Cool race car names!

[Michael Beard]

And in an aside for Michael Beard, I just rememberd that Patches was lettered with self-adhesive shelf paper. This was in the mid-sixties. What a pioneer, huh?

My uncle was an art teacher, and he taught me that trick. I lettered about a half a dozen cars with Con-Tac paper. I'd sketch the design out on the Con-Tac paper in pencil, spray paint it the main color(s) with those little cans of Testor hobby paint, then hand paint or airbrush details onto them. Then I had to cut the design out with scissors. Application was a tough process! It actually worked really good in the beginning, but after a few years, the quality of the material and the adhesive dropped significantly.

That's how I originally did my "Dust Devil II", along with "Miss Misery", "Turn Me Loose", and a few other cars that ran at Beaver Springs.


This photo was from shortly after I finally got brave enough to hand paint and airbrush the "Dust Devil" and the Taz directly on the door for the first time.