From Origins—The stories behind the art.
The ink wasn’t even dry on the Group 44 TR8 when I received a note from a previous customer, Curt Johnston, wanting to know when I was going to draw the Huffaker version. It was a hard request to turn down considering Curt owned the car in question and getting a hold of source material would be easy peasy. Besides, growing up in SoCal, the Huffaker name was very familiar to me from my early racing days. That made two good reasons to draw the Triumph. Gotta represent.
As my illustrations go, it was as uncomplicated as they get and working with Curt to nail the details was a real pleasure. The most fascinating part of the work was getting to see, in detail, the differences in preparations between the Huffaker and Tullius cars. Both were meticulously built with an attention to detail that was not all that common at the time. Many of those differences were owed to the cars competing in different race series with different rule packages, others were the result of differing approaches to race car construction and preparation between the two teams, something I became very aware of as I developed the art. The experience gave me a heightened appreciation for what a unique position I’m in when I get to draw cars like the TR8s in all their detail. It’s like having a front row seat to a race car construction party.
Never one to miss an opportunity, I hadn’t yet completed the TR8 assignment when Curt asked me to draw the Huffaker TR7 as well. Again, how could I say ‘no’? Curt had all the material I‘d ever need to support the art and I had a head start having previously drawn the stock version of the car, then there was the livery identical to the TR8. A slam dunk, right? Well, in a word, no. While the liveries may appear nearly identical, under the skin, they’re entirely different cars. True, they shared some common parts like the roll cage construction, fuel cell placement and the like, but everything else was unique to the TR7.
Confession. I think the Huffaker TR8 in its black livery with blue accents is, flat out, one of the best-looking production race cars ever.
