Bobby Unser 1974 IROC Camaro

[MarkJ]

Finally got this one finished. It took 333 hours to complete or 8 months, whichever way you want to look at it. It is my first totally brush painted model. I used Vallejo acrylic paint throughout the build. The 1974/75 IROC season was the first that the Camaro was used as the make for the series of 4 races. Two were at Riverside and one each at Michigan and the finale at Daytona during the 1975 Speedweeks. Unser just beat Foyt by a nose to win the race and the series championship. The Camaro was basically a stock car with unibody construction. They did not use a Banjo chassis till 1977. It had a Traco Chevy 336 cubic inch engine pumping out 440 horsepower. The engines were built within 5 horsepower up or down between them and tuned for longevity not raw power. Revs were kept at 7200. Roger Penske and Les Richter came up with the IROC series and decided after the first year using Porsches they would switch to the Camaro. 15 identical cars were built for the series with 12 actually competing and 3 kept as backups. Unser had to use a backup after crashing his car at the start of the first Riverside race. He was lucky to have escaped without any injuries. The right side of the car was caved in right to the transmission tunnel. Dave Marcis, Jim Sauter and Dick Trickle set the cars up for competition. The 1974 Camaro body was used for the 1974 through the 1980 seasons. Unser won 50,000 dollars for his championship. I learned a lot about IROC from doing this build.

 

[MarkJ]

[MarkJ]

[TonyK]

Very good looking model! Your flared fenders look good and so does the stance. Nice job!

[MarkJ]

Here are some shots of the real car at the final race at Daytona which is the one I wanted to do. Only had one small picture in color. The last one is of the car he wrecked and had to start over in one of the spare cars at Riverside at the start of the race.

[Scott8950]

It turned out very nice. Great job

[bbowser]

Outstanding work!  Foreshadowing what NASCAR has become, a spec series.  It's all on the drivers now.  Great pictures too.

[afx]

Nice work Mark.

[David G.]

WoW! ? 

I remember your WIP on this one and all the difficulty you had fabricating the grille.

It turned out great, well worth the effort!

The rest of the model looks great too, especially the decal work.

Truly one of a kind.

David G.

[Pierre Rivard]

Awesome as all of your builds are.

I love the photo set up.

 

[Michael F]

Ver nice, Mark. Lot of work on tis model and the result is great !!

[Bainford]

It turned out great, Mark. I'm glad you stuck with it. Cool subject and cool build. The photography looks great, too. Very well done.

[slusher]

Outstanding build, impressive scratch building that went into the build.  I enjoyed watching the wip from start to finish…

[gks1964]

Mark!!

Awesome job!!

[happy grumpy]

Great model, it looks authentic. Your hard work paid off. ?

[Belugawrx]

I saw some of your WIP on this one ..lots of scratchbuilding, which all came out great !

[MarkJ]

Thanks, guys, for all the great comments. It was a sort of fun build and very educational. I forgot to mention that the hood had a very narrow tunnel built into it with a hole that matched the opening in the air cleaner to get air from the windshield to the carburetor. So basically, the hood acted as the top of the air cleaner, if you were wondering why the air cleaner, I modeled, did not have a top for it.

[Venom]

Mark, scratch built wheels and all! ... I hope no one underestimates the work that went into this, and if they do they should see the WIP for it!.... You do really cool stuff Mark and it looks very accurate to the real car as well.. and cudos to your first all brush painted job as well, that is a whole new game in its own and it turned out well?... Also, thanks for the historical background fill in.. quite informative.... It’s really cool to see this one all done and well photographed!

[Jonathan]

Really excellent craftsmanship!  Nice to see this one completed. 

[MarkJ]

Thanks, Josh and Jonathan for the props. I really appreciate it.