New Posters From Remove Before Have Landed In The Shop: Lancia Stratos, BMW E30 M3 & 3.0CSL

March 8, 2018

Find these posters and more from Remove Before in the Petrolicious Shop

Marc Carreras’ line of posters created under his Remove Before brand have been featured on Petrolicious in the past, and the tidy, diagrammatic layout he’s chosen for his art lends itself well to a series. Today we’re happy to add three more pieces to the collection already available in the Shop: the Group 4 Alitalia Lancia Stratos HF, the BMW E30 M3, and the IMSA BMW 3.0CSL.

1974 Group 4 Lancia Stratos HF (view here)

Even though Audi is rightly credited with bringing all-wheel drive into the sport of rally, its Quattros were by no means unrivaled, and a sizable crowd would argue Lancia’s S4 was the quicker car at the zenith of Group B. Prior to that, their 037 was the last rear-wheel drive machine to win a World Rally Championship season in 1983. The Italian marque would go on to dominate the early years of Group A later in the decade, and as a whole, the WRC belonged to Lancia in the 1980s. It all began with the Stratos though, and its hat trick of championships between ’74 and ’76 ensured Lancia’s full participation in the series to come. The performance of the Stratos was matched only by its radical looks, and it’s unique angular design lent itself very well to a number of liveries, like the Alitalia scheme from the 1974 season chosen here.

1986 BMW E30 M3 (view here)

Though its Mercedes-Benz contemporary came first, the box flares of the first BMW M3 shaped the market segment invented by these two cars. Sharing only the roof and front doors with the standard E30-generation 3-Series, this homologation special allowed BMW to enter competition versions of the car in touring car championships around the world, often times returning home to Munich with the big trophy at the end of the season. Together with Mercedes and Audi, it defined European series like the DTM, and their street legal counterparts accelerated the trajectory set by cars like the 2002tii and Lotus Cortina into a new, more modern level of performance that still retained enough analog feedback. The M3 has become an icon in the wake of the first to bear the name, and the choice to present it here of Alpine White works with the sharp lines and evokes the look of body-in-white touring cars waiting for their sticker sets.

1975 BMW 3.0CSL (view here)

The BMW 3.0CSL, wearing it’s full aerodynamic package, earned it the appropriate nickname of “Batmobile” despite its predominant works liveries featuring plenty of white. It’s winged silhouette represents the aggressive bodywork that characterized cars in 1970s Group 5 racing, but even in less radical form the big BMW coupe did quite well for itself, winning championships in the first season of full factory support in the 1973 season of the European Touring Car Championship, a seres it would also win in ’75, ’76, ’77, ’78, and ’79. It did quite well in Europe, and when it was slightly modified to IMSA specifications for racing in the equivalent American series (pictured here), it held its own against the might of the turbocharged Porsche 934/935s and John Greenwood’s wild Corvettes.