LUKE'57

Wow! Now aren't you glad you enlarged the door. I LOVE tall women!! LOL I got my first one too short when I added that plastic stip at the top after I had cut the opening. That little strip made it almost a scale foot too low. A little goes a long way sometimes. If you haven't decided on your sign yet, you can work wonders with PaintShop, some typing paper, color printer and some balsa stips. You can even cover it with a sheet of clear plastic to give it that painted metal sign look. A business card program makes a good basis for a neat little sign, too.

Lookin' good. Remember that in 1/24 that 1/2 inch equals a foot. That walk in door looks a mite low but the roll ups look pretty good. Don' want any stoop shouldered mechanics. LOL This is the first shop I did and the walk in door is a little too short here.

Here's what you get when you slice up about half of a 4x8 sheet of builders styrofoam and add some stereo packing material and a little fiberglas screen to the big piece that's left. You get a superspeedway complete with grandstand and concrete retaining wall. It's just not that hard if you thing outside the box and use your imagination instead of your checkbook. Just cut the styrofoam in striips about two inches wide and glue them together like stair stips behind the retaining wall. A little paint, screen wire and some balsa wood framing and you can be the next Bruton Smith, LOL.

Thanks Mark, Sometimes being old has its advantages. While not new at the time, they were decidedly closer to being new when I built them than I am now. Funny how time slips away. LOL

While Ned was associated with Ford for most of his career, he won the first of his two championships in a Chevrolet that looked kinda like this one, only larger. Here's my tribute build to the first Nascar driver I ever saw close up. Ned came to town in the mid-sixties to give a talk to the Royal Ambassadors at the First Baptist Church in Lancaster SC. He did a lot of that for the young people all during his career and made a lasting impression for good on a lot of kids through the years. Ned's been a true class act for a very long time.

What he said!

Thanks for all the nice comments. How about a view that not many got in '63 as Joe raced to his second consecutive championship? This is what the front end looked like. LOL

Thanks James, I really appreciate the comments and glad you like it.

How it all got started. Back when I was building forty to a hundred dirt models a year, a friend brought me an AMT '63 Mercury and a '63 Galaxie buildup. Now back then the Ford was as hard to find as the Mercury so it took me a while to decide to do anything with them. But after one trip too many to the Joe Weatherly Museum I couldn't resist the pull of that Marauder any longer. I really liked the different look of the full bodies on the Grand National cars without the fenders being cut out and without those big truck hubs they used on the dirt cars. While I had built a few of the older cars like the Coke Monte Carlo and the MPC stockers they just didn't "grab" me like that old Merc did. It predated the decals for the older cars and was handlettered just like the dirt models I learned on. I lost all the dirt cars in the auction but managed to hold onto the Mercury somehow and it became the seed that became the collection I have now. It will always have a special place in my collection because it was my personal "First of the Many" that redirected my modeling to the "Darkside". I had no inkling of the future when I built this that these cars would be so popular and that so many decals and parts would be availible for them. It was a long time coming but I'm glad the early racers haven't been forgotten.

"The First of the Many" Kinda like the "Last of the Many" Hawker Hurricane in the "Battle of Britain Flight" that commemorates the last one built back in '44, I guess you could call this Wrangler Thunderbird, from Monogram's original series of two Fords and two Buicks, the "First of the Many" when it comes to what I believe may be the longest running model kit series ever. I remember opening the box on these kits after fabricating my own racing parts for so many years and being amazed at what was in it. It was like a back yard mechanic getting a key to the back door at Holman Moody and a license to steal. I know that there had been the occasional race car kit and that wonderful series of "one size fits all" MPC stockers in the '70's but nothing with this kind of accuracy on a scale such as this. For sheer volume of kits produced, these two basic tools (front steer and rear steer chassis) had to have been the longest running and most produced tool in the history of plastic car kits. I worked for a hobby wholesaler supplying hobby shops with plastic kits of all types when these kits were in production. Usually I would order kits one or two cases at a time on all but some of the new releases and would have plenty to go around. But when the feeding frenzy really hit with the stock cars I would order from ten to twenty cases of the stock cars as a general rule. And when the new Lumina kit hit with the familiar black paint scheme my initial order was over two hundred cases. I wonder just how many of these kits have been manufactured in the course of the molding runs with only small changes done. And what kind of profit margin when new kits could be added with only the expenditure of box art and decals needed for an brand new release? In another Battle of Britain reference it could be said that, "Never have so many owed so much to so few" in the money generated by the sale of these kits that went to fund new tooling of all kinds of models that might not have been made otherwise. I know that they were the stimulus that got me back into building when all my dirt car models got sold in the divorce auction. I might not have started over and have the darkside and other stock car models I have now if these kits hadn't caught my fancy in the early eighties. I think it would amaze us if we knew just how many of these little race cars have been molded since those first four kits back in the early eighties started a whole new kit, decal and detail parts market way back when.

