By 1966, Lee Roy had established himself as a hard charger, who tended to tear up equipment, much in the way of Junior Johnson before him. In '66, still moving up the pecking order, he was driving for Jon Thorne, a Chrysler dealer out of Georgia. Lee Roy had two wins, but a major win on a superspeedway had eluded him until he brought the big Purple Charger into Charlotte in October of 1966, for the National 500. For the first time, he had the combination to outlast the field, winning easily in what was the class of the field, once Cale Yarborough was sidelined in his Fairlane with wheel bearing problems. It was Lee Roy's first big win, and owner Jon Thorne's first win.
The model pictured here represents the car as it was configured for that October race. This was not a well-known machine to me, and researching it was as interesting as the building process. I had seen a shot of a purple Charger in the Blue Glen book, "Chrysler Corporation Stock Car Racing Stable of the Late 1960's", but the number was obscured.
I finally came across a shot of the car in "Forty Years of Stock Car Racing", then was able to track it back to the March 1967 issue of STOCK CAR RACING. By then I was confident I had enough info to reproduce the car as it ran in that race. There is no substitute for good research material!
I started, of course, with the recent REVELL 1967 Charger. Altho the race car is technically a 1966, by the time you make all the modifications to the 1967 for the track, it is identical to the '66, as the only differences between them were in trim, and that was not a consideration here.
This was also my 2001 project car for the club I belong to, Group 25, out of Toronto. We ended up with about 15 different Chargers, of which at least 4 were various stockers from the era! You can see them all at the Group 25 Website. I dechromed the tops of the fenders, cut away the inner fender liners, and drilled a hole in the left rear quarter for the gascap, filled in a couple of blemishes, but other than that, the body was pretty well stock.
The chassis was a bit more problematic. I started with the basic floorpan of the REVELL kit, and built up a rollcage that matched the contours of the body. From the pic on the right, I added cross braces in the dashboard area, and a hoop tied to the front subframe, intstalled AFTER the body was in place, thru holes in the front stock firewall. I added a rear bulkhead and reinforcing bars, and called it complete. Engine was the stock unit from the kit, with the drag option headers. Since I was mostly after semi-curbside, I did not get into extensive detailing of the engine compartment or chassis.
Took a bit of playing to get the stance correct. I added spacers to the rear springs, and raised the front spindles to get the wheels up into the fenderwells. The wheel and tire combo are from Perry's Resin, the only source I know of for treaded NASCAR tires for this era. They also are beefy enuff to fill out the fender openings as seen in period pictures.
I cracked my last aerosol can of original PLUM CRAZY METALLIC from Canadian Tire for this one. It was likely older than at least one of my kids, but it sprayed fine, with some coaxing under the hot water tap...
I made the decals by scanning and tweaking numbers from a JNJ mid-80's BUD decal, and made up the Jon Thorne lettering for the decklid in WORD, using WORDART, scanned it and reworked it in Photoshop to fit into the required area. All was printed up on my trusty (kind of, but that's another stoooory..) ALPS printer. First opportunity I'd had to use gold metallic, results were great. The contingency decals were supposed to come from Yesterday's great vintage sheet, but I'd misplaced mine, so ended up using those in the new Richard Petty '70 Superbird "Stock Car" from Revell. What a lame concept to recycle a mold!... but I digress... (At least it's good for SOMETHING....)
After decals had had a couple days to dry, I dusted on several LIGHT coats of TAMIYA TS13 clear, also heated first under the hot water tap, then buffed it all out to a showcar shine using Turtle brand wax/polishing compound. Ol' Jon likely never had a car with a shine like this one!
Final step was to add the hoodpins, using DetailMaster's excellent pieces, and to make up some suitably brawny-looking exhausts from aluminum tubing. Once all was together, I faced the soul-deadening task of applying Baremetal, but it came out real good.
Lee Roy went on to become a star in the ever-increasingly popular series, but his last start was in 1972, a career ended much too abruptly by illness and wrecks. He had entered 198 races, and won 14.
In his final years, Lee Roy had severe mental illness and died in 1984, under supervised care. A sad ending for a great racer. One wonders if, knowing what we know now about concussions and their potential for damage, he was a victim of one too many excursions into the wall in sub-par equipment over the years....
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