Mad Mike Signs Ghost Rider Funny Car Project

Chris Phelps' Ghost Rider 77 Pontiac Trans Am Nostalgia Funny Car Project
	Here is one of the first pictures I had of the car. The car had a look of tall in the back and wide in the rear fenders (which it is) so the challenge was to camouflage the lines of the car while keeping a nostalgia theme. Chris offered up a few pictures of some finished 77 bodies Trans Am funny cars, I found some other vintage pictures of funny cars from the era and we weeded the good and bad aspects of them all. I enlisted the input of some of my Pontiac buddies to offer pictures of stock Trans Am's they had back in the day and they were certainly interested in seeing this develop since we have had the Chevy vs Pontiac battle since high school. Of course since this is MY WEBSITE we can agree Chevy's are best.
	This was the first time I actually saw the car in person. I went out now that the major body work was complete and got measurements to actually scale the drawings with for the wrap. Several variations of my original concept were made but the basic layout remained the same.
	I convinced Chris to paint the car a GM silver and this was the result back from paint. The colors developed for the wrap would tie it all together. Admittedly, as I told Chris I HATE LETTERING SILVER CARS...So for me to say paint one silver was a huge stretch but I knew the overall finished product would be right for the theme Chris was after. Silver is not horrible if you do not try to put too much on so I was pretty certain it would all work. And man was I gonna hate myself if silver was wrong.
	The finished car after being wrapped. For you PURIST PONTIAC types....I was not trying to make it look 100% correct. This is a funny car so we wanted to retain the stock appearance with the exaggerated graphics. Chris was adamant about wanting stock type grills and that little "V" shaped Pontiac emblem on the nose. He wanted the car to be unmistakably a 77 Trans AM and most any car guy can see that in it. The other thing he was passionate about was the name being readable. I assured him I needed to white 2-tone the car to get that to happen and he fidgeted a bit but agreed. Later I found out he hates white when I showed him a small sample of the hood graphic with the white. Again I assured him it was the right and necessary thing to do.

To me the grills are the coolest part of the car. Since from the front tires back 90% of these car bodies looked the same, the grill area would make or break the entire scheme.

If you notice, the area that looks like a grill is actually flat so I drew and shadowed a basically stock appearing grill and PONTIAC trim.

Paper patterns were used to create custom templates to get the correct shape and then some creative photoshop work netted the desired results.

I attempted to balance photo images of the headlights, a drawn concept of a stock grill and fall between cartoon art and photo quality in detail.

I know Chris had a look on his face with the body up looking straight at the installed grills like uh, not sure, but this guy Mad Mike is bigger than me so I will bite my tongue.

After the body was lowered to race position and you now were looking down at the design like it would be raced, he stepped back and his tone changed (lucky thing too....LOL).

The fire chicken....

Basically a stock shaped bird outline, shadowed black to white with white and blue flames and an orange outline pinstripe.

The goal here was to make a presence while not dominating the graphics of the car.

FYI.....The graphic is over 4 foot wide and 6 foot long tail to flame tips.

Tail lights were a bit simplified. I cut red reflective for the main lenses and white carbon fiber material for the backup lenses.

OK, admittedly when Chris first approached me on this project with that, a, err, umm, rough black car and a VOODOO Racing sticker so blocky it scared me
I had to look past the then/now to the future. I feel over the years I have had good vision as I see a lot of cars in their early phase when most people would just cringe
at the idea of making something from what they see as a pile of junk.

I could see the potential in this car, and the sincere efforts of a man and his family and friends to have something to be proud of. Somewhere along the way when the graphics
were pretty much decided he talked about that damned blocky looking VOODOO logo finding a home on the car, Chris talked but I was not listening. You think he cringed at the thought of white as a primary color, that block logo was causing me stomach cramps.

He appeared at the shop a few days before we were to do the car and I roughed in the logo you see on the front spoiler and he was like "wow, I like that".
After he left I added the white fade (yeah sorry more white) to the red lettering and when it was installed he noticed I changed it up and made it even better than the version he saw.

So I made it through the couple months it took to get this project from concept to creature and I finally asked after it was done where the name Ghost Rider and VooDoo Racing came from.
The chassis and power train under this body are also used with an altered body. The altered was at an air show on display and about day 2 the guys were sitting around bored as jets flew
overhead and the TOP GUN dialogues started....Voo Doo One, Voo Doo One, this is Ghost Rider......Guess it stuck.

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