Earlier this year, I saw a post by Roger Nebelsick where he attempted to make a George Elliot Lumina for NASCAR Racing 2003, and I thought that was so cool and wondered if I could do it too.

Having almost no experience with the program GIMP, I sought out a tutorial on how to make a car on NASCAR Racing 2003 and thankfully there was one to follow.

I sought out cars that I could potentially replicate, and as I had little experience with GIMP, a one coloured car would have to be my specialty though some with a little bit of other colours could be done later.

After a few hours, I was still struggling with how to steer the program but after a while things were going in the right direction.

The obvious choice was the Brad Jones #8 Chevrolet and thankfully there was a picture to copy the number from, after taking the sample from a Shayne Hunter photograph, the background was removed leaving the number relatively intact.

Next was to find a Kmart logo from the 1990s, thankfully these were in abundant supply and so it was copied and pasted around the car, I couldn’t find a white outlined one or the tyre and auto sponsorship.

Also need to find a good Atlantis image to stick in too for the hood of the car.

The blue of the car has been a bit of a problem, as differences in light can throw off copying the colour as some photos will show it light and some will show it dark.

Then it was time to export the car into the NASCAR game and create a team for it so I could either use it or race against it, a tip is to make sure the mask is off when exporting otherwise you get what is below inside of no lines.

Next up was the George Elliot #55 Chevrolet Lumina, once again Shayne Hunter’s photographs were a starting point with the #55 sampled and background removed, it is not straight on as the car was slightly angled in all photos.

Next a Peters logo was searched for and was found, it was sampled, and background removed for use and was stuck on roughly where it was on the car.

Then it came time to find some Goodyear decals, this was easy and then came the part of finding a Pennzoil decal, this was surprisingly difficult, there were plenty of oval Pennzoil decals but for hours I could not find the one that I had sought after until I saw one in an ad.

I saw that there was a template for the Buick and thought why not add Barry Blake to the mix, once again the Shayne Hunter collection provided what was needed, I was not entirely sure about the bonnet and rear so left them largely empty though I am putting in placeholders, so it isn’t a dull look.

The photo sampling worked really well and so I had enough to make the car, I might return to this car later on as a McDonalds design is a possibility, also Castrol sponsorship is an option too.

The fourth and last car to work on was the No. 11 of Robin Best, there was not much to do on this car just stick the numbers on and put Euronova on it.

The Xerox Thunderbird would have been better, but the two-colour scheme is beyond my abilities especially when you got to work on the right side, which is upside down.

All four cars were inserted into the game; it is cool when you see #55 G. Elliot or #7 B. Blake on the list of cars and so two laps of Watkins Glen were recorded to see how they performed.

Since Watkins Glen went so well, why not try the Gold Coast? 40 Stock Cars does not go well on the Gold Coast, racing turned out to be something just like from the 1991 and 1992 races there, wrecks everywhere.

The next step is to give the cars strengths and weaknesses, at the moment they are towards the back of the field, but you do want them to be contenders, it will be a balancing act.

Overall, it was a fun experience doing the car art and I then looked into the Monte Carlo, the late Thunderbird model and the Taurus model, those designs are more complex than the Cup 90 mod and they’ve got the contingency decals as standard, but I managed to do a Dean Wanless car, of course some things just cannot be properly replicated and I couldn’t find a good picture of the hood or rear.

It is fun using the cars and maybe after poking around GIMP, better things can happen.