"Who you callin' a redneck, boy?", he said with tongue firmly in cheek. Don't look too closely at the old sign on my race car shop. It was done this way as a reminder of the early days of the Southern 500's emblems whose cars are the basis for a lot of my work. I've since figured out an even better way to affiliate myself with my heroes and my heritage with this new logo that does the same thing without giving anyone that's looking for a fight an open door. And don't for a minute think that the "Thunder" has anything to do with that Cruise movie. While I have met him and built some cars for him and even spent a little time on the set, the "Thunder" on my new sign is from a couple of movies that illustrate my Southern heritage of whiskey running (Thunder Road) and the early days of stock car racing (Thunder in Carolina) much better than the flag from a battle that is long over and should be put up on the shelf ever could. While the earlier logo served its purpose at the time, I had outgrown it and wanted something more personal and exclusive. As has been said elsewhere, you should come up with your own ideas. And it's a lot easier to explain why you are using a logo that you designed yourself. It can still tell the story you want it to while not carrying all the excess baggage of a borrowed one. And, although I might be just a wee bit prejudiced for obvious reasons, I think the one that my son and I came up with is much better looking and, being custom tailored by the two of us, fits us much better. LOL

Thanks everybody. I like to pull my weight and I love being a part of this forum. Maybe a "retaining wall-guard rail" tutorial could be on the way, both concrete and armco.

If it went in circles in the fifties and sixties then I'm on it. A few newer but mostly from the "darkside" of stock car racing's early days.

OUTLAWED-#12 In a Series of 12 March, 16, 1966- the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning for true stock car based stock car racing? That's the day that the new Fairlane racer the Wood Brothers brought to Bristol International Speedway was refused permission to race by Nascar officials. Its disqualification marked "the end of the beginning" of FoMoCo's attempt to replace their full-size stock car racers with their newly upsized intermediates, now offered with big block engines, to bring their cars more in line with the intermediates that Mopar had been running. It was the first hybrid , or "half-chassis" car in Nascar that had, up until now, required a stock frame catalogued for that body be used in the construction of a legal racer. It was disqualified for a number of reasons, one of the main ones being that the front track was wider than stock. The main reason for that was the fact that chassis wizard Ralph Moody had grafted on a front snout from a '66 Galaxie to eliminate the shock towers of the stock Fairlane and allow the tried and true Galaxie suspension to be used. Two weeks later the boys from Virginia show up with the pocket sized Ford again, this time at the "Hickory 250" in Hickory NC. By now Moody has taken a few inches out of the crossmembers and narrowed up the front suspension so that it meets the rules and it takes the combination of a Hemi with no less than David Pearson, that year's eventual point champion, to beat ol' Pops in the new Fairlane. Tuner led the first three laps and then lead from lap 171 to 198 when Pearson got around him to lead him at the end by four seconds. This race marked the "beginning of the end" for the traditional stock car as this chassis would be refined and would be the basis for what would become known as the "rear steer" or "Banjo" chassis perfected by another chassis genius, "Banjo" Matthews, from Arden NC and used sucessfully in Nascar for the next twenty five years or so. This brings to an end this series of models of OUTLAWED stock cars from the early years. I hope you have enjoyed them and I look forward to hearing from you about the series. Also, I am open to suggestions for new photo series featuring racers from my collection of stock car models of the fifties and sixties. Until then, keep it between the fences.

Try one of the permanent yellow magic markers on that scrap chrome wheel. Sometimes they are dark enough to give you the look you need.

