1998 Trans Am Flying Tiger - One Grounded

Flying high after his victory in the Spike TV series, Bullrun, Mike Alsop, general manager of Mike Raisor Pontiac in Lafayette, Indiana, took the great feeling to the design board for a SEMA-showpiece LSXP-40 Trans Am that pays homage to the Flying Tigers fighter planes of World War II. "I learned a lot winning Bullrun and put the lessons into this new show/race Trans Am," Mike recalls. "I learned many strengths the Trans Am has and many strengths I think it needs to have."

Disassembly
Starting with a '98 Trans Am, which Mike described as "very rough," he used the in-house team at Mike Raisor Pontiac Premier Autosports and stripped the Bird to its bare body shell. "We put the Trans Am up on a lift and pulled the crossmember, cradle, front suspension and engine," he says. "That allowed us to move the body shell onto a body dolly with the rear wheels still bolted on."

He enlisted the help of Bobby Vandergraff and Jaylin Scott and they removed the bumpers, fenders, doors and exterior moldings, and stripped the interior completely including seats, dash, carpet, headliner and trim. "The car was completely gutted at that point," Bobby says. "Because we were bringing the P-40 theme throughout the cabin, our only choice was to completely remove every piece of existing trim that the factory installed into the Trans Am."

Drop what you're doing! Mike took the message literally and dropped the entire drivetrain and front suspension out from underneath the Trans Am before painting it.

Paint
After stripping the body to bare metal/plastic, Bobby worked it straight while it remained on the dolly. Then he turned to concept drawings, penned by artist Rick Moon, for direction and sprayed the engine bay, interior, trunk, and doorjambs of the body shell, followed by the body panels-hood, fenders, doors, and decklid-using Glasurit Universal HS Primer Filler.

After block-sanding and sealing the body with 285-60 Universal HS Primer, his team shot the interior and jambs in basecoat Glasurit Olive Drab. "We hung the body panels back on the T/A and sprayed the entire exterior Glasurit Black basecoat followed by two coats of Glasurit HS Multi-Clear. I then wet-sanded, using 1,200 to 2,000 grit," Bobby says.

The numerous graphics on the LSXP-40 T/A required repetitive stages of painting and masking. "I started laying out all the artwork on the body including the mouth, the eyes, The Flying Tigers, the No. 53 logos, the monikers on the fenders and the body stripes," Bobby continues. "I sprayed the colors progressively, starting with white for the teeth, red for the tongue and grey for the mouth. Then I sprayed The Flying Tigers on the doors." For all of the artwork, Bobby used House of Kolors specialty paints.

The LSXP-40 is more than a SEMA show car, it's a race car, too. It made its racing debut at Memphis Motorsports Park in October 2007

It took painter Bobby Vandergraff 400 hours to transform a '98 Trans Am into this stunning one-of-one T/A. There are no decals, just paint, paint and more paint.

Once he perfected the eye-grabbing graphics, he masked them off and sprayed Olive Drab basecoat over the entire exterior, followed by a contrasting patina of Glasurit Desert Tan. He thinned the Black basecoat 150 percent to make the lettering look like it came right off a retired WW II fighter plane. To polish the look, he airbrushed 829 rivets around the car. "It nearly drove me crazy to paint all those rivets," Bobby recalls. With the airbrush work completed, he sprayed four more coats of finished clear, followed by a second wet-sand, five more coats of clear, and a final wet-sanding using progressive grits of 2,000 to 3,000. All in all, 400 hours of shop time were dedicated to the body and paint.

Interior
Mike chose Allante tan bomber jacket leather and green leather inserts to cover the T/A's seats. The material was sewn by Miranda's Customs, of Lafayette, Indiana, who upholstered the headliner and sunvisors in tan and green, too. Meanwhile, Bobby cleaned every plastic interior piece, applied adhesion promoter, and sprayed them in Olive Drab interior dye formulated by Auto Body Supply, of Lafayette, Indiana. He installed the new seat covers onto the thrones and reassembled the interior.