I would say more like 10-15 years...remember the Marlboro liveried Mitsus and Peugeots? Of course with no logos in most countries.
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It developed through the years but in some countries the ban was in place already in early 90'.
What about Castrol. They have been long time on Toyotas and then most of the time on Fords
Castrol is still in. It's one of Škoda's sponsors for example.
Banning of tabacco advertising was mostly at the end of the 90's I think. In Belgium the ban started at the end of 1998 I think. One of the last rallies where we've seen tobacco advertising must have been Barum Rally 2004 (CZ), where Thiry competed with the Kronos/Bastos-C2 S1600. After that year Bastos stopped advertising, as the brand name could not be displayed anywhere anymore.
Yes, in my understanding they somehow used a grey zone in that time existing law in CZ which allowed continuation of tobacco advertisement based on the pre-2002 deals until the end of 2004. This was valid only for certain types of advertisement while some others were banned already in 1995. In fact tobacco adverts were banned in CZ already in 1991 but the law survived only few months before it was canceled under heavy lobbying...
Most European countries had already either completely banned or restricted the tobacco advertising coming into the new millennium. The EU directive for the complete ban came into effect in 2005. Can't remember the exact details (how, and by which ruling), but the use of alternative ways of advertising (like 'East' or 'Tommi' or 'BENSON & HEDGES') has also basically been banned during the past 10 years or so.