Robert Pressley's 1997 Cartoon Network Monte Carlo
The "Scoobymobile"
Late in 1996, the Cartoon Network car, driven by Robert Pressley, underwent a change of livery, sporting variants of the graphics shown here, but on a black car.
By Daytona, 1997, the paint colour was predominantly purple, and the graphics on the rear quarterpanels had changed. As well, Crayola had come on as an associate sponsor.
This car will be remembered for its fantastic nose-stand during that race, and the fact that after slamming down on its wheels, again, the thing was still driveable! Poor Robert got himself jarred up real good, however, and had a pretty sore back...
SLIXX did a sheet for the second version of this car, as it appeared in late '96 at Atlanta. This is 100% accurate for the black car of that year, but has the wrong quarterpanel graphics (mummy on right rear, for example) for the 1997 Daytona car. Fortunately, the kit issued of this car in mid '97 by Monogram had the correct quarterpanel decals for the
Daytona nose-stander. You still need the SLIXX set, however, to get full contingency decals, and to get the bright orange outlines of the numbers, which are quite dull in the kit.
The deep purple paint is similar to that used on the Smokin' Joe car, only slightly lighter. I matched this by adding a violet Chromabase@ tint to Tamiya's TS24 purple to deepen it. This was done by transferring an ounce or so of the Tamiya aerosol to an airbrush bottle, then using an eyedropper to add the tint base. a further 30-40% of lacquer thinner was added to ensure it was sufficiently thin for the airbrush.
The rest of the build was pretty straightforward; engine oil lines and plug wires were added; seatbelts and a radio coil were added to the inside; the rest is pretty much box stock (I did have to remove the sides, and replace with sheet plastic, as the kit sides roll under too much.)
By midseason, with the team goin' nowhere, Pressley was released, and Jeff Green took over, with no leap forward in results in evidence. The paint scheme underwent yet another change to the "Tom and Jerry" motif (model pending...), but for 1998, Cartoon network moved to the 9 car and Lake Speed. The 29 team, after a brief stint with Chevrolet's "TAZ" promo are struggling. As of this writing, team is on hiatus from Winston Cup competition.