I'm building a 1/24 diecast car of Fireball Roberts #11 1951 Ford. Can anyone confirm the color of the car? I believe the bottom is black but the question is: is the top cream or gold?
Any info would be helpful. Thanks, Bill
Patty, did the 1951 Ford have Purelube on the front fender and champion spark plug decal ? All the pictures I have seen don't have them ! so I beleive they shounldn't be on the die cast car, I found some 1951 Ford paint chips , and came up with a cream [green tint ] color , which I had to blend . The car looks good in black and this shade of cream . When it is done will forward some pictures. I just did a 1956 Ford convertable that Glen Wood drove. Sent it to there muesem and had him autograph it . Thanks for the help . Bill
I have a great piece of trivia on this car. I had many conversations with Richard Riley over the years about the early days of racing. He drove relief for Elmo Langley in the first World 600 and was good friends with Fireball. One day he was talking about Fireball having a service station in Charlotte. He said they built their modified and sportsman cars there. They decided to build a new '51 Ford for Daytona. Richard said they all worked at trying to get the cars as light as possible for the races on the beach. He said there was a couple hundred pounds of undercoating and sealer in those cars. He said scraping it off was a losing battle. I wish I had recorded this conversation because Richard, in his southern drawl said "hell boy, we just sat that son of a #$%&* on fire and burned all that stuff off of it!" Richard never forgot any details of his life and he is in the record books. He said (and I'll clean it up a little), it looked like a burned garbage can till we got it painted" but it must have been 500 pounds lighter". He bent over laughing and said " you should have seen people looking at that burned out mess when we ran it up and down Mint St. where the football stadium is now."Painting it and making it look good was the last of our worries and we didn't paint it till last. I miss Richard Riley and sitting at S&R Wrecker Ser. hearing how people like himself and Fireball built the sport we love. Wouldn't it be great to hear someone this honest and candid again? By the way, I never did think to ask him what color they painted it...Charlie Craig
I honestly don't know. If I had to guess it was probably when the big paved tracks came along. I'm pretty sure they weighed them at Darlington when the front end settings and wheel balancing became such a critical part of setting up a car. On the old dirt tracks it was get them light and get them over the ruts type of deal. I have a couple of my buddies from that era that I'll run this by and try to get you an answer.
