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'64 Pontiac GTO S/FX Match Racer


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"GTO by Pontiac....for those who think young!".......

This is my interpretation of a famous "match racer" S/FX super stock drag car from my childhood, Arnie "the Farmer" Beswick's supercharged 1964 Pontiac GTO. Some claim this car is the first "door slammer" to do a 1/4 mile in under 10 seconds (and some say it was some other car....).  The base of this build was Revell's excellent 1/24 kit to which I added after-market 1/25 resin front wheels and a Hilborn fly-catcher injector as well as scratch-built headers, some PE linkage and a few odds-and-ends from my spares box.  Decals are from Slixx.  I can add additional details on this build if anyone's interested.  I'm in the process of building a collection of similar early 60's American super stock race cars which I hope to enter in the "collections" category in a hopefully future post-covid model contest. I have ten completed and another 12-14 in the queue! Thanks for looking!

John

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Exhaust headers scratch-built using 2 mm rosin-core solder. These are easier to do than I thought they would be.

 

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Scratch-built ladder type traction bars shown unpainted and dry-fitted which I'm still considering installing or replacing with better ones....these look a little big too big to me....what do you think?

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Cool stuff. I don't know what size those type of traction bars usually are but they don't look too big on the model to me. Paint 'm and stick 'm on I'd say. 

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Thanks JeroenS, I think I will go ahead with adding the challenging diagonal ladder “steps” and paint and mount these puppies. They’ll probably look a little smaller once they are painted a dark silver or black.

Thanks everyone for the compliments, I’ll keep building and posting as I make progress on my super stock collection.

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Nice Goat. You really have nailed the look.

The Halibrands up front look really good, who make them?

 

My early copies of Super Stock and Drag are worn thin from constant reading. The sixties on US dragstrips are one of my all time favourite era's for motorsport.

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Thanks Tony. The 15” Halibrands are from Speedcityresin.com, item # SC-38, $8 USD including inner rims. Expensive but worth it to get the right period look I think.

I agree with you about these early SS years, I think it’s partly nostalgia (first drag race I attended was in around ‘63 or ‘64 at Lions) but also the fact that some of these cars were sometimes very close to what one could buy from a dealer (particularly the Mopars). Modern drag racing pro stocks and funny cars do nothing for me but then that could just be my geezer age.

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My filing system is better than I thought.  No interior photos, but the ladder bars are shown.   I doubt you want to pull it apart now, but it had a beefier '57 Pontiac rear end and he used a slant pan Hydro to begin with, then a TH400.

 

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Edited by Six97s
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Thanks Six, yeh that’s the article I found on line after I was close to finish with this build. I try to research subjects (part of the fun of scale modeling) but in this case I got impatient and went ahead with best guesses, oh well, it’s all good fun accurate or not!  I painted and mounted the ladder bars, they look smaller/ more realistic in semi-gloss black.

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I’ve got a triple build going on the bench now, AMT’s really bad ‘65 Mustang AWB “funny car”, AMT’s  Grumpy’s Toy #1 ‘66 Nova A/S and the Moebius ‘s 65 Plymouth Melrose Missile Hemi SS. I’m enjoying trying to make a half-way acceptable FX cammer out of this toy-like Mustang model. 

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The ladder bars look a whole lot better in black John. There's a fair bit of Girder Bridge style  engineering used on these early cars and I think you have got the look right.

 

I've had a Dick Landy AWB car underway for more years than I want to remember. Seeing your build makes me want to dg it out and finally finish the thing.

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