Team WRT's BMW is wearing Levi's to Texas, and it is a perfect fit
One of the coolest liveries in touring car history just came back, on a modern GT car.
Team WRT has revealed a Levi's-inspired livery for its No. 69 BMW M4 GT3 EVO ahead of the Lone Star Le Mans at Circuit of the Americas, the FIA World Endurance Championship's Texas round next weekend. The red and white scheme revives one of the most charismatic BMW racers of the 1970s, and it is the latest instalment in one of the best ideas on the current grid.
The car it is dressed as
The inspiration is the BMW E9 3.0 CSL that ran Levi's colours in period, competing in the European Touring Car Championship and German events during the marque's great touring-car era. The original was all sharp red and white over that beautiful CSL shape, and WRT has reinterpreted the scheme for the very different proportions of a modern M4 GT3 EVO. It is a tribute rather than a copy, and it works because the source material was so strong to begin with.
A new outfit every round
This is not a one-off. WRT has run a different retro-inspired livery on the car at each of the eight WEC rounds this season, turning the No. 69 into a rolling history lesson in BMW motorsport. The Le Mans round carried a tribute to the BMW-powered McLaren F1 GTR that won the 24 Hours outright in 1995, and now COTA gets the Levi's CSL. BMW is no stranger to a bold wrap anyway, as its recent Spider-Man GTP livery proved, but WRT's season-long theme is a cut above a one-weekend gimmick.
Who is driving it
Behind the retro paint sits a serious effort. The No. 69 is shared by Anthony McIntosh, Parker Thompson and BMW factory driver Dan Harper, running in the LMGT3 class. McIntosh currently sits fifth in the drivers' standings, while the crew holds third in the teams' classification, behind the No. 33 TF Sport Corvette Z06 GT3.R and the No. 91 Manthey Porsche 911 GT3 R Evo. There is real racing to be done under the denim-era colours.
AutoNext Take
Heritage liveries are having a moment, and this is one of the good ones. When it is done lazily, a throwback wrap is just nostalgia for its own sake, the racing equivalent of a band T-shirt worn by someone who cannot name a song. WRT has avoided that trap by committing to it properly, a different, genuinely researched tribute at every single round, which turns a marketing idea into something closer to a celebration of BMW's back catalogue.
It also taps a wider trend, with everyone from Porsche reviving its old Apple colours to manufacturers raiding their archives for anniversary schemes. The difference here is consistency and taste. The Levi's CSL is one of the most stylish cars BMW ever raced, the M4 wears its colours well, and a grid full of liveries this thoughtful is simply better to look at. More of this, please.
