Left 4 Dead 2 Jimmy Gibbs, Jr. Stock Car

       

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Original Kit:
1969 Dodge Charger R/T (Coca Cola)
Made By:
MPC (kit #919)
Scale:
1/25
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Jimmy Gibbs, Jr. Stock Car from Left 4 Dead 2
Jimmy Gibbs, Jr. Stock Car hood detail Jimmy Gibbs, Jr. Stock Car interior Jimmy Gibbs, Jr. Stock Car fender detail Jimmy Gibbs, Jr. Stock Car grille detail Jimmy Gibbs, Jr. Stock Car flank detail Jimmy Gibbs, Jr. Stock Car rear

 
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From the first time I saw Jimmy Gibbs, Jr's car in Left 4 Dead 2, I knew I was going to recreate it in scale. The only trick was exactly how to go about it. It'd be possible to fit four people in the stripped-down interior of a classic stocker, but problematic since diagonal braces had been added to anyplace a passenger could sit since the mid-1960s. Leaving it as the nearly stock General Lee interior was an option, but felt too lazy to me. I decided to instead make it a "ride along" car - something that could be used for exhibitions where a professional driver could take a rider out for a few laps, so the interior was somewhere between factory stock and full professional roll cage.

My first step was to cut out the rear seat and center console, rebuilding the areas with flat sheet styrene to recreate the look of plain metal. This also meant removing the CB holder from the bottom of the dash since it would interfere with my new tunnel. The shifter was scratch built, then the seats, dash, and steering wheel were installed straight from the box. Everything was painted semi gloss black, and the interior was finished with the kit's roll bar painted Tamiya TS-58 Pearl Light Blue.

The chassis only needed one modification, a new set of holes drilled in the rear axle to raise the ride height. The wheels were from Plastic Performance Products, narrowed to fit the interior rib on my parts box tires and drilled to accept the kit's wire axles.

As with the City Slicker, I was able to retain the kit's weird 69/71 hybrid grilles. In this case they were even beneficial, since I could simply cut off the headlight doors and I was left with a realistic offset to act as the headlight recesses. The headlight blanks were simply punchings made from thin styrene. I also rounded off the leading edge of the hood, filled in the stock fuel fill recess, added a blank over the tail panel, and scratch built a wing based on measurements taken from the Joe Dirt Charger.

It was tough to pin down an exact match to the game car's color, but TS-58 seemed pretty close to some scenes. The stripes and wing were painted TS-26 Pure White, and the chrome parts (including a parts box fuel fill) were stripped and painted TS-38 Gunmetal. The window surrounds and other small details were brush painted Vallejo's Natural Steel, which was a surprisingly close match to the TS-38. All of the markings are my own design, drawn up in Illustrator and printed onto decal stock.

 

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