Today we take a look at the nearly complete restoration of the #29 Ford Holman Moody chassis. This is the last in the series, but we will show you the completed car in its own post later.
John Craft is the owner restorer of this gorgeous historic race car. He has provided us with the photos posted in this series as well as the details on the car’s restoration. After the final race body was restored to perfection, it was painted in the correct livery for 1968. Of course, to maintain authenticity the numbers and lettering were painted not decals.
At that time, sign painting was relatively simple, but painfully laborious. Cars were not wrapped with giant computer generated sponsor stickers like many of today’s race cars. Virtually everything, from the race number, Ford branding, and even sponsor logos, were hand painted. It was a beautiful form of artistry that is largely lost in today’s world. In order to reproduce this look, John employed the services of Buz McKim, renowned artist, and NASCAR Hall of Fame historian to hand letter the car. The end result was quite stunning, and the perfect, correct finish to this very correct and car.
John expected to have the car completed by now and actually should have. The picture above is of the car’s period correct 427 Tunnel Port engine that he built. Unfortunately, he had to actually build it twice. He originally built the engine before his garage and its contents were flooded in Texas Hurricane Harvey. He decided the wise thing to do was to rebuild the engine again. It is currently being broken in on the dyno at the time of this posting. When the engine has been installed, we will update you on the completed car.
