GITANES

Gitanes is a French brand of cigarettes, currently owned and manufactured by Imperial Tobacco following their acquisition of Altadis in January 2008, having been owned by SEITA before that. 

Gitanes had a long-standing partnership with the Equipe Ligier team. Following the acquisition of the Matra Formula One team's assets, Ligier entered Formula One in 1976 with a Matra V12-powered car, and won the 1977 Swedish Grand Prix with Jacques Laffite. This is generally considered to have been the first all-French victory in the Formula One World Championship.

In total the team won 8 races, got 47 podiums and earned 373 points during their partnership with Gitanes. In 1996, the sister company Gauloises became the new sponsor, ending a partnership that lasted 19 years. In 1997 the team was sold to Alain Prost and became Prost Grand Prix in 1997. Prost GP, despite substantial financial backing by large private French companies, failed to make the team competitive and went bankrupt in 2002.