Here are our phantom racer entries. Please take a good look at each of them and prepare to vote for your overall favorite.
NEW ENTRY:
Michael Graeber
Salt Lake Viper
The base kit is an AMT Viper RT/10 with many low-drag bodywork modifications. Details include Moon Disc wheel covers from Sakatsu, Mooneyes decals from Slixx, and custom "Eye" decals printed on an Alps printer.
Trevor Taylor
VW Bug Streamliner
I started by chopping the roof off the Beetle and creating a tonneau cover in sheet plastic. The tail extension was made with the front end of a Porsche 996 and the headrest was created from a Tamiya 936 scoop. The whole mess was blended with lots of putty and sanded until it hurt. The interior was given a basic racer look with parts box bits. Paint it all silver, add some simple Germanic looking sponsor decals pillaged from a Shell 962, and you have a pseudo 30's silver arrow.
Jim McCall
Roush Ford Escort IMSA GTO, 1995
Imagine if you will, given Fords success with the Cosworth Escort Rally car, that Jack Roush decided to build one for the 1995 Rolex 24? What if Audi and Group 44 had not been so dominant leading to IMSA banning AWD cars? What if the Roush drivers were Dorsey Schroeder, Mark Martin and Bill Elliott? What if Roush secured Budweiser's sponsorship for the car in IMSA's GTO class?
Yeah, a lot of what if's and imagine that, but Dorsey was a Roush driver at the time, and both Martin and Elliott drove one of his Mustangs at the Daytona 24 hour race before. I have been told that the Escorts did race in Europe on road courses, but not here in IMSA competition.
Anyway, here is my take on the Phantom race car. Take one Tamiya Escort kit, a set of rims from the Tamiya Focus kit, add a set of Cady Bud decals and a bunch of sponsor decals from a deep box, paint it Testors Italian red and here you are! Basically box stock with a little kit bashing for the electrical boxes and battery case from a Revell T/A Mustang kit, a simple scratch built splitter from .015 sheet, some S&S window net and a photo etch rear tow hook.
This was a blast to build. Certainly the quickest build in a long time. After a couple of aborted starts on two other projects for the theme, this sucker got finished last night!!
My great thanks to my wife Barb and her great computer skills this evening. She saved me from pulling what little hair I have out getting the digital photos done. All in all it was fun.
Rob Mepham
Raid VW Bug/Porsche, "And they wondered why . . ."
The Bug is assembled from two Revell kits and some scratchbuilding. A snap-tite Bug for the body, a Porsche GT1 for floorpan and suspension, a parts box V6 engine, scratchbuilt fender flares, other aero aids, and engine intake system.
Major sponsor markings were masked off and airbrushed, minor markings from the spares box.
Mike Stucker
Tucker Torpedo LM-GTP
Photos by Marc Havican
The Car
You remember the 1948 Tucker Torpedo. Rear-engined (an air-cooled flat-six, just like a Porsche except it was from a helicopter) safety vehicle created by Preston Tucker. Only 51 were built before the government, in cahoots with the major car companies and various mysterious cabals, shut the Tucker Corporation down.
Skip forward to 1998. Entrepreneurs are ready to relaunch the Tucker marque and are looking for a way to make a big splash on the international automotive scene. What better way than to field a prototype racer in the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
Within 12 months the project is put together, designed, built, and on the track for qualifying. With a veteran Italian sportscar racer, Giovanni Lavaggi, and two American CART racers, Alex Baron and Memo Gidley, signed, the team expected to make a good showing. Alas, it was not to be. Mechanical problems kept the Torpedo LM-GTP from turning any competitive laps in qualifying, which is why you've never seen it before.
Unfortunately, the failure of the Le Mans project caused the loss of a lot of money, very little positive publicity, irate investors, a replay of the government investigation of 50 years earlier, and the demise of the company.
The Model
The idea for this 1/24th scale model came to me the first time I saw a photo of the slammer Testors' Jimmy Flintstone Triclopz custom car kit, which is based on a '48 Tucker Torpedo. My first thought was "Le Mans racer". I decided that the major sponsor on the car had to be Jagermeister, because it had to have been dreamed up by someone drinking an awful lot of the stuff. Plus, I figured it would look good in orange.
1999 was chosen as the race year because, well, that was the latest year I had Le Mans decals for. The drivers were chosen, again, because that's what I had. (I am a big fan of Gidley, though.)
The only actual modifications to the Tryclopz body were the adding of the roof scoop and using putty to fill in some panel lines (to convert the car from a 4-door into a 2-door).
