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When Gary Balough showed up at Syracuse Super Dirt Week in 1980 with this Kenny Weld built contraption, he changed modified dirt racing forever. Painted black, with it's wide, ground-effects body based on a Lincoln Contenental (wink wink, nudge nudge), it was quickly dubbed the Batmobile, and many wondered if ground-effects would really work on dirt. Any doubts evaporated when Balough qualified 2 1/2 seconds faster than the second place car, which, ironically, was the same car that Balough himself sat on the pole with the previous year. Practically overnight, the other racers tried converting their own cars to "ground-effect" cars, bolting on everything from stolen highway signs to plywood in an attempt to keep up with Balough. It was all to no avail, however, as Balough easily dominated the week-ending Schaefer 200. After Syracuse, the rule book was re-written, making the Batmobile illegal, and it never raced in this configuration again....but it signaled the end to stock-bodied modifieds, ushering in the more aerodynamic fabricated sheet metal bodies like the ones raced today. For what its worth, Kenny Weld built the car this way to disguise the REAL secret. According to Weld, the ground-effects did little, if anything, to increase performance. The REAL secret, and the reason Weld used a Lincoln grille in the first place, was a sealed forced-air induction system....ram-air.....that at the end of the straightway was estimated to be 70% as effective as a turbocharger. The radiator was relocated to the side pod, so the "ground-effects" louvers were for cooling, not sucking the car to the ground! I've always thought this was one of the coolest race cars ever, and after finding out that Big Donkey made a resin body kit, I just HAD to build a model of it. The Chassis is an AMT Gremlin modified with the wheelbase stretched 5/8". I used the torsion bar suspension from a Monogram sprint car kit. I also raised the roll cage to match the height of the roof. Like the real car, the interior is pretty simple. I added MCG gauges and a Detail Master seat belt kit. The engine is the kit engine, and like the real car, I moved the radiator to the side pod and fabricated a ram-air setup from parts-box pieces. They were very secretive about this setup, and no pictures are known to exist, so I just sorta guessed at it. Most other parts are from the Gremlin kit. The wheels and hubs are my own castings. Bumpers are aluminum rod. Paint is Testors black, and the decals are from Polecat. A very fun build, and my first completion of the year, which is sayin' something for me.