OUTLAWED-#11 In a Series of 12 The guys in Dearborn didn't forget the L-M crowd when they got ready to go racing in '69. In a continuation of the "kinfolks that weren't" Yarborough and Yarbough saga that was played out on the South's superspeedways in '68, the Wood Brothers fielded this potent Cyclone Spoiler II for Timmonsville terror Cale Yarborough. With a red and white paint scheme, gold numeraled ride that previewed the look of some of the worst nightmares in Mopar's superspeedway future to come, in '69 Cale won the Atlanta 500 and the Motor State 500. Backing that up the following year with the '70 Motor State 400 and the final '70 superspeedway event, the American 500 at Rockingham, Cale won the last "Clash of the Titans" before the aerocars were legislated out of business by the upcoming season's rule changes. It is unlikely that the streets nor the ovals will ever see their like again. And it is a fact that anyone who was priveliged to see a field of these aerowarriors in full warpaint do battle on the high banks will ever forget it. I was fortunate to see the newest speedsters do battle on the oldest superspeedway and to see David Pearson win it in a Holman Moody Ford.

OUTLAWED-#10 In a Series of 12 To help counter the advantages the rebodied mid-sized Ford products had in '68, Chrysler did a little fine tuning on their slippery new Charger. A couple of minor "tweaks" made a world of difference on the new Charger 500 and the boys from Dearborn back to playing "catch up" again Ford looked at the flush rear window, which they already had, (wonder just how fast Smokey's Chevelle would have been with a rear window change?) and a new flush grill which the Fords didn't have. As in any good "peeing" contest, you take what the other guy does and do him one better. This particular occasion was no different. Ford decided to not only make the grill flush but also make the grill and, in the process, the frontal area a little smaller by adding a sloping fender extention, new grill and a modified rear bumper to replace the stock front bumper. When all the dust and shavings had settled at the FoMoCo whittling session the Mopars were back to square one and the Blue Oval Boys were back in business with a new weapon named for Fance's brand new superspeedway, Talladega. LeeRoy took both Daytona races and also won at Charlotte, Darlington, Atlanta and Rockingham as the first man to win at all five superspeedways in a single season. With the new bodywork, LeeRoy's ability behind the wheel and the tried and true 427 engine, Ford didn't really need anything else. But for the long suffering Mopar teams, it seems kinda unfair that he also had a certain ex-whiskey running chicken farmer from Wilkes County calling the shots on his car from the pits along with one of Holman Moody's secret weapons that helped them "Nab" numerous victories as his chief mechanic.

OUTLAWED!-Number 9 In a Series of 12. While the Superbird was built, among other reasons, to give Plymouth a competitive stock car and to get Richard Petty back into the fold in 1970, back in '69 when the Daytona was introduced it was for one reason only- to crush the competition from the Torinos and the Cyclones. It was a gloves off superspeedway brawler that meant to stomp the FoMoCo cars into the ground. It looked like it was doing 180 moh standing still and it didn't stand still near enough to suit the Dearborn crowd. The needle nosed high wing body work even filtered down to the independents like my friend Neil Castles. Ol' Neil had been driving since the fifties and was one of the journeymen drivers that never really got a shot at the big time but he was involved in a lot more stuff than met the eye when it came to fast cars. I won't say that he was involved in the transportation business in any way but get him to tell you the story about the cast on his foot, the revenours and his stolen car sometimes. What he most definatley was involved in, besides racing, was making movies a lot more exciting when it involved cars. Neil was involved in stunt driving for everything from "Thunder Road" and "Thunder in Carolina" to the "Movin' On" TV series and a lot more. He designed a camera mount so practical and efficient that it is still used today. Of all the people I have met in racing I consider Neil one of my favorites and a treasured friend. Neil used to wait until the Saturday before the race to qualify by running in the consolation race that was held for people who hadn't made the field. The race would not only give a starting spot for Sunday's main event but would also pay a few hundred dollars to the winner, unlike qualifications that didn't pay anything. He won so many of them that the joke around the garage area was that they were going to change the name of the "consolation race" to the "Neil Castles Benefit Race" since he was usually a cinch to win it. While I don't usually build cars much past '67 or so, I just had to build one of Neil's winged warriors to go with my other friends cars even if it was almost "current" compared to most of my "oldies". I hope you enjoy seeing it as much as I enjoyed building it.

