Ed McCulluch's 77 "Revellution" Demon

          (By request, we cropped down "Fairground Funnies" painting to feature the "Ace's" car only....)

By 1977, funny car racing had started to become cliché, and somewhat common place. The media, and more precisely the motorsports media, basically ignored the flopper class.  One editor remarked that the cars had become "cookie cutters."  "All the cars were basically the same, only adorned with different body shells to somehow appease the Factories." 

      For the next few years, magazines would only occasionally run articles on the "Plastic Fantastics," and then the stories would only be about the major players at the time, like Prudhomme's "Army" car,  or Beadle's "Blue Max."   However, there were some very beautiful cars running at the time, and real fans of the sport realized, that Funny Cars were just coming into their own. They were becoming extremely exotic race cars, and a ongoing working experiment in aerodynamics.

As an Artist, I was very excited to be able to paint, a prime examples of the "Beauty" of Funny Car racing.  This is one of my "personal favorite" cars, and that goes way back to my model car building days. 

One of my last jobs as a Professional Modeler, was a series I was building for Ed "the Ace" McCulloch. I was building replicas of all of Ed's Funny Cars, to display in his trophy case, and he paid me well for my efforts. This magenta "Revellution" car was the last replica I built for him, and I never thought I would be in a position to be able to do a painting of this uniquely painted car.

In the 70s, when Revell models released their series of authentic Drag Racing cars, the "Ace" was their biggest seller.  They released 3 different versions of his cars, this Magenta schemed Dodge Dart being the last. ( Ed carried this scheme into the 78 season on a new Plymouth Arrow body, until the "Revell" deal expired later that year.)

(Those of you who built the "Revell" model of this car, know that the kit was a far cry from the real car. In fact the model kit was Ed's 72 car reissued as the 77 version. In the 5 years from 72 to 77, the aerodynamics on these cars had changed dramatically. The bodies had been stretched and cropped, the chassis had become more developed, which allowed the body of the car to be dropped lower to the ground.)

"In this painting, we Ed "the Ace" McCulloch, during the first round of 1977 "Winternationals" held at the "Pomona Fairgrounds."  Although the "Ace" is cranking on the brakes, he can't keep the potent Dodge from smoking the tires and handing the victory to Ron Colson.

"Can you feel the Thunder and Smell the Nitro?"......DCP 

(Remember, this is a print of David's original airbrush painting!)