Vintage Vinyl Graphics

Update by Tim Suddard to the Shelby GT350 project car
Mar 5, 2012

Shelby’s 1967 Trans Am race team was Terlingua Racing, named after his home in Texas, and since this car was so overpowered, we decided to call it the Terlingua Terror and add some appropriate graphics.

Our Shelby GT 350 needed a defining look for the Texas 1000 rally. The worn-out rat motif wouldn’t quite cut it for the big event, so we put our heads together and came up with an idea: transform the car into the mythical Terlingua Terror using specially designed decals. Shelby’s 1967 Trans Am race team was Terlingua Racing, named after his home in Texas, and since this car was so overpowered, we decided to call it the Terlingua Terror and add some appropriate graphics.

We ran the idea by Kirk Hansen, the marketing and graphics guy at NPD. He loved the idea of making weathered- and vintage-looking decals. He also had the skill, tools and resources to get them printed in the three days we had left before the rally.

Kirk knocked the look out of the ballpark, and the crew at Classic Motorsports finished placing the decals as the truck pulled up from Exotic Transport to take the car to Texas.

These are simple vinyl decals, but they’re dully colored and die-cut with distress holes to appear as old as the car’s finish. The designs are all Kirk, as none of the companies depicted were even in business in the 1960s except Ford (but not as Ford Racing). He made vintage logos for his company, NPD; Classic Motorsports; and the other main sponsors involved with the project.

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