NASCAR Special Paint Scheme of the Month: 1995 Bill Elliott Thunderbat

Before I get into today's post, I made an error in the first post in this series. When I gave the list of special paint schemes before the silver #3, I totally forgot that for the final race of 1994 Harry Gant's Leo Jackson Motorsports team painted up his car to look like the 1981 car from when he first joined the team. It became one of the first throwbacks in NASCAR history (but not the first, that honor goes to James Hylton in 1969 running a throwback to Rex White's 1959-63 scheme)

The Special Paint Scheme I've chosen to highlight is again from the 1995 season, and one of my all-time favorites. This car was run for three races, beginning with the Coca Cola 600 at Charlotte, just one week after the silver #3 highlighted was run, then skipping Dover and appearing in Pocono and Michigan.

It was the first paint scheme to promote a movie, in this case Batman Forever. It was the first time DC Comics properties ever appeared on a race car. As a lifelong DC reader I thought that was pretty darn cool.

The best result for the car came at Pocono where Elliott finished 6th. A crash at Charlotte relegated the Thunderbat to 39th, and Michigan saw a finish of 14th, a lap off the pace.

The car was fairly popular on cards. It appears on at least 14 cards- the one shown, two more from the same set, the Racing Champions card, and a 10-card "Bat Chase" insert from 1995 Maxx. Unfortunately none of the Bat Chase cards appear in my collection, but I do have the Racing Champions card and the Action Packed cards, shown below.

Action Packed issued three sets in 1995, this one is the Winston Cup Stars set, which was I believe the final release of the year. While I was collecting at that time, I don't remember anymore for sure if the Stars or the Winston Cup Country set was the last one released during the season. The third set is the Preview set, which obviously came first.

Note that the car in the photo is lacking roof rails. That's highly curious because they have been mandated to be on all cars sine the 1989 season. Since this one was in 1995, it should have had them. I don't have an answer for that one.

This was the second time that Ford had allowed one it's teams to change the name of their Thunderbird. In the final race of 1992, Alan Kulwicki removed the T to make the "Underbird" to celebrate his underdog status (he won the title that year by 10 points over Elliott). This time they allowed the Thunderbird to become the Thunderbat. The usual bright red and yellow McDonald's colors were changed to black and dark blue with green accents for this special event. The McDonald's sponsorship would lead to many special paint schemes, Elliott would run several every year until 2000, the last year they sponsored him. Currently sponsoring Jamie McMurray, they have already run a special paint scheme in 2017!

The other Action Packed cards are lenticular and don't really show the card in scan, but you can see it in hand.
The Racing Champions card shows a photo of the 1/24 diecast, as shown below.

Although the car in the Action Packed card appears to have a black interior, and the Racing Champions issue has green, the real car raced with the standard red interior.

The Maxx Bat Chase cards show actual race photos, at least on some of the 10 cards. I'd like to hunt them down at some point. 

Thanks for reading, March's post will not be from the 1995 season, although I have not determined which scheme to highlight yet, these were the only two of the season so the proverbial well has run dry for 1995.

I'm posting this during this year's Daytona 500. The Truck race was decent, the Xfinity race was actually very good, here's hoping that the Daytona 500 itself will be a good one also. It's the 25th Daytona 500 I've seen live (on TV), all consecutively, so that's a bit of a big deal to me. I've seen 1986-91 as well but a copy of the 1992 race still eludes me, I've never seen that one.

NASCAR Special Paint Scheme of the Month: 1995 Dale Earnhardt Silver Select

2017 marks my 25th anniversary of discovering the sport of NASCAR. It was December 26th, 1992, but I'm going to celebrate it all year anyway, and all of 2018 as 1993 was the first year I actually watched.

I wanted to do something special to mark my 25th Anniversary, but what? Then it hit me, how about highlighting some special paint schemes? Special Anniversary = Special Paint Schemes, It made sense! I originally conceived the idea as a weekly series, but soon realized that wouldn't work- since Press Pass never bothered to produce cards showing the cars, I would run out of cards to post before I reached the end of 2017, let alone get me through 2018. Then I thought about it some more, and realized, since it's a 25th Anniversary special series, I could do 25 posts- one per month in every month of 2017 and 2018, and a bonus post to be published on the actual 25th anniversary day. Now that...that was doable.

