Curry, who is 80 years old, remembers the call he got to paint the car vividly. “I never lettered cars. I only did graphic painting,” he said. “The Parkers called me and said, ‘We got a new race car and want you to look at it.‘
“When I got over there, they had the car hidden in the backroom extension of their house. Back then there weren‘t any store-bought race cars around here. They made me swear I wouldn‘t tell anybody it was back there. They said, ‘We want you to paint it yellow and you do whatever you want with it.‘
“Back then a lot of people were doing ribbon work. I was just starting,” Curry continued. “But I was trying to find a technique of how to do it. Both sides of the car are completely different. That was something I always did. My theory was you can‘t see but one side at a time. That was probably only the third or fourth sprint car that I had ever done at that time.
“That is one car I did that I‘m proud of. It caused a lot of attention around here and everywhere else it went, too. They took it to California and Lee said people went crazy over the car out there. I‘m very impressed with how the car turned out with Chad (Freeman) replicating my original work. It‘s very difficult to copy somebody else‘s work,” concluded Curry.
“I‘ve always been enamored with this car,” stressed Freeman. “Just the fact my hero, Jimmy Riddle, drove it. It was just a unique-looking car with the Lexan bubble that‘s on the hood scoop.
It was a Leffler and just a cool-looking sprint car.
“When Jan Parker saw it for the first time, she walked up and looked at the purple interior and started crying,” Freeman added. “To get the car done and for it to turn out as good as it did, made me feel good. For Jan Parker, Eddie Curry and the former mechanic, Bob Bellot, to see it again and have them tell me it looks as good as it did in 1975 made the project worthwhile.
“My biggest satisfaction was seeing their reaction. And I helped save a part of Florida sprint car history.”
