Not just another Flying Tiger — “It’s GRRREAT!”

Fictional Racer

This is not my scale, being 1/48th, but it was free and the club wanted to do a “build the same kit” theme so I acquiesced.

The Backstory

What if NASCAR never took off, so to speak, but aviation racing reached the sponsorship and popularity of modern day NASCAR? Lots of aircraft available post-war, and ultimately there became both the unlimited, WarBird, and single aircraft type categories. Okay, we do have this today but it’s not as popular as NASCAR, you don’t see on broadcast TV…

The Kellogg’s Team, with their Tony the Tiger character pushing Frosted Flakes, was a natural to be put on the aircraft of the “Flying Tigers” — The American Volunteer Group, followed by the 23rd Fighter Group in China.

The Model

This is the AMT P-40 kit, representing a P-40E, F, K or M depending on details. I paid no attention to any of that and went with the easiest possible construction, out-of-the-box. Having no 1/48th pilot figures I decided to ignore the cockpit and painted the interior of the canopy and windscreen a dark blue, almost a black, Midnight Blue from Gunze. Since I was simplifying I decided to make it in flight, and made a stand for it.

Basic painting is Tamiya Orange overall, with Metallic Blue for the aft fuselage and empennage. I found a light blue that matched Tony’s nose for the spinner, and then for added interest decided to make the prop blades a polished aluminum (although it didn’t come out quite “polished”).

Decals I found on the internet at a site that sells both NASCAR kits, aftermarket and decals for anyone’s favorite racer or car, any period.

Summary

I had a lot of fun with this one, it was quite different and during construction realized that it would be easy to do this on a large scale with every racer on the NASCAR circuit. Who knows, maybe there’s a market for this?

Thanks for looking…