Over the years, the hobby has lost many great model builders.  The sad thing is that there have been many of them.  Another great was Bud Lefevre.  Bud built many drag cars and also was in drag racing.  I only had a few contacts with him, but the times were very enjoyable.  I once competed against him at a model contest in the drag racing class.  Bud won and I did not.  I was just honored to be able to say that I competed with him.  Some of our other connections were when I purchased some decals from him for one of my projects.  I wish that I could have gotten to know him better.  Like my best friend Jerry G. Kathe, Bud was very knowable on the topic of drag racing.  Here is a photo of Bud.

 

 

Here is a photo of his real drag car.

 

Bud built many fantastic Jr. Stock Drag Cars.  One of his most famous was a replica of George Cureton's "Tokyo Rose" National Champion G/SA Jr. Stocker.  Here is a photo of the real car.

 

 

Here is Bud's model.

 

 

Here are two more of his models.

 

 

As you can see, Bud was a great build.  He and I did have one thing in common when it came to some of the models we built.  We both enjoy building replicas of drag cars that not everyone else builds.  Not one of these models were totally kit produced.  The main difference being that he started with a production kit, but made many modifications.  The thing that stands out most are the decals he used to create his replicas.  I really enjoy doing that as well.  It is fun to put a model on a contest table that is different.

 

After Bud had passed away, Spotlight Hobbies held a "Build Off" in his memory.  The object was to build a model that would best represent Bud and a model that he may have built.  I was honored when my entry won the top model picked for this.  Here is a photo of that model.  I used Bud's idea to build this replica.  I designed my own decals with my computer system and printed them for this project.





 

This is a replica of Jere Stahl's D/S Jr. Stock drag car that he ran back in the '60's.  Since I built this car, my wife and I have had the honor of meeting Jere and his wife.  They are wonderful people.