22 replies to this topic

[stevefzr]

Hi Guys,

I want to restore two Hasegawa stockers, a '66 Chevy Impala and a '66 Buick Wildcat. I want to get decals so I can paint them like actual Nascar racers of the time. I've searched the web and can't find details anyone who raced either of these. Can anyone point me to some pictures of race cars, or better yet, tell me where I can get waterslide decals to suit?

Is there a place I can go to to find all the cars that raced in nascar over the years? I've found sites that list results and pole sitters by driver, but doesn't list the cars.

The other alternatives are to paint them like the box covers, or to get repros of the original decals. Again, can anyone point to a source for suitable decals for either option?

Here's some pics of the two cars:






Thanks,

Steve C

[stevphens]

Try old magazines. I googled "Stock Car Racing" magazine and found some back issues for sale going back as far as 1967.

[MG Brown]

Slotcars 4 U has the '65/'66 Impala decals, including the beautiful black and gold Bobby Allison driven Smokey Yunick machine.









I don't recall seeing the Buick race in NASCAR so get creative and make it a USAC racer or something?

[chaparrAL]

The Buick was still stuck with the nailhead engine while the others had new big blocks. As a child I saw lots of USAC races and no one ran Buicks there. Lots of left over 61-63 Pontiacs from the Factory days. Nascar tracks where bigger, so.......
My favorites were Dick Passmore and our local friend Buck Hinkle in.......Studebaker Larks!

[Steve Deiters]

Wasn't there some activity on the 'blog about the restoration of a 66-76 Chevly driven by Roy Mayne?

[John Streisguth]

I have a set of the #9 and #47 shown above if interested.

[Bruce Neasmith]

STEVE,
As you will have found out from earlier postings to your 'thread', if you search around, you will find plenty of 1966 Chevrolet Stocker pictures and decals . They were a prominent car used in racing a lot during 1966/67 . The same cannot be said about the 1966 Buick Wildcat. Just off hand, I don't remember ANY used in upper echelon USA Stockcar Racing. About the only Buick used in the Sixties, would have been cars like say, a '67 Buick GS 400, but no Riviera's or Wildcat's . So this means you can 'freestyle' your livery and paint on the Buick. Have a look at Patto's Website, he has a number of interesting Sixties era Decal and Sticker sets to choose from.

Part of NASCAR is a group of people who restore 'Vintage' Stockers. If you look up "Historic Grand National" Stock Cars on the 'Net' you will see lots of interesting pictures of authentically Restored Stockers .

In respect of Post # 3 above, ChaparrAL, I remember that Dick Passmore ran a Studebaker Gran Turismo Hawk without much success during the 1962-64 era. I don't think I remember his exploits or those of Buck Hinkle in Studebaker Larks. Can you fill me in with some brief info. I think Dick thought he had a winner with the Hawk, because of its aerodynamic bodylines and the fact that Andy Granatelli ran one at Bonneville in 1963 hitting 142 MPH through the traps in a Stock car, albeit, one fitted with an R2 package Paxton Supercharger (Studebaker owned Paxton back then).

BRUCE NEASMITH

[olskoolslotz]

That Hasegawa Impala body is a 1965 model year, three round tail lights per side.

The 1966 Impala tail lights were changed to a rectangular assembly on either side, about the only major difference. The AMT Impala's are 1966 models.

[TSR]

Both are hard to find slot car kits nowadays but Hasegawa also produced the bodies for their static kits.
Intact slot car kits are another matter, even in Japan or Australia where most were sold.
The third kit in the line is a Ford T-Bird seen below with the Chevy and the Buick.

[Bruce Neasmith]

PDL ,
Awww , where is the picture of the Boxlid for the Buick Wildcat. Did it slip off the radar in some sort of computer glitch? Seriously, thank you very much for puting up the great pictures of what would now be VERY rare unbuilt kits. These cars had well engineered chassis, but not very sophisticated, so you had to add some brass pans out to the edge of the bodies, if you wanted them to handle.

As you pointed out, these three (3) Hasegowa Stockers are it for full Slotcar kits, but I did hear from one guy that the Pontiac Bonneville that was part of the static kit range, was actually issued in a plastic bag with a header card and the slot interior as a 'replacement' body. In your travels, has this been found to be true? I do know that the other car in the static series, a Caddy, was never set up as a candidate for slotting.

And so from Japan, there were the three Tamiya Stockers and the three Hasegawa ones. I wonder whether that worked out on purpose!

BRUCE NEASMITH

[TSR]

Bruce,
here is the missing picture as well as the box cover for the static Impala kit. The other body kits in bags were marketed under a different name, like Wakamatsu or something like that! They not only were the 3 stockers but other models including a Cadillac 2-door coupe worthy of a 1966 New York pimp! Some came up on e-Pay a few years back and the LASCM got what they needed.

