Simon R.'s 1976 Replica
"Starsky & Hutch®" Gran Torino
Recently purchased from John M. in Arizona, USA,
and taken across the world to Scotland!
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This is how the car looked when John found it in California in
November of 2000. The car had 85,410 original miles on it and only 2 previous owners. There were no interior flaws.
The engine is a 351 Modified, which is basically a 351 engine bored out to a 400 at the factory. The factory sticker
on one of the valve covers reads, "351M/400." |
| This is how the car looked in February, 2001, after putting on
Goodyear Eagle GT II tires, Gabriel "Highjacker" air shocks, and buying the five slot wheels from eBay.
The wheels are 14x7 in front and 15x8.5 in the rear. The rear tires are P255/70 R15 and the front tires are P215/70
R14. |
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The shop took about three days to sand the car. In this photo,
the car is having all the holes being patched up on the side from the moldings that John had them remove. |
| After patching and sanding, the car was acid washed to remove
all the old paint down to bare metal. John said it was an expensive process but worth it! After acid washing, a
white primer was sprayed on. In this case, black was also sprayed in the area of the stripe only for the pin striping. |
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After the black was sprayed, the taping was done and white was
sprayed over it. When the white was done (3 coats with wet sanding in between each coat), the blue pinstripe tape
was peeled away, revealing the black pin striping all around the white stripe. John didn't want decal tape around
the stripe because the heat in Arizona would have destroyed it. He said it was also nice to have that area all
smooth and flat. |
| After masking off the entire white stripe, including the black
pinstripe around it, the now infamous 2B Bright Red was applied. |
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The Finished Product - a Beautiful Replica of Starsky's "Zebra
3."
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Funny, that!
Old English Creations did the restoration,
and now the car resides in England!