This is another one of the classic's featured in the previous Cycle World, Wild and Wonderful Customs post. This 1964 Car Craft article mentions the bike winning Larry Howard's 1963 "Show of Custom Bikes". That must have been a good one!
In 1964 Revell Models was tapping into the bike scene and used the Louie Lopez Show Bike as the basis of its "Triumph Custom Show Bike Kit". You can see in the sales flyer above they actually used the picture of the real bike and had it retouched to resemble the model more accurately, but they forgot to remove the real clutch lever from the handlebars! This is not the only time Revell took machines from the pages of Peterson Publishing magazines to base a model kit on. It happened many times in the four wheeled scene, but there was another 1/8th scale Triumph Motorcycle kit pulled directly from a 1961 issue of Hot Rod. I have what's left of the real thing. Hopefully I will feature that project here before too long...
This is another one of the classic's featured in the previous Cycle World, Wild and Wonderful Customs post. This 1964 Car Craft article mentions the bike winning Larry Howard's 1963 "Show of Custom Bikes". That must have been a good one!
In 1964 Revell Models was tapping into the bike scene and used the Louie Lopez Show Bike as the basis of its "Triumph Custom Show Bike Kit". You can see in the sales flyer above they actually used the picture of the real bike and had it retouched to resemble the model more accurately, but they forgot to remove the real clutch lever from the handlebars! This is not the only time Revell took machines from the pages of Peterson Publishing magazines to base a model kit on. It happened many times in the four wheeled scene, but there was another 1/8th scale Triumph Motorcycle kit pulled directly from a 1961 issue of Hot Rod. I have what's left of the real thing. Hopefully I will feature that project here before too long...
You have Louie Lopez's pre-unit? If so, thats one bike I'd love to see! There was some speculation that Mark Drew's purple 500 pre-unit with original motor build by AJ Lewis belonged to Louie Lopez's brother. Crazy stuff. I'd love to see Ed Fuller's bike surface or the illusive pre-unit rigid with finned timing cover from the Cover of that 1967 Cycle Guide.
ReplyDeleteNo, I have a project going based on the Revell Triumph Drag Bike that they patterned after a Dragbike featured in a 1961 issue of Hot Rod. But you never know when some of these old customs will resurface. You guys in SoCal are at the epicenter. Hopefully there are still some hidden away. Got a good one for tomorrow.
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