Special Oil Company Maps for the Olympic Games

Eight summer and nine winter Olympics have been held in Europe since 1930. For a few of these games, leading petrol companies produced special maps to help their customers get to the Olympic venues.
Please follow the link for Maps from Winter Olympic Games.

Berlin (1936)

This city plan of Berlin was produced by Leuna, the largest German oil refiner in the 1930s. It was the normal street map given away by the company but was adapted for use in the 1936 Olympic games by pasting a plan of the stadium over the previous rear cover (shown opened out left).

Helsinki (1952)

In 1952 Helsinki hosted the Olympic games, and this map from that year shows part of the Olympic stadium complex. Internally, it was a normal map of the country at a scale of 1:1,500,000, created for Esso by Maanmittaushallitus. There were no special inserts of the immediate area of the Olympic Games, and although on the regular inset map of Helsinki the outline of the stadium can just be seen, the nearby Esso service station is given greater prominence.

In the 1950s Shell published a series of small format booklets offering information to motorists about countries that they might visit. Svenska Shell published a special Swedish language booklet of "Tips for Car tourists" to the Helsinki Olympics; it is not known if a similar booklet was used by Shell companies in more distant countries from Finland. The booklet has 34 pages of events and schedules for the Games, but only a very basic locator map.
Shell Image courtesy of Richard Horwitz.

Rome (1960)

Esso chose to issue several special maps for the Rome Olympics in 1960. Four new maps were produced including a version of the Western Europe map that had Northern Italy on the reverse and illustrated an Esso station on the autostrada del sole. Both the Roma (Rome) and Sardegna (Sardinia) maps were described as having been newly drawn for the year: it seems that the Italian authorities were trying to encourage tourism in the rest of Italy as well as in Rome, and examples are not known from other years. Esso also advertised prominently on the official ENIT map distributed free by Italian tourism offices.

The BP map is entirely in English and is headed Games of the XVII Olympiad, 25^th August - 11^th September 1960. As it predates BP's entry into Italian petrol retailing it was probably prepared for the London-based BP Touring Service. In contrast Petrol Caltex was actively involved in the market. Its graphic cover uses five circles rather than the official Olympic rings, as at this stage it was still possible for firms to produce Olympic souvenirs without formal approval. Inside the map highlighted games venues in red. Unlike the other companies, Shell already had a map of Rome, produced by IGA (Agostini) and the Olympiade edition is similar internally, although has a striking cover of part of the Coliseum. The reverse lists the 15 main venues (14 of which are marked by number on the map) in four main languages, with brief descriptions of places to visit "between events" and of Italian gastronomy. Mobil also issued a map, featuring a cartoon car on the cover, with the Olympic rings for wheels (not illustrated).
BP Image courtesy of William Phillips; Petrol Caltex courtesy of Wilhelm Feuer.

Tokyo (1964)

Although the 1964 Olympics were not in Europe, Shell produced this card "calendar" showing the Olympic record holders and time for most events since 1896. Two slides, each folded in half, permitted the results from 152 events to be shown in four windows in the card. Designed by Scanpublic and produced in Denmark, it was printed in English and featured 4 cartoons, probably by Mel Calman.

Munich (1972)

For the ill-fated 1972 Olympics at Munich (München), it appears that Shell gained the main rights to use the Olympic logo. On the left is a 1971 map centred on Munich from the Deutsche Generalkarte series. It may have been a special title since, as well as displaying a small Olympic logo, it covered most of the area normally on 4 Generalkarte sheets (22-3 & 25-6). The 1972 map was undeniably a special edition with a large logo and described as an OlympiaKarte in three languages. As well as normal Mairs maps, it had a large plan of the Olympiapark, and a calendar of sporting events. Esso issued a special map providing plans of the three Olympic cities: Munich, Kiel and Augsburg, which was where the canoeing slalom took place. The rear cover showed a model of the main Olympic village. Much of one side was devoted to a map of central Munich, where there were no Olympic events taking place, and the main tourist sights in each of the cities were listed in German, English and French.

Barcelona (1992)

The Olympics' most recent games in Europe were in Barcelona in 1992. Campsa, the former monopoly brand of petrol in Spain, produced a free supplement to its annual guide, printed on gloss paper in rather garish colours, giving limited practical information for visitors to Barcelona as well as Sevilla and Madrid. It included 6 fold-out maps/plans - one for each city (lacking most street names and drawn in perspective), plus plans of the Olympic stadium, the route of the Olympic torch and Expo 92 grounds in Sevilla. The Olympic rings symbol was not used at all in the book.

No maps are known from any of the other summer or winter Olympic Games, although they may exist. In particular Esso might have done something for the 1956 Stockholm Games (shared with Melbourne). As commercial brands of petrol were unavailable locally it is less likely that anything was produced for the 1980 Moscow Games.

Once again, if you have an oil company map from one of these Olympic events, please send me an e-mail!

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