OUTLAWED!-Number 8 In a Series Of 12 There had been some creative bodywork in the sixties in the search of speed on the big ovals. It was said that Bud Moore cut an inch or two out the beltline and two or three inches straight down the center of his '64 Mercurys to make them a little more "equal" to the smaller cars he had to run against. And there were some very liberal interpretation as to how much the car at the dealership was supposed to resemble the racer on pit road as the sixties progressed. A certain yellow '66 Galaxie at the Atlanta race with a former Yankee carpenter in the driver's seat and a mountain based poultry producer on the quarter panels comes to mind. But the gloves really came off during the '69-'70 seasons with the debut of the first of the Mopar Aerowarriors. First came the Charger 500 with a reworked rear window area and a flush mounted Coronet grille. Ford couldn't let that go by so they came out with a new front snout using a modified rear bumper and some fender extensions that made the already sleek Torinos and Cyclones positively slick. Dodge was the first Mopar to unveil the really big gun when they rolled out the new winged, drop snooted Daytona and it was on. Petty wanted to switch from Plymouth to the new Daytona and Mopar said no. Ford made an offer and sweetened it with a new Talladega all decked out in Petty Blue and the unthinkable happened. The promotional hay to be made while the sun shined on a Petty Ford was anything but petty. There was nothing to do but put the plans into play to get the Randleman Rocket back in a Plymouth where he belonged. The stylists and engineers were called into service and they delivered the goods. While the Daytona was sort of an "eyeball engineering" project to just go fast, the Superbird was the whole package- styling, engineering and graphics. Not to mention the fact that Nascar had changed the minimums for a "limited edition" car for the '70 racing season. The new Superbird was more of a total package than the Daytona but was still accomplished about the same way. A new extended nose and hood, a rear window "plug" and a huge wing on the rear and the Road Runner became a Superbird. Due to the fact that the backlight "plug" had some fit and finish issues, all the street versions had vinyl roofs to help hide where the roof had been modified. About the only real fly in the ointment was that pesky new minimum unit requirement that Nascar had instated to help curb the "funny car" invasion. Instead of 500 unit like the Fords, Mercurys and Dodges, Plymouth had to build two for each dealership which meant that instead of 500 units there had to build about three times that many. Chrysler bit the bullet and built them and that's why you see more Superbirds than Daytonas now and why Petty only ran the Ford for one season. Here's the SuperBird of Ramo Stott that he started 15th and drove to an 8th place finish in the '70 Daytona 500. While his multi colored 'Bird was winging its way to a solid finish there was another 'Bird in the familiar Petty blue fighting it out with a familiar blue and gold championship winning Ford up front. The "blue bird" would win the race and add a new Yankee winner to the "Great American Race" when Pete Hamilton held off Pearson for the win wearing a number 40 instead of the familiar 43 of his new boss. But while he didn't win, Ramo's 'Bird would still be the most colorful in the new Mopar "aviary". But even with all the effort and money put into the "Winged Warriors" a series of rule changes would make them but a memory after little more than a year in competition and it would take 36 years and the advent of the "Car of Tomorrow" for the winged cars to once again run in the Nascar division.

OUTLAWED!-#7 In a Series of 12 Unlike British royalty that starts at birth, no one expected that tall lanky kid from Level Cross to become "King Richard" when you began racing. Least of all Popps Lee who had to find places out behind the shop to put all the ruined sheet metal ol' "Ski King" presented him with in the early days. But there were flashes of brilliance in the beginning with good finishes here and there, a win or two and there was that Rookie of the Year thing. But it seemed that equipment kept holding him back. At first it was the hand-me-down cars that his championship winning Daddy made availible to him and later the underpowered Plymouths he struggled with after Daytona vitually put his Daddy out of the driver's seat and almost in the ground. But there was a storm brewing on the horizon that would rock racing and catapult the young North Carolinian to the throne. The first rumblings of the coming storm was word from Goodyear's five mile test track in Texas about certain Plymouths and Dodges turning in speeds of around 180 MPH. Keep in mind that the pole for the '63 Daytona 500 was won by Fireball Roberts at 160.943 in Banjo Matthews Pontiac. It didn't get any better when Petty, who had qualified at 154.785 the year before, qualified at 174.418 to start on the outside pole. When the dust had settled Petty had won his first Daytona 500 and was on the way to winning his first Championship. While it may have been true that the increased speeds brought on by the hemi overtaxed the state of the art in tire and chassis design and lead indirectly to the tragic events of the '64 season, it must have still come as a shock to Petty that one way Nascar chose to level the playing field was to take the only really competitive engine he had ever had away. ANd while it racing would go on as usual in '65 it looked like the race wins and championships had been put on hold for a while at Petty Engineering.

