Technical talk - Painting the town blue!

The iconic blue and yellow colour scheme of the team's Subaru Imprezas, used since its debut in Finland 1993, is perhaps one the most recognisable in modern day motorsport.

Here Standox, paint suppliers to the Subaru World Rally Team, reveal all about the painting process:

- The team's rally cars are painted using complete Standox paint system, which includes primers, fillers, colour coats and high-gloss clear lacquers. The pearlescent blue of the Subaru rally cars, unique to the 555 Subaru team, is developed and manufactured in one of the world's most advanced production facilities in Wuppertal, Germany.

- The bare metal body shell is sprayed with an etch primer and filler coat before the outside is painted with the colour coat and finished with a high-gloss clear lacquer. The colour coat is applied sparingly on the inside, and no lacquer is used in order to keep the weight down to a minimum. The inside of the roof is painted white to minimise heat absorption, and lacquer is applied to the engine bay to help keep it clean. From start to finish it can take up to three people one week to paint the Impreza, while the road car requires two days of work.

- Weight is an important consideration on the WRC car. The primer, base-coat and lacquer used on each Subaru Impreza WRC2003 adds approximately 10kgs to the overall weight. After each event, the shells are stripped before being repainted to ensure there's no paint build-up and consequent weight disadvantage.

- The paint materials used for the Subaru Impreza WRC are lightweight. The 18 litres of materials used per car, weighs just under 10kg, while in contrast the 5 litres of paint used for the road car, weighs 5kg. More paint is required for the rally car as it's applied to both the exterior and interior, there's no metal exposed on the inside of the road car so less paint is required.

- Presentation has always been of paramount important to the 555 Subaru team. Their cars were the first to use a custom-metallic paint in 1997 and over the years, the team has constantly amended the colour to ensure that the cars continue to look good on film. There have been several slight colour changes, notably the change to metallic in 1997, and a new blue for 2001 when the four-door car was launched. The yellow graphics were changed to fluorescent yellow in 1997, as it appeared far more striking on television.