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SHORT TRACK MODELS by Rod McLeod Joy Fair's 1975 Mustang Late Model

decals by BULLRING GRAPHIX!

Most of his cars were school bus yellow and carried the number 1. The cars were generally not show cars but they all had that unique Fair look and most competitors knew it best from the rear view.

This mid-sixties bodied Mustang is a typical example. It followed after the 1974 season when Joy ran a four-door Maverick. There is a model of the Maverick on Mr. NASCAR’s site by Jim Hehl who also provided the reference material and the inspiration for this car. Click here to link to it..

The starting point was an AMT 66 Mustang body that was stripped from an old build that I found on the vendor’s tables at our club contest. Little did I know that the nice copper paint was a second paint job and it took lots of dunking to get the blue underneath removed as well.

After the body was stripped the wheel wells and front fenders were cut to match the reference pics. The real car looked more like a modified than a Late Model with the exhaust out the fenders and must have been quite a sight amid the throng of mid-70s Camaros that made up most of the field in those days.

I drilled holes in the body where I removed the door handles and the trunk key opening. The hood scoop is from the 69 Torino with some filing to get the shape closer and it is mounted backwards. I cut an opening in the hood for the breather that came from the Model King Vega Modified and it all fit quite nicely.

The bumpers were dechromed because I needed to remove the “nerf” bars in the stock Mustang pieces. I painted these with a can of Alclad spray over a gloss black bass and was quite pleased with the result.

The chassis underneath is an AMT T-Bird Winston Cup with the rear clip cut down and replaced by a more accurate one made from Evergreen rectangular tubing. The chassis and rear end both had to be narrowed to fit under the Mustang body but the wheelbase was unchanged as the front fender cuts left lots of room. The kit cage was going to take a lot of work to make it fit but I found one from an old MPC Camaro kit that fit very nicely so I used that.

The headers were made by swapping the T-Bird kit headers side to side and turning them upside down. I heated them with a candle and bending until I had something that came out of the fender at the right angle. I made side pipes from Evergreen tubing with a single upward bend at one end to match the headers. Both were painted with a colour I mixed up from red and dark brown paint to a shade that looked like the red oxide heat paint on the real car.

A window net was made from some mesh, strips of white medical tape, a length of a straight pin and a buckle made of a scrap of Evergreen. In the early days of window nets it was common for the nets to be fixed at the top of the cage and buckled/hooked at the bottom. No mounting kits were provided so you pretty much had to come up with a bracket yourself. Reference pics showed that Fair’s was done this way, so I attached it to the roof with some Crystal Clear white glue.

The decals were pretty simple to draw and Les did his usual fine job on the printing. I also have a set on hand for the 1976 car that had the same chassis and 342 stroker motor under a 1969 Mustang body with aluminium Camaro bumpers. But that is a whole different project."

(Note from Mr NASCAR: Rod is a fellow Canuck, short track enthusiast, and one of the NASCARphiles in GROUP 25... He is the "Resident Artiste" for BULLRING GRAPHIX)

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