THanks, glad you liked it.

OUTLAWED!-#6 In a Series. When the Chrysler teams rolled into Daytona at the start of the 1964 Speedweeks they had a surprise for Ford and it wasn't pleasant. After trying to catch what they considered an illegal and limited run engine in Junior Johnson's Chevy for most of the previous season Ford had hoped to have a better time of it in '64. Unfortunately for the FoMoCo teams Chrysler had dusted off a design that, along with a certain outboard motor manufacturer, had given everybody else nightmares in the mid-fifties. Yep, the HEMI was back and better than ever. Speedweeks was a rerun of the year before for Ford but with around ten or so superfast rides in the Ford competition's camp instead of two or three. And this time it looked like they would last to the end of the race. Here's the Dodge version of Ford's hemi powered nightmare driven by an emerging star for the Dodge marque. Bobby Isaac. Poor old star crossed Bobby. He sat out most of '65 because of the Hemi ban and then switched to Ford in '66 just in time for the Ford boycott over the single overhead cam engine flap. Ford got a reprieve of sorts in '65 with the outlawing of the powerful Hemi and had one of the most one sided seasons in Nascar history. Without any clearcut competition Ford won most of the races but doing so over fields full of independents and one and two year old cars it couldn't even feel good about that. Somedays it just doesn't pay to get out of bed.

OUTLAWED-Number 5 in a Series. ANOTHER FINE GATORBUILT MODEL FROM JACKIE SIMS RACE CAR MODELS With the advent of Chevy's fuel injected "Black Widow", everyone knew that the Blue Oval boys would have something special up their sleeve when Speedweeks rolled around. Ralph Moody was still one of the starting drivers for the factory Ford team when the supercharged "New For '57" Fords showed up for the beginning of the season. As Ford's fastest "executive" in '57 Moody lapped the field, twice, at the season's sixth race at Wilson, NC showing the "real" drivers how it's done. That was something that Ralph could do as long as HM was in operation, letting the air out of several "real race car drivers" sails when they questioned how much a mere mechanic could know about fast driving. Like the "War of Northern Aggression" it depends on which camp you are in as to who is the bad guy, but as a lifelong Ford fan I still think that GM was behind the pressure that caused the pull out of the factories in mid season. First, Chevy's fuel injection (which was a source of major headaches to the mechanics) and Ford's superchargers were pulled and later the AMA voted to distance itsself from any forms of racing all together. That left John Holman with the job of overseeing the building of most of the Ford race cars and Ralph Moody handling the fabrication with a mortgage on his airplane. And a racing Dynasty was born. Say What? Yep, Ford offered their entire racing setup, less the cars and trailers given to their drivers, to John Holman for $12,000 but he didn't have the money so Ralph took out a lien on his plane and history was in the making. It was pretty slow going at first so they knew they had to broaden their customer base somehow. With the success of their cars on the Nascar Circuit it was still "preaching to the choir" when they advertised winning races in the Southern newspapers and the race programs. So these "good ol' boys", one from California and the other from Massachusetts no less, like good Rebels, took the fight to the Yankees. Ralph took his red and white #22 '57 and turned it loose on USAC. He didn't win the first outing at a 300 mile race at Trenton NJ because problems put him five laps down early on. But to say he got their attention would be an understatement when he made up four of them during the latter part of the event. Three weeks later he began a run that gave Moody a 1-2 victory with Troy Ruttman in the 150 mile USAC race in Milwaukee, and a win in August in a 200 miler and another win in a 250 miler later in the season, both at Milwaukee. He then came back in October to win the USAC 100 miler in Birmingham. The four victories and a second place finish in USAC's points race cemented Holman Moody's reputation. Adding this to their success on the Southern circuit, the orders came rolling in and "California Speed Equipment" pretty soon came to mean drag racing only.

Anybody that could ignore that '55 Rex White sportsman of yours needs his pulse checked because he probably doesn't have one! That is one super nice dirt dobber you got there.

Thank you, I enjoy sharing the history and models of the pioneers of stock car racing.