At the end of 1983 my first story for Scale Auto Enthusiast hit the stands, and I got the cover (that'll hook you). That was the Dirty Old Dodge, a brand new MPC 1978 Dodge Monaco sedan kit.

(I looked at the story recently. It's awful. Gary Schmidt showed me how to write better stories.)

So I took that and another police car, a '41 Plymouth coupe. 1984 was the beginning of the seesaw between Evan Hermel and me. He'd win in Light Commercial one year and I'd win the next. So this was the start of that. I think the '41 got second place and the Dirty Dodge third, but I don't remember for sure. Roy Sorenson christened me "Dr. Dirt" for all the weathered stuff I was doing.

Funny story about it. This was supposed to look like the patrol cars I was driving at the time, so I showed this cover and the story to our Sheriff. He looked at it and said, "Why'd you have to do a dirty one?" I replied that the cars looked like that a lot. Shortly after, we got a note in briefing to wash the cars more often.

Here's how it looks now. Something in the weathering has eaten away much of the chrome on the bumpers but it's pretty much the way I built it, otherwise.

The cover--January-February 1984. Gary Schmidt liked the idea of a dirty car, not just a truck or something industrial so that's what got his attention.

Here's the '41 Plymouth, too. Still looks like this. It's hard to imagine that these are nearly 40 years old. Decals weren't available at the time like they were later, so I think I used the Mt. Prospect Police decals from the little Monogram 1/32 scale Chevelle police car kit. This color scheme is patterned about the California Highway Patrol Oldsmobiles at the time. The big red light is a '32 Ford headlight. I found photos of something similar on a Garden City, Long Island '41 Plymouth. This used to have a big whip antenna but that's disappeared over a couple of moves.

Terry