What do two stripes....

[Ataim]

on the drivers fender stand for? Once a week I see a sports car with them.

[Majik]

I think a corvette in the 90s had them and now people copy that.

[tailchaser]

The '96 commemorative Grand Sport edition of the Corvette carried two red hashes on the left fender.

According to legend, the hashes recalled the '63 Corvette Grand Sports that were raced and identified by hashes on the fender instead of numbers.

[Nails]

It's a chevron stripe. RPM Chris has them on his white NC.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevron_(insignia))

[cwisenheimer]

Those are "rookie stripes". They were originally used to identify a race car driven by a rookie so that the other drivers knew to keep an eye on the car since the driver might make a rookie mistake. Now, kind of like racing stripes, people think they look cool and make a car look racy. Funny how they overlook the "I'm possibly an idiot" connotation.

[rudedog]

The 63 Grand Sports did indeed have the stripes but they were on the nose on one side.
The cars also had numbers but the stripes helped the crew ID the car coming in at them before the numbers could be read.
It started on the Grand Sports in the Mecom team at Sebring.
And before communication between the pits and drivers.
Every Miata out there enjoy the 4th and keep safe.

[Ataim]

Thanks, now I have more usless knowledge than I did before.

[Dave04]

Thanks, now I have more usless knowledge than I did before.

Umm... you did ask your question on this forum... what did you expect?

[jrj512]

Other than their appearance on the GS Vettes and that they look neat, I do not know of any other reason for them. I did not see anything about them being rookie stripes, but perhaps cwisenheimer can provide a link or something.

The look great on RPMChris's car.

[cwisenheimer]

... wisenheimer googles...

Well, there are so many entries regarding NASCAR's rookie stripes (two horizontal yellow strips on the rear bumper, one each side) that I can't find a good link. In the Cobra world, those are generally called "rookie stripes" but there is some debate on that name there too. Some people say they were team colors to provide visual identification of similar cars wearing the same paint color (whether indicating country of origin (white = US, blue = France, etc.) or other) or individual colors to identify a driver within a team of the same paint color. There are pictures of Cobras wearing fender stripes, GrandSport Corvettes wearing fender stripes, and a few others. I can't provide a definitive answer and the question has been asked elsewhere without a definitive answer either. Perhaps somebody's got Dan Gurney's cell number?