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Wanted: Early '90's Chrysler LeBaron model kit or die cast collectible. Please contact me here. Check out Les Smirles Mr. NASCAR's Neighbourhood for some great models and NASCAR modelling resources.
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Stock Car ModelsI have been building models since I was a boy. Many of them I have lost over the years and I have a whole cupboard full of the ones broken during one of my moves (my fault, big tears). These are some of my best, all of which I have built in the early '90's. They are placed on the page in the order that I built them and I have tried to include the information which makes each of them significant to me.
My wife gave me a set of three models, Richard Petty, Ernie Irvan's Kodak car (below) and Sterling Marlin's Maxwell House car for Christmas several years ago and renewed my love of modelling. This car obviously meant a lot to me and I hope the time and care I put into it show. I spent many hours filling in the grooves where the nose and tail pieces meet the body with putty. Fill, sand, prime.... fill, sand, prime .... fill, sand, prime. There is nothing glamorous about this stuff. The body is brush painted and I mixed the colours by eye. I never masked or drew the line between red and blue. I knew this paint scheme so well I could have done it with my eyes closed. The white decalling washed out so badly on the red and blue that I painted over it again with white to make it stand out better. Once all of the detailing was done I gloss coated the entire body, including the windows. I highly recommend this as it seals the decals forever and makes dusting much easier.
The detailing of this car was pretty straight forward, but I like it for it's simplicity. It has always been a very distinctive car in my opinion. This one was sprayed, straight from a Testors spray can because it is all one colour. I have never had any success with masking and that is why I hand paint most of my models.
Like the STP car, this one is brush painted and was done without masking. The dayglo green was toned down with white until it looked right. Typically I use Testors paint. The one thing that disappointed me about this model, and the one below, is the way the decalling washes out against the black. I never felt confident enough that I would improve it by going over it with paint. If I had these two to do over again I would paint the car white, apply the decals and then paint around them. If you are not extremely patient the results could be disastrous but I have done this several times since then with good success.
I don't have to explain to a NASCAR fan why this one is a favourite. I've never felt right about seeing anyone else in this car since Davey Allison died.
I built this one because I am a Michael Waltrip fan. If you look closely you will notice that there is no name above the window, that is because it is actually a Neil Bonnet model. I never realized this until after Neil died at Daytona in 1994 but unfortunately I had thrown out the decals.
Bar none - The best looking car in Winston Cup. Terry Labonte's Kellogg's Lumina
Mark Martin's bird. When I started this one I considered applying all of
the decals first but I didn't relish having to paint blue around the word
Valvoline. I
sprayed the white and brushed the blue on this one, but when I decalled it I was so
disgusted with how badly the red and blue decals, not to mention the blue paint, bled
through the numbers that I put the whole thing back on the shelf and never touched it for
a year. Finally this winter I went over the numbers and lettering with white paint and
finished it off. I recommend using a very small brush and caution anyone who tries this
style to not get carried away with getting to the absolute edge of the lettering. Once it
is gloss coated and put on a shelf behind glass you will not see any flaws in the
lettering. The mission is to improve the effect, if you try too hard you will undoubtedly
go over the lines sooner or later. I've been looking for an oil paint eraser for a while
but haven't found one yet. |
What, you don't recognize this one? Well it never ran NASCAR but it did a respectable job in CASCAR. This car is special to me because I lettered the real thing too. It was my fathers car. It was home built, like all of his cars were, and was finished at 3:00 am on the morning of it's first race on the road course at Mosport. I was actually lettering this car as the crew worked around me. We rolled it on the trailer with the paint still wet. In it's maiden run it qualified second and finished second.
This one is all one colour but I had to brush paint it too in order to get the true colour. Grabbar blue is just a shade darker than Petty blue and more brilliant. I always thought it made a nice race car - simple like Rusty's old black and yellow Miller car, or the Kodak car. Like the real thing, I lettered this model free hand. The trunk lid presented a challenge as the text was long sort of scrolled from one end to the other. As anyone who has worked with lettering this small will know - you only get one shot. The black spot on the right side door is an exhaust port. The rules in most short track classes call for the exhaust to be above the frame rails as opposed to below in a Cup or Busch car.
This is what modelling is all about to me. This started out as Bobby Hamilton's Country Time Olds, but I wanted to be more true to the real car so I altered it extensively. The square housings ahead of the rear wheels, as well as the raised passenger side floor were constructed out of a cigarette package and glued together. The fuel cell area is closed off from the rest of the car by a piece attached to the body. The radiator and shroud were also handmade from cardboard but they are also part of the body. I have no idea how much time I have in this model or some of the other short track cars I have built but I find altering the kits to this degree very rewarding.
Another example of why the model companies need to use more opaque decals. I could improve the numbers but the Goodwrech decals looked a little too challenging, so I left it, but this was the last time I will ever paint a dark car before I decal it, or gloss coat it without going over all of the decals with a brush.
Dale Jarret's Interstate Batteries Lumina is the first car that I did by painting it all white and then applying the stripe and numbers first. Since I don't use masking tape, I couldn't for the life of me see how I was going to get the break between the green and white in the right place. I wouldn't change anything about this one.
Does anyone else have this one in their collection? When I think of Dave Marcis, I see this car in my mind. The JUST MARRIED sign on the car is for real. It wasn't Dave's big weekend, but rather a couple of honeymooners who went to Daytona and wanted to do something memorable so they gave Dave some money for a "limited sponsorship" and this was the result. I also wanted to build this car because in the off season of that particular year my Dad built a Pontiac for a guy who raced in our area and of course it was painted blue. It was #71 and I styled the numbers just like these. No big deal?? I hadn't seen Daves' new car yet ! The previous year he was still using the block numbers found even on his old K&K insurance Dodges. Imagine my surprise when Daytona came around. I've been a Marcis fan ever since.
I know, I know, but I don't have to like the driver to think the car belongs in my collection. I want to do one of geoff bodine's Car too, but it will have the right side all caved in and be covered with cement dust. Ironically, this is one of the models that I am most proud of . The numbers, stripes and DuPont logos were all put on the car before the blue and red were painted on. The effect, I think, is striking, especially when you compare it to some of the others on this page. I had lot's of opportunities to screw up the decals on this one. There are nine coats of red paint on this car to get the dayglo effect I was looking for. Don't worry about brush strokes marks. Keep your paint thin, don't try to correct wet paint, and seal everything with a gloss coat spray. |