[Bruce Neasmith]

PDL ,
Thanks for uploading those two images and the extra information. I must say that I believe I have never before seen the original boxlid art work for the 'static' model Impala. For the time, I reckon they did a great job. I do have a couple of the slot Impalas as built up cars but alas, no box. I also do have one each of the Thunderbird and Wildcat each with their respective boxes as slotcars. Of course all the static kits have been rerun a couple of times but I am yet to see any of the "bodybag" versions that you speak of.

With your contacts, do you know if Tamiya will now be reissuing their three (3) Stockers as bodybags like they did their other cars?

BRUCE NEASMITH

[stevefzr]

Thanks to another slot blogger I'm sorted for the impala decals. I'll just scrounge and make what I can to do the wildcat like the box lid art.

Regards,

Steve C

[TSR]

With your contacts, do you know if Tamiya will now be reissuing their three (3) Stockers as bodybags like they did their other cars?

Bruce,
I have no commercial contacts anymore with any hobby company, so I would not know. However it sounds logical that they may want to do this, only if they have sufficient orders from their distributors... then again, business is not so good for kit companies so they might want to do it because a Yen is a Yen.

I am only interested in the real thing, so I am not even sure of which bodies they replicated so far.

I cannot remember the name applied to the 'body bags" containing the Hasegawa stockers, but it is something in four syllables, that begins with a "W", like "Wasihara" or something like that. Here is the 1966 Cadillac built from one of those kits:

[sub006]

Not exactly a Buick, but I remember seeing a FOUR-DOOR Oldsmobile running in the NASCAR Riverside 500 in 1966.  At the back of the pack.

 

Dan Gurney won as usual in a Ford.

[Rusty Pinion]

http://www.cyberwomb...model_notes.htm

 

Try here for more info

[MG Brown]

http://www.cyberwomb...model_notes.htm

 

Try here for more info

 

Unfortunately the list is out of date- notable in not including the Chrysler 300 and Hudson Hornet modeled by Moebius during the last year.

[Hworth08]

The pickings for Chevorlet is pretty thin from about 1964 till the early '70s. Something about an agreement with the Society of Automotive Engineers IIRC.

 

The factory pulled the plug and left only Smokey Yunick to cheat till the car would fall out of the race. Bobby Allison out thought the field and won a couple of races on super short tracks by out-handling cars with a 327 engine. I'm pretty sure the rules at that period were nine pounds of weight per cubic inch.

 

I'm thinking it was the late '70s, about the time of Laguna Seca when Chevrolet made an under-the-table deal with Banjo Matthews to build several very cheap but fine Chevy chassis. Everybody figured Chevy was paying for about three quarters of the cost.

[Rusty Pinion]

Unfortunately the list is out of date- notable in not including the Chrysler 300 and Hudson Hornet modeled by Moebius during the last year.

 True...but it's better than nothing...LOL

[stevefzr]

Time for me to update you all on these cars.  I ended up going with the Curtis Turner decals for the Impala and getting the Wildcat painted like the box lid seeing as I couldn't find any original Nascar livery.  I stripped these and then sent them off to a  static modeller named Curtis to paint as I was just too busy to do it myself.  The only decals I could find for the checker patten on the Wildcat sills were cracked and 45 years old.  They presented a lot of problems, but it looks like Curtis managed to deal with them in the end.   

 

 

 

All that's left now is for me to install the chassis.  That might take a year or more!  That's why I posted photos now instead of waiting for the cars to be completely finished.

These hasegawa stockers are pretty rare.  Much rarer than the Tamiya ones.  It took me 10 years of collecting to find one, but then two more (these two) fell into my lap within a couple of months of each other. There's something about these 9" long stock cars, whether they be Hasegawas, Tamiyas or the Cox Dan Gurney, that make them my favourites of all the 1960s slots.

 

Regards,

 

Steve C

[VintageSlotCarRacing.com]

Hello Steve, I have to agree that the stock cars are a bit of a favourite. I can still remember as a kid lovingly looking at the selection available in an advertisements in an American comic while sitting down in the main arena grandstand at the Melbourne Show. I was far too young to know how to obtain them so had to ‘make do’ with 1:32 scale Scalextric cars.

 

Curiously the steering wheel and be window glass were missing when I received Wildcat, even though there is no evidence of the interior ever being removed. I used the glass out a Hasegawa static model kit. It fits reasonably well.

 

I put on temporary made-up decals as I couldn't find any original liveries at the time, although I now notice that yours is as the car appears on the artwork of the original box.

 

There are photos of my car on my web site here: http://www.vintage-slot-car-racing.com/Hasegawa.htm

 

Photos of someone else's (made up?) livery here: http://slotberlin.com/2002_NCB_2/Wildcat.jpg

[stevefzr]

Hi Chris,

 

There were no decals included with the original car to allow you to make it up to match the box lid.  I scrounged through all my old decals to find ones that suited. 

 

Regards,

 

Steve C

[VintageSlotCarRacing.com]

Hello Steve, no decals unfortunately, just the car itself. The Hasegawa static model kit I bought had no bodywork decals either. Chris