Here's an idea coming out of Grey Fox (Soper)'s recent HCC project.
Attach a small file with a car skin set which allows ai names and colour schemes to be joined in together, and then loaded into the game.
eg: 1) Set ai driver 1 name to HCC1
2) Set colour scheme for ai driver 1 to use skin XFR_HCC1.jpg
3) Repeat for the rest of the field.
This would then enables someone to switch to a complete set of 12 custom skins instantly for racing in different series.
A small front-end applet could be designed to allow an option of loading up a different car series set before racing, which could assign all the skins automatically for a particular car.
Maybe later it could also be set up at the server end for controlling league, team and series races.
For people wishing to race against carsd with a similar 'look', the skinning community could look at releasing more complete packs, like an SCGT series for the FZR, a 2005 F3-series pack for the FOX, etc., and these packs would then be used by various servers running the different league and series racing events.

Great idea, Al!

Couldn't there already be a 3rd party software made for this? I mean, if you have a .col file named HCC1 your AI driver will use that one.

So, the software could check the drv folder for AI names (and let you choose the ones you're currently using), and then rename (or even make) a set of .col files respectively.

Or did I just type something you already knew and missed the point completely

The only thing is, having 12 .col files for each car would make a mess of the list of colors in garage, if there'd be a way to hide the AI-colors from the list it'd be cool!

Hmm.. maybe some sort of quick-.col-app could do the trick. Something that lets you pick which car, which AI, and which skin, and makes the respective .col file for you? A bit quicker than doing it in game I guess..