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NASCAR MODELS by MR NASCAR Ted Musgrave's 2002 SIRIUS Chrome Intrepid

Ted Musgrave was one of those WINSTON CUP drivers you could call a "footsoldier"; in a stage play he would be in the "supporting cast"; second string defensive tackle in the NFL (allstar in the CFL... but I digress...). He came into WINSTON CUP in 1990, running 4 races; 2 in his own car, and 2 for D.K. Ulrich. He obviously made the right impression, and Ulrich took him on for the full season in 1991 in the #55 car, giving Bobby Hamilton a good run for Rookie of the Year, with Jasper Engines coming on board as the sponsor in mid season. For the next 2 years, the Jasper car with Ted Musgrave was a fixture among the midpack runners, with 3 top 5's, 5 top 10's and an average finish of around 20th... how midpack can you get?

Jack Roush must have seen some potential there and' in 1994, he put Ted in the #16 Family Channel Ford, where he soldiered on until the last third of the 1998 season, still a consistent midpacker, although there were a few more top 5's and 10's. Roush was looking for more, and Ted was gone after the 1998 Watkins Glen race, picking up assortrd rides and finishing out the season in the Bill Elliott-owned First Plus car. 1999 saw him in the Rahilly-owned 75 car, with more midpack results - 2 top 10's and an average finish of 26.5.. the slippery slope was winning...

In 2000, he started with Joe Bessey's Power Team, gone by midseason to Felix Sabates' #01 BellSouth Team - average finish 25th... hangin' in...but only running 18 races... 2001, only one race, and then 2002, five races, four of them with the Jim Smith 07 Sirius Dodge. One more race in 2003, and Ted's WINSTON CUP days were over... But don't feel too sorry for ol' Teddy, he has had a great career in trucks... why, didn't he just win the Championship in '05? Only to have the Chamionship team fold its tent?... In the immortal words of Kurt Vonnegut Jr: "...and so it goes..."

The model you see here is the car he raced at The Brickyard in 2002, that had a special chrome finish on it. (The regular car in the other three races were merely silver...) The graphics are kind of a joint effort.. a 1/64th modeller, Eric Sing, had a chrome Intrepid he didn't know what to do with. He contacted me with a nice set of graphics considerately done in 1/24th scale for both the chrome and the silver versions. (slight diffeence in secondary sponsors, and letter colouring); all that was missing were the side swoops. His offer was if I could cobble those up, and send him some complete 1/64th decals, we could add these to the 3 Amigos stable. Sounded good! It took some doing (I hadn't yet begun to dabble in CorelDraw) but finally a few months back, I was able to send him his decals, and added this to my "should-build-some-day" list. Decided to tackle it early in the New Year... Lo and behold... I had no "original" Intrepid kits left! Only the 2004 ones on my shelf! After checking out local hobby shops and Group 25 members, with no luck... I ended up picking a couple up off eBay... kits weren't too pricey but shipping to Canada.. jeez...

I decided it would be cool to do the chrome version, so set about trying to figure out how to "chrome" the body... Wasn't interested in sending it out... thought about printing giant foil blocks on decal paper and applying it to the whole body... couldn't be any worse that the 24 Starwars car... but finally decided to try the Aerosol approach. I had an old can of Chrome bumper paint, that I sprayed out over a scrap body.. looked real good, but it was thick, peely, and easily scuffed.

Finally, after playing around thinning some of the chrome sprayed into an airbrush bottle, I got something that got me pretty excited (left). Body was primed with grey PlastiKote primer, then shot with black lacquer. I then sanded and polished it to be ultra smooth and applied the "Chrome" thru my airbrush. I realized early on that it would likely be disasterous to clearcoat this as the clear would likely disorient the flakes, and I'd lose the "chrome" effect. I also let the body sit for about two weeks before decalling to see if the chrome effect would die back as it shrank more on curing, but it seemed pretty stable.

Decal application was simple - I started with the "swoops" and then everything else was straighforward. Eric had even included accurate contingencies for the Indy version. The only fly in the ointment was that no matter how carefully I handled it it seemed to lose some of the chrome effect. It might have been the effect of my handling it during decal application, or the water from the decals... or maybe it woulda happened anyway, just took more than two weeks... but the chrome effect is diminished on the finished model. Still better than silver paint, but not what I'd hoped for... I shoulda foiled the whole durned thing...

But all in all. it's a pretty neat car, and NOT one you'll find many references for. I had nothing in hardcopy, ended up using a few shots provided by Eric that mostly came from Jayski's site.

Ted's results in the Brickyard pretty much mirrored his career accomplishments.. 36th place start, 21st place finish... no laps led... but hey, he hung in at the top level for over 10 years!