Greetings,

Half-hidden beneath my '70 Chaparral Camaro is a longstanding project in the form of a T/G Racing '70 Jerry Titus SCCA Trans-Am Firebird racer. Hideous rear flares featured on the actual car, while the front lip flares evolved across the season. This effort is also based on an old ERTL tool, although in this case a Lane Pontiac 400 has been substituted in given my ACME '69 Daytona 24HR Titus/Godsall Firebird needed a small block Chevrolet implant and is - gasp - also apart at present. Anything I could work up to reproduce a tall-deck (post Laguna Seca then) Ram Air IV head, Pontiac 303 Trans Am mill has been performed, although exhaust header fabrication is still to come.

The Trans Am Firebird aerodynamic additions weren't appropriately homologated at the first race of the season and were thus disallowed, while as the time passed the exterior configuration (speaking of scoops, spats and spoilers) as well as exhaust routing altered. What is seen will hopefully replicate a '70 Mid-Ohio spec. which looked nice if nothing else. Power steering failure rendered the entry a DNF at Mid-Ohio, consistent with an unfolding tale of unreliability and generally low power output even as the car handled well.

Back to the model, the turned aluminum outer wheel lips are 1:25th scale lowrider items apparently suitable to do 22 inch rims in that scale, while here they've clearly been repurposed. The Pegasus 'aluminum stepped sleeves' are sold for about $10 a set, hence experimenting with them to explore the possible isn't terrifically expensive if one is so-intrigued. Tires are old GMP Trans-Am Camaro fare, wheels are my revised resin Minilites with better shaped spokes as seen time and again on my projects.

Cloned resin items and scratch built assemblies are scattered across the build. Most of the fabrication work is done at this point, with the rear flares being fashioned from poured slabs of resin segregated into pockets formed on the side of a spare shell. A previous effort to do the rear flares based upon cobbled together elements led nowhere, hence it took until the COVID-19 lockdown for me to make any progress at all in this respect. The front wheel arches were filed out from below, with thin hard resin arch lips introduced and puttied in. Thanks...


Mostly chosen to capture the profile of the rear flares even as the topic isn't wholly in-frame, just evidence submitted to telegraph how gruesome these were in-period. Note the considerable overhang across the rear tires in particular. Seen at Laguna Seca during the first race date on the '70 schedule where Titus would happily post a finish. It was to prove a dreadful season for T/G Racing, while Jerry Titus would perish in the wake of a collision with a concrete embankment at Road America later in the year when steering failure prevented him from doing much more than locking his brakes to preserve his well being.


While this would be the topic at '70 Mid-Ohio and looking more like itself. From a 35mm color slide auctioned off on eBay, the photographer fated to remain unidentified given it was a storage unit clear out containing many such images.


And moving on to my scale effort. Resin was poured into the headlamp and front indicator pockets and hand finished to reproduce the fill panels for each, while the rain gutter trim as well as door glass seals on the sides have been either ground flat or filed off. The shaker scoop assembly is taken from a Welly '72 Trans Am, while the finned valve covers are new items that combine the finned detail from the Welly tool with stamped covers from the GMP '70 GTO Judge. The radiator is likewise sourced from a GMP '70 GTO Judge, while the remote oil filter mount and coolant expansion tank are resin items yet again. The fender to radiator support braces have been cut out (maybe just SD455 specific these?), while patch panels fix the indents left on the top of each inner wheel house shroud. GMP Camaro Trans-Am upper control arms (or at least a third of such) peek out for being visible underhood, adding a bit of interest.


This a close up of the rear flare mass. The profile dips in a touch across the top, bows out a bit towards the bottom front, and almost forms a delicate point along the bottom rear. Notice too that the rear wheel arch aerodynamic spats otherwise expected forward of each opening have been removed for careful bending, trimming and blending. I wanted to effectively erase this detail before fashioning the flares, and hence things appear clean. The exterior door handles were scrubbed off and replaced with nicely rendered Welly '72 Firebird Trans Am items. Removing the tire blue lines while saving the discreet 'GOODYEAR' sidewall lettering was tedious work.


Just in profile, while at Mid-Ohio the exhaust was routed out the back and to an angle. The hand-formed roll cage fits well, while the sheet aluminum driveshaft hump has been formed, the cast-in console cut out with new material laboriously grafted into the floor. The seat is a resin clone GMP Trans-Am Camaro item, the steering wheel a pair of ETRL Trans Am Firebird parts so that I could sand off the center 'honeycomb' cap trim, drill out the spokes, and retain the shape of the steering wheel grip given it's attached as a separate part.


Not too obvious, but cutting the twin refueling ports through the thick Zamac shell on such an angle was no fun at all. Craft store beads serve as race transporter hold down points attached to the fuel cell housing discreetly visible here. And lastly, the hood pins are GMP Trans-Am Camaro clones, the fuel cap a Hwy. 61 '70 340 Dart item. Kind thanks for your review of this project...

Mike K./Swede70