I knew to begin the series I would use Dale Earnhardt's 1995 Silver Select car, or at least that's what Action called it. Most sources, including NASCAR itself, call this the very first special paint scheme. But, it's not. Not by a longshot. It's not even the first Dale Earnhardt himself ran.

The first special paint scheme in NASCAR history was run in 1968, by David Pearson. The Holman-Moody Fords he usually drove were blue with a gold roof, but for at least 5 races in 1968, he drove a gold car with a blue roof, to celebrate Ford Motor Company's 65th anniversary. There are no cards of this car or most of the cars that predate the silver car shown in this post.

Dale himself drove the second and third special paint schemes in NASCAR history. He ran a reverse paint scheme at the 1985 Daytona 500, and in the 1986 Daytona 500, he ran with "Red Headed Stranger" on the hood and Farm Aid on the tail panel.

The fourth special paint scheme was run by Dale Jarrett in 1989, to promote the Ghostbusters II movie.  This car DOES appear on a card, in the 1991 K&M Sports Legends Dale Jarrett set, but I don't have it.

The fifth special paint scheme was driven by Morgan Shepherd in 1993, when an alternate, eagle design was used on the hood of his car at least at the first Darlington race, possibly others. I would not have remembered it's existence if it was not shown in the NASCAR Yearbook, which leads me to another point- there may be others I don't know of or don't remember.

The sixth, seventh and 8th special paint schemes were all run by Kyle Petty, one in 1993 and two in 1994. In 1993 he ran a tribute to his father, Richard Petty on the trunk lid at the Daytona 500 only (where he won the pole- this was the first race I ever saw). During 1994 he ran a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles hood and at the final race of the year, the sponsor, Mello Yello, had a tribute to Kyle himself on the sides of the car, thanking him for being their driver since 1991.

Finally, we get to 1995. 1995 was the year that special paint schemes really took off, and it was at the Winston that it all kicked in. From that race forward, special paint schemes have been a staple of NASCAR, culminating in the 2016 Southern 500 when 38 of 40 cars had a special paint scheme, the most in NASCAR history.

While the silver car may not be the first, it certainly is the one that made it popular. Earnhardt would drive a special paint scheme at The Winston (The All-Star race) every year for the rest of his career, and more than likely his Winston specials may appear in this program again.

The Silver car was run to celebrate Winston's 25th anniversary being the title sponsor of the sport, but unfortunately for Earnhardt, his night ended 10 laps short of the end, when he was taken out in a multi-car accident, finishing 14th in the 20 car field. I never saw the race, as it was on a TV channel we didn't get, but I believe he was battling for the lead at the time.
The accident is actually shown on 1996 Ultra #200, but I don't have that card.

The Silver car appears on a number of cards:
1995 Action Packed Winston Cup Country Jumbos #1, 2 and 4, probably 3 as well but I have not seen it
1995 Maxx Premier Plus special card, unknown number
1996 Ultra #200
1996 Ultra Golden Memories #4 (back only)
2002 Dale Earnhardt: The Artist's Series #63

The final card in the list is the card shown, as it's the only one in my collection. This somewhat mysterious series has no year or maker's info anywhere on the cards. It was sold through QVC's "For Race Fans Only" show in 2002, which is where I got it, as a factory set. The entire series is painted by artist Bill Purdom.

Here's a diecast replica, which shows the unique contingency placement of the We Care logo, normally found on the side of the car at the rear bumper. The car raced with it in the position shown on this die cast, which, as near as I can tell, was the only car to ever race with it in that location.

Here is a 1/24 scale plastic model I build of the car in 2004. Please keep in mind I had absolutely no idea what I was doing so it's not very accurate, it was the first NASCAR model I built when I finally felt confident enough in my skills to begin building them. I was unaware of the proper contingency placement at the time of building, and someday I plan to do another which in theory would be better as I have somewhat better skills now, and more knowledge of how to do it more accurately, plus access to more accurate decals.

Finally, here's a photo of the real car on track. I do not know the source of the photo or the photographer. I found it on a NASCAR message board in 2008. Based on this being taken in the sunlight, it must have been taken during practice.

Future posts in this series won't be so long, but being the first one, I had to give a little history of the special paint scheme before I really got into it.

Thanks for reading, and expect February's post to go live during the Daytona 500.