| A customer wanted decals for several drag race cars from the sixties. One was the 1966 Fairlane driven by Ed Terry, with 'Hayward Ford' sponsor markings. |
| The customer had gathered a few photos, but all were of relatively low resolution. This is not a problem for well-known sponsor markings, but it makes recreation of the other markings quite difficult. On the other hand, a near-straight side view like this is great to have. |
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| Another nice view. The smaller stickers on the rear quarter window would be near impossible to recreate, the photo resolution is insufficient unfortunately. |
| The original car still exists, and is restored, but I saw several differences between period photos and the restoration. By the way, the decal artwork would also be easy to convert to full-scale size, to create the markings for a replica / tribute car. | 
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| I use an old version of CorelDraw, a popular vector graphics software. For this project, I used the side view photo as my sketching board. The longhand texts were recreated by first drawing a centerline, and then adding thickness to the line. It's a difficult process, especially as you're looking at just a few pixels! | 
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| Old stickers, as found on the internet, are usually sufficiently detailed to be drawn over in vector graphics. In general I need help from the customer in recognizing the sponsor logos. |
| More progress on the sketching board. Here I moved the graphics away, so you can do a visual comparison.
It's usually very laborious to find the right font for texts like 'HAYWARD FORD' and '754 SS/B'. They were most likely painted free-hand, so any font that is close likely needs modifications. It also depends on the accuracy that the customer requires. | 
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| I found out at a late stage that I had used a fairly modern Ford logo. I did not know that the logo had evolved over time. I found the logo as used on the 1966 Fairline. |
| The customer provided a very useful picture with basic measurements of the model, and sizes of the markings. | 
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| After sizing the decals, I provided the customer with this test sheet, that he could print and apply to the model for a size check. |
| Here's the resulting double set, before printing, together with a set for a De Havilland DH88 Comet. I think it looked really nice, and I expect the model to look great with them. Unfortunately I do not remember the time spent on this decal set, but I would guess four to five hours.
These decals were to be printed on an Alps printer, that is (was) unique in that it could print white. However the color palette is rather limited on an Alps, and matching the Ford logo color was difficult. | 
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| The printing was outsourced to Arctic Decals. I forgot to photograph the results, and can only show you some partial misprints. The resolution of an Alps is amazing, and the Hurst logos are very sharp and look fantastic, even at 6 mm diameter. This project was followed by a few more drag cars for the customer.
Diecast company GMP will issue a 1/18 model of this car late summer 2022. |