Ally Bank Original Paint Scheme - Part 2 (Brian Vickers Hendrick Motorsports Edition)

(Part 1)

With the custom Ally logo brush in the paint booth, I decided to start from scratch and start experimenting. As I noted in the previous post, Ally Bank used to be the financing wing for General Motors, known then as GMAC. As was the deal back in the early 00's, GM decided to provide roundabout support to their top team (Hendrick Motorsports) without jeopardizing their GM Goodwrench deal with Richard Childress Racing after the loss of Dale Earnhardt. I believe the word "synergy" was thrown around a bunch.

Either way, everything went to hell with that giant crash in '08, and GMAC got "bailed out" under some fairly brutal terms. The unions pitched in to become actual stakeholders, and the government covered a hefty chunk, gaining most of the shares. They've finally righted the ship, and offered a new IPO to sell the company back to private shareholders in 2014, putting itself forward as a new lean online-only digital banking/auto loan service.

GMAC is now Ally, so I figured a #25 Hendrick style Chevy was the more fitting than the custom Fords I had been working on.

I decided to go with a mashup between MWR and Hendrick styles, since they were both major teams Vickers drover for and have had some similar styles in the recent past.

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Some more shots:

Ally Bank Original NASCAR Paint Scheme - Part 1

I was tooling around in the NASCAR '15 paint booth, trying to come up with an original sponsor paint scheme, when I settled in on Ally Bank. I figure since I use them for free online checking & debit services, they have a fairly simple corporate style, and they used to be GMAC (the financial wing of General Motors) -- a longstanding NASCAR sponsor up until the financial meltdown of '08, it would make sense to do some "what if" paint schemes for the company's new brand. The predominant colors are purple and white. They also have a weird lower case "a" symbol which serves as the company logo. So I started off with that in mind:

Nice and simple

After making the custom Ally logo, I slapped it on a solid purple car, and tried to add a bit of flag styling to the side.

Got 'dem 'dega hydraulics

I quickly realized the car would look better with a white splitter and air dam at the front. That also helps in came for determining how high off the ground it is:

It's important to be able to see the splitter in contrast to the shadow on the track when setting up your car.

I decided to continue on with the development of the paint scheme by doing the classic bottom white stripe around the entire car and eliminated the flag stuff, because it just wasn't working. Still, it seemed kinda off.

The people I race online with nicknamed this car "Barney."

Continued in Part 2...