German racing silver
 

Here is an interesting article that explains the history of nationalistic race car colors: German silver, Italian red, British green, etc.

http://www.motorsport.com/magazine/feature.asp?C=Kerbs&D=2000-08-13

No wonder every German car ad has the cars in silver! I knew there had to be a reason other than it being a popular color today. They've been showing their cars in silver for a long, long time.

Looks like my speed yellow puts me in the Belgium camp. Not all bad, the mussels there are pretty good. And I did use black letters on the track -

The origin of silver for the german team
 

I read in a magazine that the german color before was blue same as the french. One driver in order to save weight on his racing car did without the paint on the car body. After this it became traditional for the german team use silver.

I believe the answer to this, if I remember correctly, is that the German racing color was white (pre mid 1930's). The team manager for the Mercedes team faced a problem in that his cars were OVER the maximum weight limit. He had his cars stripped and painted them with silver aluminium paint, which was lighter. They became very successful, and a journalist coined the term "Silver Arrows" to describe the Mercedes team. The nickname stuck, and Germany changed it's color to silver to reflect this.

See this site http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A839090 regarding the history of "Silver Arrows"

"Germany's motor-sport colour was white. At this time, as mentioned above, there was a maximum weight limit on the cars. Mercedes' car was weighed and found to be one kilo too heavy. Alfred Neubauer, the Mercedes team manager, hit upon the idea of stripping the paint from the cars. When combined with the filler (which smoothed the hand-beaten metal panels), this made up the necessary weight reduction. The cars were an instant success, and silver was quickly adopted as the German racing colour. Thus the dominant German cars of this period, the Mercedes and Auto Unions, were referred to as 'silver arrows', a name still occasionally applied to Mercedes DTM cars6 and McLaren-Mercedes F1 machines."