Parts List
Testors' Model Master Jimmy Flintstone Tryclopz - body, chassis plate, and headlights.
Tamiya Porsche 911 GT1 - roof scoop, rear wing, tires, wheels, brakes, diffuser, tow hooks, and mirrors.
Revell Champ Car - wing supports.
Taillights came from the parts box, exhausts are cut from aluminum tubing, and the antennas are made from wire.
Paints used - Black Gold Tangelo Pearl, Tamiya TS-14 black, Humbrol Flat Black (grill), and a mixture of Alclad Magnesium & Chrome (windows). Clearcoated with Future Floor Wax.
Decals are from Tamiya, Revell, Patto's Place, Colorado Decals, Auto World, Scale Motorsports, Microscale, and Earl Ma.
Gary McNutt
Pontiac Club de Mer Le Mans 1956
Mystery Pontiac found in Carriage House
Michigan. Executors of the late Edgar Crowley estate found a surprise in the carriage house behind his home. Crowley, a retired General Motors engineer, had lived in the home since childhood and sometime in the 1950s had squirreled away a rare prototype Pontiac, the Club de Mer. The car had been featured in the 1956 GM Motorama as a dream car but as found looks more like a racecar complete with painted on numbers. The car is in remarkably original condition as Crowley took great pains to preserve the car both mechanically and cosmetically.
Interviews with surviving Pontiac employees reveal this fascinating tale. It was 1956 and Pontiac was developing a performance image for 1957 with its fuel injected stock cars and AAA speed trials. Word leaked out that Chevrolet was preparing the Corvette SS for Sebring and Pontiac's Pete Estes was inflamed, sending word down to engineering to catch-up and counter the Chevrolet sport car effort. The answer was the Club de Mer. The good news was that it was just coming off the show circuit and featured a dual four-barrel 300hp V8 along with a de Dion rear suspension.
The bad news was the choice of tires. The Club de Mer stylists used 13-inch tires to achieve its low profile of 38 inches. None of the tire manufacturers made a suitable 13-inch racing tire so adapting the prototype for larger tires was a time consuming hurdle which delayed the track testing of the "Club." The delay was just enough to push the racing development into the death grip of the infamous 1957 Automobile Manufacturing Association ban on racing. The Club de Mer never turned a wheel in competition.
How Edgar Crowley took possession of the Club de Mer will remain a mystery. His executors plan to offer the unique vehicle at a major collector car auction with the proceeds going to Crowley's designated charities, as he left no heirs. For Pontiac fans, it is another case of what might have been.
Dale W. King
Porsche Type 1003 Twin Turbo V-8 Spyder
At the end of the 1990s the Porsche factory was secretly working on a new replacement for its 911 GT1. This was in the form of an LMP 900 Spyder with either a twin turbo V-8 or V-10. The car was built and tested at the Weissach track by, among others, Bob Wolleck. It was found to be lightning fast and considering Porsche's history of near bullet-proof machines was thought to be a favorite for the likes of Le Mans. At this point, in stepped the corporate 'bean counters' who terminated the program in favor of their upcoming SUV, the 'Cayenne.' How this was allowed to happen at Porsche no one knows for sure. It was, in my and many others' opinion, totally wrong.
Porsche's entire history is based on racing. At any rate the car lay hidden from public view until it was finally acquired by Champion Racing in Florida, U.S.A. Porsche and Champion have high hopes for the car in 2002. All this is true up until the "Champion" part. Hey, what's imagination for if you can't daydream a bit.
The model started out as Tamiya's 1/24th scale Toyota GT-One. Not much is left of the original body. The front and rear of the model were chopped off and the sides 're-paneled' with sheet styrene. The tip of the nose and headlight area, plus the engine cover from the rear of the cockpit on back, were created out of Renshape. Patterns were made for the new head and tail lights and heated clear plastic pulled over them to form new covers. The area directly in front of the cockpit and the roll bar were pounded out of K&S sheet aluminum. The air intakes for the brakes and turbos were completely revised and carbon fiber decal was used everywhere that was appropriate including the interior and engine bay.
I modified the exterior of the engine a little - I figure if you can rebadge an Audi and call it a Bentley then why not a Toyota to a Porsche? Seemed OK to me. The model was painted using Tamiya spray can pure white. It was then decaled, clear coated (again Tamiya spray paint) and rubbed out with Semichrome and Novus polish. The color 'swashes' were, for the most part, hand cut from color decal sheet. The lettering was borrowed from several different Champion decal sets with the exception of the "P 900" and the "www.champion-motors.com" which were done for me by Lindley Ruddick on his Alps printer.
