From the vault No. 5: GTO Street Freak....

tim boyd · December 20, 2022

This is a model I built about 10 to 15 years ago or so. It's an attempt to revisit in scale the 1/1 scale "Street Freak" era of the 1970's.

For inspiration I re-read some of the Hank Borger stories in Car Model magazine...you know, the Ghost Dancer, the Corvette, the great writing recreating the era when the neighbor down the street started up his bad boy machine with open headers on Saturday morning....you remember, right? (For those of you, probably most of you, who missed out on Hank's articles, they were not only instructive and creative, but truly entertaining as well....).

As the model was the basis for a published article, I had to limit parts sources to a few kits. The body was the old RC/Ertl reissue of the MPC 1967 GTO kit, with much massaging to the body to resolve the many problems with the surfacing of the body. The chassis came from the flip-front MPC '57 Chevy Sedan Gasser /'53 F-100 pickup kit tooling, while the engine (if I am recalling correctly) was partuly based on the Revell '68 Firebird kit, but with the pretty meager blower setup in that kit replaced with much better part box sourcing.

Paint was Testors Lacquers, with real lace overlays. I was always really happy with how this one came out, but I don't recall hearing much, if any, feedback on it. Maybe it was (still?) hopelessly behind the times, or alternatively, premature to the eventual/expectation of a return of 1/1 scale Street Freak fascination????

Anyway, enjoy the pix....and sorry for the lighting on the engine pix....TB