It's a wrap: Legends cars to look like new

BY SPENCER CAMPBELL
BRISTOL HERALD COURIER

BRISTOL, Tenn. – Paint is so passé.

It’s old news in NASCAR, gone the way of the Busch Series and dirt tracks.

Some drivers, such as Jeff Gordon with his DuPont sponsorship, have remained true to the old-fashioned paint job. But with car designs becoming more elaborate and complex, a new exterior-design fad is all the rage in stock car racing.

“[Kyle Busch’s No. 18] M&M’s is a good example,” Kurt Kummer said. “It would take forever to paint all that. It’s much quicker and more economical to do the M&M’s car as a wrap.”
Kummer should know. He’s leading the design revolution – at least in Bristol.

His shop, Modern D-Signs is responsible for the gaudy murals displayed on the side of Bristol Virginia Utility vans. Last year, his shop designed both pace cars at the Bristol Motor Speedway. He’s wrapped boats in camouflage, telephone booths in BMS designs and a 1997 Aston Martin in energy drink graffiti.

“We’ll wrap just about anything,” Kummer said. “Volkswagens are the worst. There’s not a flat edge on it.”

Wrapping is as straight-forward as it sounds. In an effort to avoid the messy, time-consuming headache that comes with painting a NASCAR ride in flamboyant paint schemes, cars are enveloped in a special vinyl. Kummer says that a car can be fully tricked-out in less than six hours.

And now, thanks to Kummer and Modern D, vinyl is patching the NASCAR generational gap.

In this week’s Saturday Night Special, past Bristol winners will remount at BMS in a 50-lap race for charity. Some legends drivers, such as Rusty Wallace and Junior Johnson, will climb behind the wheels of their own cars. Others, like Jimmy Spencer and Harry Gant, will drive cars donated by United Auto Racing Association-Stars team owners.

In an effort to make these UARA-Stars rides as authentically old-school as possible, BMS brass is retrofitting each car. The cars’ numbers, the colors and the over design intend to mirror the ride each driver won Bristol with: Harry Gant in the green Skoal car, David Green in the No. 44 Slim Jim car and Jimmy Spencer in white with red-and-gray racing stripes.

It’s seems ironic, then, that the Saturday Night Special will be authentically retro thanks to Modern D and the newest advance in auto racing design.

It is with this mission in mind that three of Kummer’s employees – Brad Keeling, Aaron Hill and Greg Keith – recently surrounded the UARA car that Spencer will drive this Saturday. Working in tandem, the triumvirate placed pieces of vinyl over each of the car’s panels.

The group held each piece of vinyl under a blow torch heated to 212 degrees and placed over a car panel. Hill said that an infrared thermometer is typically used right along with the torch, because at 270 degrees the vinyl begins to burn.

None of the three used the thermometers. Nothing was singed. They’ve been doing this a while, Kummer says.

The material Kummer’s workers used is called cast vinyl. If cast vinyl is heated and placed in the wrong position, or needs to be moved, all that is required is a reheating with the torch. The heated piece will magically turn flat again, the kinks falling out like tiny waves.

With normal vinyl, or calendared vinyl, once you mold it there’s no turning back. Frustration inevitably mounts. “You couldn’t stay back here because of all the cussing,” Keith said.

Spencer’s car designs – red numbers for the hood and door panels, as well as a Speed Channel logo – were created by Modern D’s mammoth 54-inch, wide-format, ink-jet printer. In order to save time, Kummer began printing the numbers for the hood and side panels before each UARA car was delivered.

He took measurements from required UARA specifications. He quickly discovered that there’s nothing stock about stock cars.

“We found out roofs on the older cars are shorter. By an inch,” Kummer said. As a result, the wait for each vinyl printout to out-gas its solvents has been curbed. “It’s supposed to dry for 24 hours,” Kummer said. “So pretend that it did.”

Kummer won’t disclose his bid price for the Saturday Night wrapping job, but he did say that a typical wrapping job runs anywhere from $2,000 to $3,500, depending on the design and car model (vans are toward the $3,500 end).

Whatever the cost, the end product appears worth the price.

On Spencer’s car, each piece of vinyl sticks smoothly to the smallest contours of the body work. Even though the UARA car used is painted blue and gold, the colors barely peek through the white vinyl stretched over it. And then there’s the best news of all: As soon as the race is over, the material will be peeled off, leaving no trace that it was ever there.

Well, hopefully.

“We’re hoping the vinyl doesn’t take Gant’s decals off,” Kummer said.

scampbell@bristolnews.com|(276) 645-2543