Bob Ward’s Custom-Built 1:32 Scale Cars. Part 1
We recently ran into Bob Ward, a longtime slot car racer and builder. Not many people know that ED’s owner, Scott Bader, got involved with slot cars as a result of meeting Bob several years ago at a 1:1 scale vintage car race at Pacific Raceways, near Seattle.
Bob was working at the time for a local slot car dealer that had a booth in the vendor area. Scott ran cars on the Scalextric track and got into a conversation with Bob, who opened up his race case and began showing Scott his one-off slot cars. Scott persuaded Bob to sell him two cars on the spot, and those two cars were the beginning of what is now one of the most extensive slot car collections in the world.
We asked Bob if he would let us showcase his work on our web site and he very graciously agreed to provide us with photos and descriptions of some of his more interesting cars. Here they are, photographed by Bob and described in his own words.
1958 Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa
There is something about the old front-engine sports-racing cars of the 50s and early 60s that stirs the soul. These cars were all designed and built before the world of racing really discovered aerodynamics, so they embody a particular blend of lean functionality with a sensuous grace of form, uncluttered by wings, spoilers, and other aircraft-like elements, that makes them a joy to look at, whether in 1:1 scale at a vintage race or in 1:32 scale on a slot car track.
My model is a Strombecker body mounted on a 60s Revell aluminum chassis and powered by an original Revell SP500 motor. The car is exactly as I acquired it except for a general cleaning up, a repaint, and new exhaust pipes fabricated from plastic and aluminum tubing.
Don’t you just love the curves on this car? And can’t you just imagine yourself sitting in an open cockpit behind a screaming V12 engine, hurtling down the Mulsanne Straight (without chicanes)?
Here’s the chassis, vintage Revell all the way except for the guide, lead wires, and some modern tires I found that would fit the original Revell wheels. Oh, and that’s a Cox crown gear, but that actually dates back to the 60s, so it’s vintage, too. Whoever mounted the body on the chassis did a good job of it. Did you notice that it’s a 1:24 formula car chassis? You can tell because it has only one body mounting point at the rear instead of three.
1961 Ferrari 246SP
Enzo Ferrari was somewhat slow to embrace the key innovations of his time, notably the mid-engine layout and monococque chassis, but that didn’t keep him from producing some excellent race cars. One of the earliest mid-engine Ferrari sports-racers was the 246SP. These cars were contemporaries with the mighty front-engine TR61 that won LeMans. Their bodywork is very similar and there has often been confusion between the two among modelers and racing history buffs.
This model is an original 60s Bergmann body mounted on a Monogram brass chassis. The body is actually far too wide to be scale, but it does make it a lot easier to fit over a chassis and permits a wider track for better handling. The 246SP is a car that looks great from any angle, regardless of scale.
Here you can see the modified Monogram chassis. (Btw, this was a damaged chassis when I got it, so I didn’t chop up a priceless collectible.) I grafted on a new guide tongue to accommodate a Jet Guide and I added a pair of .063” brass pans to get weight down low for better handling. The gear is a Cox unit, but otherwise everything is 60s Monogram, including the red-can 16-D motor.
1969 Ferrari 612 CanAm
I love this car, both the full-size one and the model. This was Ferrari’s one-off effort at fielding a competitive CanAm car in 1969. With a V-12 engine of 6, then 7 liters it should have been competitive with the McLarens, and on several occasions almost was.
What’s cool about the model is that it’s made from one of the Aurora 1:32 scale bodies that were scaled up from HO bodies in the early 70s. That makes this car wide – 2 ¾ inches to be exact, and leaves all kinds of room under the body for just about any kind of chassis one could want.
The Aurora body is box-stock except for a roll bar made from Plastruct, a pair of sheet-plastic spoilers at the corners of the nose, and a paint job. The car is modeled as it looked early in the 1969 season. Later on it had a high wing and more elaborate graphics.
The chassis is scratch built from .063” brass and steel wire. The Mura C can is a stressed chassis member. The wheels are real magnesium Cox 1:24 scale Ferrari F-1 wheels modified for set screw mounting.
Lola T70
People ask whether I actually run any of my custom-built cars. I do, and here’s the proof. If you look closely at the photos of my Lola T70 you can see a big crack in the left front fender and a chip out of the rear spoiler. This car has been raced and damaged, repaired and run again.
In fact, I crashed it and broke off the left front fender on its very first test run. When I originally built the car it had a very hot motor in it – a late 60s Mura pro racing motor to be exact. As you might guess, it turned out to be, shall we say, a bit too much motor for the car. On the very first test run it launched on the main straight at a truly insane speed and clobbered the wall. The first thing I did afterward was replace the motor with something tamer, a Russkit 22. Then I installed padding on the track’s walls at all the likely impact points. Finally, I had to decide what to do with my brand-new old Monogram Lola body, now looking rather secondhand. Of course, my first thought was to take it apart and restore it to pristine condition. But after some thought I decided that the cracks and scrapes of racing were part of what a race car is. So, I carefully glued on all the broken parts, touched up the paint with a fine brush, and just kept on running the car. One of these days, when it gets really beat-up looking, I will do the restoration, but for now I’ll just enjoy the car as it is. Besides, it’s fun telling people I originally built this patched-up car from a body taken from a mint boxed kit. I didn’t really, but watching collectors turn pale and reach for their heart pills is too much fun to resist.
Anyway, this car was built to run, not to be a trailer queen. The chassis uses a 60s vintage Dynamic aluminum center with a scratchbuilt .063” brass pan / front end assembly. The pan assembly attaches to the center with two 4-40 socket head screws. The wheels are Cox 1:32 scale magnesium Ford GT wheels converted to set screw mounting by pressing an aluminum hub into the back of the original Cox wheel. The lugs on the pans are for the body to snap onto, making body mounting a toolless, fastenerless process.
The body is stock with the exception of a sheet plastic chin spoiler and “big block” injector stacks make from plastic tubing. The roll bar is Plastruct and mounts to the interior rather than the body. When I got the body mounted properly low over the chassis there wasn’t much room on top of the motor for an interior, so I got rid of the stock interior tray, replacing it with a simple piece of thin sheet styrene. The Cox driver was the lowest-profile driver figure I could find.
I have many more custom-built cars. Look for more articles like this one on the Electric Dreams web site.