One day when you nerds were probably eating tuna sandwiches in your mom's basement or maybe watching fake judge courtroom trash tv, I found this goofy thing at the local Fret Mexer for a low low price. The louver work on the hood would look nice on a fenderless highboy, but when I got the thing home, I realized the chassis is part of the fenders. So I decided to build a fendered jalopy, and switched the big-and-littles out for Firestones and pie crust slicks (if you don't know me by now...) I dechromed the steelies and valve covers with Eazyofff and started in on assembling the thing. Here is the first mockup, you will be updated on a need-to-know basis................Mr. Red Primer
Cool eighties treatment of the iconic mid-fifties Chevy- I like how the bumpers are body color in the cover photos, can't stand the Flashdance decals though. This one would be cool done up as one of the Two Lane Blacktop cars- glad it has Revell's eighties tires instead of those chintzy seventies two-piece ones...
It sounded crazy to me too, but easy off really does go to work on some enamel or chrome while leaving the styrene underneath undisturbed. Just to make sure I wasn't crazy, I ran it past Emil who agreed the stuff is absolutely poison but works great as a stripper for chrome especially. These rims can now be painted an enamel color to hit with the color schemes of the car they end up on...
This one is straight out of my child hood- we used to look at the original car through the window of George Barris' showroom / custom shop down in The Valley of L.A. Somewhere I have snapshots we made at the time.
I was crazy about anything with a skull or skeleton: Lil' Coffin, Rommel's Rod, Jolly Roger and this one. I fumbled through the assembly of my own personal Boot Hill Express, fogging up the clear parts with too much Testors and messing up the most delicate parts.
It was thrilling to find a mint eighties version of the thing in impeccable shape, special thanks goes to Emil. The thing is molded in yellow and chrome, with great tires: in fact the pie crust slicks on the rear rims have white wall inserts that are played down in the cover photos of this re-press, but must have been super hot back in '61 or whenever they built the first version of this creepy rod. I remember being freaked out in a cool way when my folks told me the car was a cowboy hearse, and what a hearse was....
It would be a special challenge to carefully build this thing, done up in gold enamel with wide white wall slicks and a diorama behind it. Boot Hill Express will set next to the Lil' Stogey Death Valley Dragger Wagon quite nicely.........
Mr. Red Primer AUTUMN SHEDULE 2012
