Sponsors, and successes on the track at that level, were few and far between, but his perseverence earned him the respect of the big names of the day, such as Petty, Roberts, Turner... I've heard that Petty even gave him a complete truck and trailer rig in the late 60's to help him out. (Not sure how true that is, however...)
Wendell never made a lot of money in stock car racing, just $180,000 in 500 starts. He collected a lot of trophies in his racing career, but Wendell's only big time win was a NASCAR race at Jacksonville, Fla., on Dec. 1, 1963. It's a simple wooden monument only a couple of feet high. It's also the reminder of a race Wendell won but was not given the honor of celebrating until a month after the race had ended. Buck Baker had been given the victory even though he finished in second place. It's said Wendell was not given the win because of all the racial tensions of the era. Wendell won the race, but the flagman didn't drop the checkered flag until Buck Baker raced by. NASCAR officials finally admitted a month later that Scott indeed was the winner.
By then, of course, Baker had already received the trophy, the glory and all the fanfare. Wendell demanded his prize money and was awarded a plain wooden trophy with no brass nameplate, or nothing to reveal its history or origin. With this incident and other frustrations resulting from racial prejudice, Wendell had every reason to quit racing and return to his shop in Danville. Instead, he continued doing what he enjoyed most - driving race cars.
His story even inspired a movie, Greased Lightning, starring Richard Pryor.
I felt that one of his cars would be a good addition to my collection, and was elated when YESTERDAY'S came out with a sheet for his cars. However, I had spotted a neat Scott car in the old "Masters of Racing" card series issued about 1991 or so that I'd recently acquired.
It was a circa 1972 Torino. I have been totally unsuccessful in finding any other pix of this car, and from FORTY YEARS OF STOCK CAR RACING, it would appear this is the 1971 Torino that Wendell ran in 1972. In 1970-71, he appeared to be still running a '69 Torino.
When the ProModeler 1970 Torino Cobra came out several months back, followed by the Polar Lights 1969 Torino stockers, everything I needed seemed to be falling together. Only problem was the numbers and names on this car were a different colour from any on the YESTERDAY's sheet. That I solved by scanning the sheet, recolouring as needed, and preparing and printing my own graphics on the trusty old ALPS printer.
Aha! Let the building begin!
Then I took a closer look at the Scott car, and realized this was NOT the Cobra body style, but the more mundane coupe body. What to do? Just build it anyway? (nope..)
Find an original AMT promo, and NASCARize it? (Tried that, never tracked one down; not even sure they existed.)
Sacrifice an original MPC Purolator Merc for the roof line?? (I considered that, and almost had myself convinced, then I noticed the rear quarters were all wrong...whew!!)
Ultimately, I shelved the idea, just before Christmas. Then, in Toledo in March, I noticed a 1971 Mercury Cyclone resin kit at Ray Parsons' (R&R Vacuumcraft) booth...
Hmmm, that looks familiar! Would it? Could it??
After pawing it and coming back to it two or three times, I shelled out the 35 bucks, and brought it back to Oshawa.
I started out by building up the PL chassis, so I could check the fit as I went along. The R&R body was a plop-fit on the chassis - a promising start. Then it was time to perform some surgery and engineer a Torino Coupe from the resin Cyclone kit, and the ProModeler Cobra.
My first thought was to simply cut off the front clips of the Cobra and the Cyclone, and glue the Cobra snout onto the resin Cyclone body, but it was not that simple, due to a distinctive featureline on the Torino that carried from the front fenders through the doors, fading away just in front of the rear wheelwells. This made it necessary to chop the body aft of the doors, yet keep the roofline by chopping through the base of the A-pillars on both bodies. Click Here to see a more detailed step-by-stepper on the body mods.
Once I had the bodywork done, I completed the buildout of the PL chassis, adding the wheels, and rear suspension. I had to fiddle these a bit to get everything centred in the wheelwells, but generally, once the bodywork was done, and new decals printed, this became a pretty routine buildup.
My take on the Polar Lights kit:
I'm glad we have a kit representing the state of the art in NASCAR in the late '60's/early '70's, but compared to offerings from other kit makers, this one has a vague feel to it, with poor identification of locating points, some imprecise fits, and serious warpage, had I planned to use the kit body. Face it, we would scream bloody murder had AMT or Revellogram executed a kit at this level. But, it is workable, and opens a whole bunch of new modelling doors, and we need another kit maker for variety, so I'll still be adding more of these to my shelves... and I'm still hot for that Petty car later this year! (PL and I are still in the honeymoon phase... )
The R&R kit is in an analagous place among resin makers. Not the best out there, not being up to Modelhaus or Perry's quality level, but workable, attractively priced, and Ray has a HUGE line of product. Unfortunately, he only sells through shows around Eastern USA, no website, no email, no catalog that I know of, no adverts...
The PL chassis was built box stock, with only addition being plug wires, and rollcage padding, cut from lengths of insulated wire with the copper core removed, and slit lengthwise to slip over the bars.
When converting the Cobra snout, I had to grind off the factory hood scoop, and fill in and sand until I had just a normal flat hood, no scoops, no grabbers... Plastic was ground away with a drum sander in my Dremel tool, then I used my fave concoction, crazy glue and baking soda, as a filler, followed by primer, and final imperfection fills with TAMIYA putty.
The car is all one colour, the best match I found to my single reference source picture was a touchup aerosol, a match to Ford's 1979-1984 Lt Medium Blue 3F, that I spotted in a clearance bin in Canadian Tire.
Once all the painting was done, decals were added. As I indicated above, I made the numbers by scanning and recolouring a YESTERDAY'S sheet, including reshaping the roof decal, based, believe it or not, on the left door decal! The "427 CI" on the hood was scanned from a JNJ sheet, and also recoloured, and outlined in white. The contingency decals were from SLIXX, JNJ, and YESTERDAY'S. Baremetal was grudgingly applied as needed (I love the effect, but hate the application process...), and the excellent DETAILMASTER hood pins sets were used.
An accident at Talladega Superspeedway in 1973 ended Wendell's career. During the next 18 years until he died, Wendell ran his auto repair shop. In 1999, Wendell was elected to the International Motorsports Hall of Fame, along with Alain Prost, Gordon Johncock, Harry Hyde, and, fittingly, Louise Smith, another pioneer of NASCAR diversity. Pretty good company!
The Actual Car:
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