By Alan Thorpe

To all you aircraft modellers out there I'm afraid you are about to be somewhat disappointed.  This is an article as you can see about a car, an Indy car as it happens, and not about an other P51; Bf109; Corsair; Spitfire.....(owmigawd the list goes on), just tick the one that applies to you and just pretend, ok?  The truth is m'dear I don't give a damn, the planet is awash with articles on WWII models to make a car modeller weep. Now, be totally honest, how many more models of the same fighter aircraft does the world need right now?  Some of you blokes have more kits and decals of the SAME aircraft stashed away than you have eaten hot dinners!  Sad but true.  And you all pay a kings ransom for the little devils, and then pay through the nose to pay for the decals too.  Shame that. Pity hey!  But read on, you will be entertained.

The Indianapolis 500 is a race that has been run every year since 1911 to this present day, except for a few years during WWII ('42 to'45) when Uncle Sam had more mundane matters to attend to.  The Indy 500 did and still does arguably attract the largest paying crowd to an event anywhere on the planet (over two weeks in May) and that includes airshows, I kid you not.  And what do they pay to see?  Not the blimp I can tell you, but the cars.  Yes Albert the cars.  Strange then that there not that many kits of early era Indy cars on the shelves, some of the seventies thru to the present day cars are about (although true Indy cars are IRL cars and not the CART cars as seen on free to air TV, but the distinction is more a political thing than anything else) but that is pretty much it.

Doing the usual research and scrounging around old mags and such to find a half decent, nay any bloody kit of early Indy stuff, I came across a couple of gems buried almost into obscurity just waiting to come to life to enlighten you all, one of which I'm going to rattle on about, because it actually ends up being a rather nice and reasonably accurate model.

The kit in question was released by Monogram way back in 1956 and again in the mid to late nineties.  It's kit #P12 (wow' how olds that?) and its called the "All-plastic exact scale model Indianapolis Racer".  How's that for a generic title, covers just about anything imaginable don't you think?  If you saw the kit in a shop you would be forgiven for thinking it was a toy, for generic it most certainly is.

Out of the box it don't quite represent anything that ever raced with those markings, and a bonnet bulge that is questionable at best.  I don't know why but there it is.  The kit comes complete with amazing workable steering, a fairly well detailed engine, a driver, a mechanic, a toolbox, jack and decals. (Well of course it does!)  How's that for 1956 detail?  So, hang on to the engine bits and put the rest of the pieces just mentioned in a place of safe-keeping.  I call my spot the bin.

Now we can start proper and get some substance into this story.  The kit, in 1/24 scale, in fact was tooled to copy the Kurtis roadsters built and raced in the fifties by a plethora  (good word that) of teams and is in fact pretty accurate, albeit in need of a few easy modifications and the correct markings.  It turns out to be a Frank Kurtis designed and built KK500C chassis, that was powered by the ubiquitous Offenhauser four banger, and raced by no less than fourteen teams out the thirty three cars that started in the 1955 Indy race.  You could say it was a popular and damn good car.

However decal availability reduced my choice to two teams of that time.  I'm not sure if there are decals of more teams, I had stopped digging by then.  The decals I found are available from Fred Cady Design Inc. and cost US$4.00 yep, four bucks a pop.  I got the only two sets he does for the Kurtis, one for the "John Zink" #6 1955 winner, and the other set for two cars of the DA Lubricants team, a '55 and '56 car.  The connection is that Bob Sweikert drove both the '55 winner and the '56 DA car to 6th place.  The '55 DA car crashed out of the 1955 race.

I chose to do the  "John Zink" car 'cos its painted dark pink, or rose as the team officially catalogued its colour, and also its historical interest of course.  The DA Lubricants cars were all painted yellow and had black markings, so a model of those cars would look good too.  I'll build one eventually but I've already got yellow Indy cars in my collection, so I stuck with the pink.

The #6 "John Zink" KK500C driven by Sweikert started the '55 Indy from the middle of the fifth row in 14th position, got up and won!  This was Sweikerts fourth Indy race.  He is the only driver in history to win the Indy 500, the national championship title, and the sprint car title in the same year, 1955.  He drove the yellow DA Lube car to sixth place in the '56 Indy but was killed in a sprint car crash at a speedway at Salem in Indiana a month later.  The "John Zink" was the last Frank Kurtis roadster to win Indy, so its place in history is assured.

The kit is dead easy to build with minimal bits, kindergarten stuff actually, but a little modelling skill would help to get the most obvious modifications to look right.  Not absolutely necessary of course.  The bonnet bulge has to go, just back fill with Milliput, sand and polish back.  See photo of part built bits.

I then added a small piece off aluminium tube to the back of the tranny, 'cos the driveshaft is visible to the left of the seat looking into the cockpit.  Substitute the awful plastic exhaust pipe (not the headers, they're ok) with a piece of aluminium tubing, bent, polished and painted with Tamiya clears.  Next, mess with the front axle/suspension parts by thinning down all pieces and replace tie rod, again ally rod will do the job.  Then I reckoned that the tyres needed widening a tad, the proportions (aspect ratio) looked wrong some how.  The fact that each "tyre/wheel" is moulded in halves, makes it easy to glue a piece of plastic card between 'em, they look much better.

Now, the kits only real shortcoming is that no brakes are provided, and the disc brakes, or lack of, is clearly visible.  So I had resin copies made up of some odds'n'sods I cobbled together to look the part.  That's it!  Paint pink and white add decals, and a damn fine little model of the 1955 Indianapolis winner emerges.

Not bad for a $19.50 kit and US $4.00 for the decals. Check out more photos of the model  in the SAPMA gallery

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