Cadillac F1’s Texas-Themed Paint Scheme Perpetuates One Texan Stereotype That Really Bothers Me

The United States Grand Prix at the Circuit of the Americas was the first Formula One race I ever attended and therefore has a special place in my heart. Also, it took place in Texas, and as a native Texan that makes it better than any other race that was ever held anywhere else. When I heard that Cadillac would be doing a special livery for this year’s GP in Texas I was pleased, as any Texan would be. And then I saw the mistake most graphic designers make when trying to create something that looks Texan.

Any stereotype you have about Texas is probably true, because Texas is big enough, and contains enough people, to find an example to prove anything you want. Texans are reserved and boisterous, proud and humble, god-fearing and hell-raising, sometimes all at once. It is our nature.

Cadillac’s foray into Formula One has gone about as poorly as you might expect, as all new teams have to essentially get beaten into the F1 gang. Like all good Americans, I’m optimistic about the future of the program and willing to accept that it’s going to take a minute to get to success. Nothing would make me happier than Cadillac nabbing their first points in Texas. If Aston can do it, how hard could it possibly be?

It’ll be even more rewarding if Cadillac manages to do it in its Texas-themed livery.

The Cavender’s Cadillac

At a distance, it’s not entirely obvious what the problem is or what is special about this specific paint scheme. As you look closer, though, there are a lot of fun details. Specifically, the iconic and very Texan chain stitching of blue jeans has been paired with the scrollwork you’ll see on a saddle. Every Texan has clothing that looks like this car, and the fact that they made it appear as though the livery was embroidered onto the car is very cool.

I love that. It’s fun, it’s Texan, and it still works within the context of an F1 car. GM goes out of its way to point out that Texans worked on it in its blog:

It all began with a genuine Texan: Vincent Traina, design manager at the General Motors Performance, Motorsports and Accessories studio. Traina grew up in Dallas and hasn’t missed a single Formula 1® race since childhood, when his dad would wake him up in the early morning hours to watch races broadcast from Europe.

So when the Cadillac Formula 1® Team decided to do a custom one-off livery celebrating its American roots at the United States Grand Prix, it was a career-defining moment for Traina. “Injecting that creativity from the GM Design side, bringing in the culture of Texas as a Texan, and being such a fan of Formula 1®, it all hit home for me,” he told GM News.

Curiously, the designers fell into the one trap that most non-Texans seem to fall into.

The Reverend Horton Heat Is Disappointed

Embedded in the faux embroidery are all sorts of Texan symbols, including lone stars and horseshoes. There’s even a stitched Circuit of the Americas on one side. I was super into all of this right up until I looked at this photo:

If you’re a Texan, you probably clocked it immediately. There’s one bit of flora that has been forever associated with Texas that is not, in fact, Texan. It’s Arizonian. In fact, our resident ex-Arizona resident Griffin also spotted it. Do you see it now?

Yup, the cactus that looks like it’s being held up at a bank is a Saguaro cactus, aka Carnegiea gigantea, a massive columnar cactus that you can find in the Sonoran Desert. You find them in Arizona, Mexico, and a few areas of California. You do not find them in Texas.

This is a common mistake, perpetrated by filmmakers and commercial artists who have never been to Texas and assume, incorrectly, that these are found here. They are not. The Reverend Horton Heat even wrote a helpful song called “Ain’t No Saguaro in Texas” to cover this, lest you be confused.

Here are some key lines:

Hollywood and misinformed artists
Made the saguaro a Texas icon
But the saguaro only grows in Arizona
Where people got em’ out on their lawn

I love the Sonoran desert
I’ll bet people there are glad I’m telling you
That the saguaro only grows in Arizona
And part of Northern Mexico too

There ain’t no saguaro in Texas
It’s not the kind of cactus we’ve got
But somehow we’re stuck with this image
And changing it is gonna take a lot

To the credit of Cadillac, someone may have caught this and they have the line that “the team wanted to celebrate Americana, Texas, and the American West.” That cactus definitely qualifies as the American West. I might be a bit pedantic here, maybe even prickly, but that’s only because the prickly pear is the kind of cactus we get.

While I’m not greatly bothered by this, I swear on Willie Nelson’s braids that it is something that’ll always irk me when I see it. Either way, Cadillac gets points for being creative, which are hopefully not the only points they get this weekend.

Top photo: Cadillac