Chances are if you have looked at enough photos of kaido racers, you have might have seen racing numbers on them. One of the racing numbers has a very specific looking font to it that almost looks home made.
This specific font was a commonly used set of racing numbers. They called these types of numbers “zekken” / ゼッケン, a borrowed word from German referring to the racing bib found on cars or other athletic sports. A few different brands created sticker packs of them that could buy from the local auto shop, but all had the same type of font face.
These stickers were made by a few different brands, like Autolook. The height of the numbers is right around 368mm or 14.5 inches.
Two of the packaging also state “CSI公認書体” or “CSI Approved Typeface.” This is referring to the international governing body for motorsports named Commission Sportive Internationale. This name was later changed to Fédération Internationale du Sport Automobile (FISA) in 1978.
One thing to keep in mind about these numbers, they were very popular in the late 1970 and early 1980 with more of the Grachan styled cars and early Chibaragi. If you were building something more period to that era and location these numbers would be a good option to add on to the car. It might look strange when adding it to a Fukuoka or Hokkaido car as they used a different style number sometimes accompanied with a square box or racing bib.
I have also decided to upload my personal recreation of the sticker for reproduction purposes in hopes that more people are interesting in getting the perfect Grachan styling on their own car. Download here (v 1.2 all numbers on one layer).
