short-tail and long-tail 917 variants. The result was a car with rounder, wider curves than anything Porsche had raced before. Someone in the workshop remarked it looked like a pig.
Designer Anatole Lapine ran with it. The car was painted pink and decorated with a butcher's diagram identifying pork cuts across the bodywork: shoulder, loin, belly, rump. It was formally nicknamed "Die Sau" (The Sow) and informally the Pink Pig. Legend has it Martini, whose stripes were the usual choice for Porsche's works entries, declined to have their livery on a car that looked like a pig. So Lapine created something that would outlast every other Porsche livery in cultural memory.
The 917/20 crashed before the finish. It never competed again. But the livery returned at Le Mans 2018 on a Porsche 911 RSR that won the GTE Pro class, and again on a privately wrapped 918 Spyder. Porsche celebrated its 75th anniversary in 2023 with a Porsche 963 wearing a livery incorporating elements of the Pink Pig alongside the Gulf, Martini and Rothmans colours. The car that crashed in 1971 has never stopped being relevant.
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The Pink Pig livery has appeared on three Porsche models in the Deckorate collection. Read the full story in our dedicated Pink Pig livery guide.
3. Martini Racing: Porsche 936 and 911 (1976-1992)
Martini's white, red and blue stripes are the most commercially successful livery in motorsport history, appearing on Lancia, Brabham, Williams and Porsche across four decades. But the association with Porsche is the most emotionally resonant, beginning with the 936 Spyder's Le Mans victories in 1976 and 1977 and running through the Lancia Delta Integrale's six consecutive WRC championships into the early 1990s.
At Le Mans specifically, the Martini-liveried Porsche 936 won back-to-back in 1976 and 1977, then again in 1981. Jacky Ickx won all three, making him the most successful Le Mans driver in the sport's history at the time. The combination of Ickx's talent, the 936's dominance and the Martini stripes created an era of Porsche racing that fans of the period still regard as the defining chapter.
The Martini livery has appeared on the Porsche 964 in the Deckorate collection, on a road car interpretation that captures the same visual language that made the 936 era legendary.
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4. Apple Computer: Porsche 935 K3 (1979-1980)
The 1979 Le Mans winner was a Kremer Racing Porsche 935 K3 wearing one of the most unexpected liveries in endurance racing history: the rainbow-striped Apple Computer logo across white bodywork. Apple was three years old, had just launched the Apple II, and was spending aggressively on brand awareness in markets that would understand what a personal computer was. Endurance racing crowds in 1979 were exactly that audience.
Klaus Ludwig and brothers Don and Bill Whittington drove the Kremer 935 to the overall victory at Le Mans, beating prototype competitors in a car derived from the 911. It was the first time a rear-engine production-based car had won outright at Le Mans. The Apple livery, already striking, became iconic overnight.
The car raced again at Le Mans in 1980 in the same livery, finishing fifth overall. By then the livery was established as one of the most recognisable in the sport. The combination of the 935's extreme Group 5 aerodynamics (the massive rear wing, the wide fenders, the aggressive front splitter) and the rainbow Apple logo created a visual contrast between technological modernity and mechanical excess that resonates just as strongly today.
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5. Rothmans: Porsche 956 and 962 (1982-1987)
Between 1981 and 1987, Porsche racing cars won Le Mans every single year. The car that defined the dominant middle of that run was the 956, and the livery that defined the 956 was Rothmans: deep navy blue with gold lettering and white bodywork. In 1982 the Rothmans-liveried 956 finished first, second and third on its Le Mans debut. The most dominant debut performance in the race's history.
The Rothmans livery suits the 956's long, low Group C body in a way that few liveries match a car so completely. The dark blue against the white ground plane reads as authoritative and fast simultaneously. It appeared across six seasons on the 956 and its successor the 962, accumulating wins that still represent the most sustained period of dominance by a single manufacturer at Le Mans.
Derek Bell won Le Mans five times in total, three of them in the Rothmans Porsche. Jacky Ickx won his fifth and sixth Le Mans victories in Rothmans cars. The livery is inseparable from the most successful dynasty in endurance racing history.
6. Porsche 911 RSR Pink Pig tribute: Le Mans 2018
Porsche's 70th anniversary produced one of the most celebrated livery moments in recent motorsport history. A factory-entered 911 RSR carried a recreation of the 1971 Pink Pig livery at Le Mans 2018, driven by Kevin Estre, Laurens Vanthoor and Michael Christensen. They won the GTE Pro class.
The execution was complete: pink headlamps instead of white, every pit stop announced as a "pigstop," a stuffed Ikea pig thrown into the crowd. A livery born from an aerodynamic experiment and a designer's sense of humour in 1971 won at Le Mans 47 years later on the same circuit where it first appeared.
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Why Porsche liveries endure
Most racing liveries are forgotten within a decade. The cars that wore them are sold, crashed or disassembled. The sponsors move on. The fans age out.
Porsche's Le Mans liveries have not followed that pattern. The Gulf 917 is more recognisable now than it was in 1971. The Pink Pig has been recreated three times across fifty years. The Martini stripes remain the most commercially reproduced motorsport livery in history. The Apple Computer 935 has become a crossover icon that resonates with audiences who have never watched an endurance race.
The reason is the combination of distinctive visual design with genuine achievement. These liveries won things. They were on the fastest cars, driven by the best drivers, at the most demanding circuit in the world. The design is remembered because it is inseparable from the performance it represented.
That is what makes them worth putting on a wall.
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For the most driver-focused road car in the Porsche range, read our 991 vs 992 GT3 RS comparison →
