White Lightning 1971 Ford

       

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Original Kit:
Ford Interceptor Police Car
Made By:
AMT (kit #38466)
Scale:
1/25
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1971 Ford Galaxie from the movie White Lightning
White Lightning 1971 Ford Galaxie interior White Lightning 1971 Ford Galaxie chassis White Lightning 1971 Ford Galaxie engine

 
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Before Stroker Ace, before J.J. McClure, before Hooper, even before "Bandit" Darville, Burt Reynolds was "Gator" McKlusky in White Lightning and it's sequel Gator. The first one was not only a great movie, but it included one of the all-time great sleepers with a massively overpowered 4-door sedan that looked like half the other cars on the road. The closest kit is AMT's '70 Ford Interceptor, but Missing Link Resin made a '71 transkit that included the body, hood, trunk, dashboard, and chrome bits.

I started with the engine, which in the movie was famously neither what was shown or described: the insert shot was a Mustang, which very much did not have a 429 and lacked the dual carburetors Gator was impressed by. The kit, however, did include a 429 and I made a custom intake manifold for it to accept a set of dual 4bbl carbs from my parts box. Different cars used in the film had different transmissions, but Gator was shown working a floor shift so I kept the manual gearbox. Once assembled, I added basic wiring and plumbing, and swapped out the stock exhausts for a set of shorter pipes with scratch built Cherry Bomb mufflers.

This kit didn't come with a whole lot of chassis detail: the aforementioned exhaust pipes were molded as part of the rear axle and, well, that was the only separate piece. There were screw holes in the floor of the trunk that I capped to turn into moonshine drains, otherwise I simply painted what was there and called it good. The kit's wheels looked great, but were paired with AMT's classic Firestone skinny tires. These looked OK for a standard Ford, but this wan't supposed to be standard. So I swapped them for a set of early 1970s stock car tires from Plastic Performance Products wearing screen-accurate Cooper Cobra white letter decals from Fireball Modelworks.

The interior was pretty basic as well, but at least had a few more parts so it looked decent enough. I swapped the dash for the one that was in the Missing Link kit and added a floor shift from my parts box, otherwise it was built straight out of the box. The base color is Tamiya AS-8 Navy Blue with a mix of browns for the wood panel inserts and chrome paint for the door hardware and dash buttons. As is common for these kits, the door panel detail was pretty shallow, so I was able to recreate the '71-specific details by simply painting over what was there.

Finally, it was time to work on the body. the casting was generally nice and clean, with only a few minor pinholes and rough edges to clean up. A good deal of test fitting was required, though, and I needed to do some work around the hood, trunk, and grille opening to get everything to fit. I also had to remove a strip from the front of the chassis to allow the front bumper to fit correctly. Once the prep work was done, I painted the body Testors 1848 Root Beer Brown and did the trim with a combination of Bare Metal Foil and chrome paint. The grille was a two-piece affair, with the center section made to fit into a slot in the rest of it. The full-width piece of it was a hair too wide, though, being too gappy for the center piece and too wide for the body. It was easy enough to cut a section out of the middle and fix both problems, just a little odd that it needed to be addressed at all. The transkit's headlights needed a little cleanup but fit fine, but the taillights needed to be trimmed down to fit correctly. I finished it off with a custom screen-accurate rear license plate.

 

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