Sunoco Oil Yellow

Number Five Sunoco Oil Yellow, the yellow from the Sunoco emblem

The counterpart of the blue from the same pair. The Sunoco yellow is neither lemon nor ocher: it is a warm advertising yellow that the fuel firm carried in its emblem and that on racing cars made the contrast to a dark ground.

Where the yellow was on a car

On circuit specials the yellow kept to precisely defined places: the arrows with the name of the sponsor on the flanks and the nose, the borders around race numbers and the stripes that divided the uniform surface of a body. The extent differed from car to car. With closed coupes it was mainly a matter of lettering and borders, with the large prototypes the yellow took up continuous bands across a flank. Anyone who builds this livery needs both colors at once, because one without the other makes no sense and a substitution with an ordinary yellow shows on a model at first sight. The yellow elements moreover lie on a small area, so the result is decided by the accuracy of the tone and not by the amount of paint: the difference between a warm and a cold yellow stands out far more on a dark ground than on a light one.

What the shade will reach for

• Arrows, lettering and the borders of race numbers on a dark body
• The dividing stripes of two-color American liveries
• Yellow elements of the cars of the endurance and Can-Am series
• Small areas where the yellow is meant to look advertising-like and warm

Who the shade is for

For modelers who put a livery together from the original tones instead of reaching for the first yellow in the drawer. It finds a use as well where the edges and transitions are being finished on a decal and the tone has to be hit exactly. In the emblem of the fuel firm the yellow always stands on a dark field, and it is from exactly this pair of colors that the shade comes.