"TV" Tommy Ivo's first rear/engine dragster 1972

jlucky · March 20, 2023

It was the eagle-eye of one observer on this site that noticed I didn’t have the new “TV” Tommy Ivo rear-engine kit displayed, so that prompted my most recent build. Like any kit however it was not without it’s strange building issues. Bear with me for this rather long-winded introduction.

First off I needed a different set of rear wheels and slicks. The ones included in the kit are far too wide (at least 15”) for 1972. The best place to secure a set of 13” slicks is a Polar Lights funny car kit so that was secured. The IVO kit’s headers are too thin and required some fiddley building so I went to the spare parts tray and came up with a suitable set of headers. The only other serious adjustment was with the front torsion bars. The kit comes with twin rods, but the Ivo car only had single torsion bars.

I was able to secure a 3-D printed distributor that was the perfect size for the hemi. It came pre-drilled so doing the ignition wires was a dream. The fuel lines for Ivo’s car were solid pipe rather than braided hose, a feature of the era. A Pro-Tech barrel valve and hex fittings along with home-made fuel junction boxes completed the fuel system.

There were no painting instructions, so I checked in Ivo’s book and saw, like the box art the car was reddish/orange in color so I shot it with an orange base coat and covered that with Candy Apple red. It looked right, but unfortunately many of the decals disappeared when applied because of either thin-color layers or I applied a wrong color. The engine was treated with some Tamiya Panel Line Accent color and the bright chrome was painted with Tamiya Smoke to dull it down a bit. After all that it was dusted with some silver weathering.

After it was completed I also noticed that the unique tail section of the car, as molded was considerably taller than the real car. The kit body sits almost as high as the top of the rear slicks when it really should have been molded to come up to the height of the rear wheels, if not slightly lower. Still, great to have the kit back on the store shelves and it makes fine addition to my dragster history.