Falcon Ranchero Posted March 23 Posted March 23 Have to admit I am quite proud of this build. It all started back in August last year when I picked up AMT's '61 Galaxie kit for $40 at a St Ignace Hobby Shop. Early in September, I had built the car as some two-toned blue mild custom and dubbed it the "Sho Gal '61" but wasn't pleased with it. About a month ago I thought maybe i'd just switch to using the stock front end, and it didn't looks too bad, but I just could not get a pleased feeling out of the thing. That's when an outrageous idea occured. There's been quite a few Canadian Car Conversions I noticed being done on here, namely just making Acadians or Beaumonts out of Novas and Chevelles, but I could never find any Canadian Ford car conversions. So I figured, why not turn this Galaxie into a Meteor, the Canadian Fords of about 1946-'61. I compiled the custom parts from three kits (The '61 Galaxie, '64 Marauder, and '66 T-bird) in order to make the new grille and tailight treatments. As you can see in the below ad, there were quite some different styling ques going on. For the grille, I started with the mild custom grille that came with the '61 Galaxie kit; it has a few bars less than the actual Meteor grille, but it fit the bill. The custom headlight bezels (also '61 Galaxie kit) were cut in half, and then the trimmed custom tailights from the '66 T-bird were placed between them, and then a chrome vinyl star was cut out and placed in the center of each side. I had to cut the stock Galaxie grille off in order to use the stock bumper with the new Meteor grille. In the tailights I had used a custom piece from the Galaxie, cut the ends off, and glued them to a thicker chrome piece, and added little clear nubs for the backup lights. Had to put notches on the body of the car behind the tail fin so the Meteor chrome bars would fit in. Center of the rear, where the gas fill door is, I had cut out of the full custom rear end from the Galaxie, and put another chrome vinyl star. The actual tailights are just stock Galaxie. On the body of the car, the moulded side trim had to be sanded back to just a bit behind the doors on each side, and silver vinyl took care of the new Meteor trim that curves up higher on the door. No Montcalm script so on the doors I used some inconspicous Mercury scrpit decals from the '64 Maraduer to fill the space; they became quite transparent upon application. Hood and trunk I cut out individual M E T E O R letters and stuck them on. Hood ornament I found a random piece of glitter on the floor under the work table and thought what the heck, and it fits the bill. New interior colours, and some spotlights were also added. No fender ornamnets so in order to fill the holes in the body I took the cheap way out and just shaved down the Galaxie ornaments and glued them in before having the car sprayed. The colour for this build was inspired by a '61 Meteor Rideau that one of my Grandfather's hunting buddies had back in the day, visible behind another hunting buddy's '62 Rambler Classic at the local hunting grounds in circa 1970. And if you're curious about what I started with, it was this, Sept, 2024, and then the minor change this past February. 15
espo Posted March 23 Posted March 23 I have always liked seeing Canadian cars and trucks. Most of the styling reminds me of a mild custom approach to what I would normally see in the US. Like the grill and rear end changes along with the side trim. 1
Kah puts Posted March 24 Posted March 24 Nice Meteor, your skills are impressive, it looks like it’s ready to take off eh 🇨🇦 1
ncbuckeye67 Posted March 25 Posted March 25 All your hard work and effort really paid off. That's a beautiful conversion! 1
thatz4u Posted April 8 Posted April 8 great conversion, wish someone would print conversions for the 1960 1
Falcon Ranchero Posted April 8 Author Posted April 8 2 hours ago, thatz4u said: wish someone would print conversions for the 1960 I had the same thought of doing a '60, but yes someone would have to print the grille and tail panel for it since I didn't think I could use any existing custom parts like I did on this '61.
bh1701 Posted April 9 Posted April 9 An interesting subject. You did a great job capturing the look and feel of the real car. 1
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