any particular version, there might be 5 or more different styles out there

some just don't look right IMO

There’s a few different sets of measurements depending on which S&H one you are trying to copy.

Pilot Episode (side impact trim and standard or deluxe chrome mirrors)

Season 1 (red sport mirrors, side impact trim deleted) 

Seasons 2-4 (deluxe chrome mirrors and side impact trim) 

The Pilot episode had a smaller stripe and a thicker 3/8" black pinstripe. You can see the first pic where the stripe rides about 1" above the side impact trim. 

Season 1 had a larger white stripe and a smaller (1/4") black pinstripe. And the bigger size pushed the stripe down to that body line where the side impact trim would sit. The bigger stripe would also push the front of the stripe forward past the front side marker light. 

Season 2 they slightly changed the design of the front of the stripe (you can see it sitting 1" above the front side marker light) and they switched to deluxe chrome mirrors and added the side impact trim back on.

Ford also produced just over 1,000 limited edition S&H Gran Torino's that had the red sport mirrors, no black pinstripe and no side impact trim.

So depending on which S&H Torino you are looking to replicate, we can definitely put you in contact with the right person.

-Mike

George,

First, WELCOME TO THE FORUM

Now, which stripe are you wanting to do? There were three versions on the TV show, the stripe from the film and then there's the factory LE stripe?

We can help once we know which one you're after....

TV 2M8O wrote: There were three versions on the TV show, the stripe from the film and then there's the factory LE stripe

that's 5, weren't there a couple guys that made up their own 'hybrid' stripes, and they were selling templates IIRC?

I've seen this floating around, the closest thing I've seen to the Season 1 stripe

This was the stripe template kit sold once upon a time by "Detective Brent". Not sure what ever happened to him or the availability of his kit these days.

I have created two different stripe templates for those doing a particular S&H Gran Torino....

The first is a template for the Ford Starsky & Hutch Limited Edition Gran Torino. The first set of templates were supplied to Steve Bordi for use on the L&E he currently has undergoing restoration. Feed back I got from the body shop was that it worked nicely in getting the stripe laid out easily. Here is the template applied to my car to verify fit and accuracy and also the only photo I have been provided so far of the stripe applied to Steve's LE using my template...

My LE template was created by providing a base translucent template of the "swoop" to the owners of 4 UNTOUCHED LE's who applied that base template over the stripe on their car, traced their stripe outline onto the provided template and then returned that tracings to me. I was surprised that no two of the returned outlines matched exactly, but talking with Bill Maynard the painter at the Chicago Ford plant responsible for putting the stripes on the cars as they came down the two tone line, he said there were 3M supplied decals which they applied over the white cars to mask off the stripe when they shot the 2B red so he wasn't surprised there was a slight deviation among the 4 examples sampled for the template. So what I did was to overly the 4 returned templates and used the average of the outlines to create my LE template.

To create my S2-4 TV Stripe template, I was provided a tracing of the "swoop" on the number 1 Hero car, the BENCH SEAT car, from seasons 2 thru 4 by Joe Wright who refreshed the car while it was in his possession. I scanned the tracing into my computer to create the template. Here is the S2-4 template applied to my Torino....

The Pilot, Season 1 stripes as well as the stripes on the movie Torinos were each different. I can understand the Pilot stripe differing from the season 1 thru 4 cars because the Pilot cars were gone by the time the series was picked up so the transportation department had to recreate the stripe for season 1 but you would have thought they would have been able to mimic that same stripe on the season 2 cars (which were used thru the end of the series) but they were unique as well.

I heard that the movie car stripes were changed slightly to get around copyright issues (?) and the Hero cars were built especially for the film by Movie Mike Walsh and the stunt cars were built by Cinema Vehicle Services. The Hero cars were sold afterwards and the stunt cars were sold or destroyed once filming wrapped. Steve did provide a couple of the cars for use in the building of the film Hero cars I believe, but the Torinos were not fan cars used/loaned/rented for the making of the movie.

Hope I haven't bored you to death with this narrative...

Good luck with your build!!

And how cool you had resources to connect you with Bill Maynard who painted these LE's from the factory! And yeah with how "off" these 1K vehicles were from the original TV cars, including no black pinstripe and even no slotted mag wheels, I'm not the least bit surprised there is slight deviation from one stripe to the next. No one would have ever thought nearly 50 years ago that S&H enthusiasts would compare one LE stripe to another side by side, let alone use freeze frame technology of today to compare a Pilot stripe to Season 1 to Seasons 2-4, etc. But that's really awesome you were able to create the best possible LE stripe template based on what you had. I'm curious to know who are the 4 owners of the only untouched LE S&H Torino's...

And that's a great template you have for Seasons 2-4 stripe! That's the best representation of this stripe since you went off of Joe's Hero 1 car when he had it. Also, as much respect as I have for the guy, Steve Bordi didn't do the Hero 2 car correctly. I don't know if he used the Detective Brent kit or what resources he had available, but you can see in the pics below (Steve's Hero 2 car is the furthest in the background in both pics) that it seems like he put a Season 1 stripe on the original Seasons 2-4 TV car (notice the stripe riding close to the front side marker)

I have primarily been sending people to Steve Casteel (Born Again Torino's) because I know he uses the dimensions he also received from Joe Wright, but now that I know you have this template I will certainly be sending folks your way! What do you charge for either stripe template kit?

And as far as the Pilot stripe is concerned, while it isn't entirely perfect, my S&H Pilot tribute car has the best Pilot stripe that I have seen. It's all thanks to Paul from the UK for building the template based on phone pictures from his TV and mailing me the template, plus CaliforniaJohnny "The Master Fabricator" doing the absolute best we could with the highly scarce resources that we had since there are no traces of the Pilot Torino's to surface in the last 49 years. And as OCD as John knows I am , while I have tried to keep the template intact as best I can, I am still hesitant to share it as a resource because I know it isn't fully accurate. 

And that would totally make sense as far as changing the movie stripe to avoid Trademark™️/Copyright©️ infringement. More information that I did not know before that I'm glad I now know! 

And BTW, has anyone seen any sign of George?  I knew we were going to give him far more information than he bargained for, but can't blame us for being all or nothing S&H enthusiasts!  Regardless, I am grateful for the narrative and the explanation. I can definitely say that I am a better and more knowledgeable S&H fan as a result of reading through it. Thank you 2M8O Joe 

A lot of us on here are picture ho's, so PLEASE post a few pics of your car so we can all enjoy it!!

And to those who beat up on your car, have them show you their ride that they have at the cruise in or car show. Be willing to bet a LOT of them will have an excuse for why their's isn't there, or their Dad had one or blah, blah, blah...

DON'T LET THEM STEAL YOUR PRIDE AND THE ENJOYMENT OF YOUR RIDE!

Have fun this season buddy!

Steve bought his Hero 2 car from Doug Stevenson in pieces. You can read the story of the cars when Doug had them as well as a article on the car once Steve on John Quirks's STARSKY TORINO.COM...

https://starskytorinodotcom.godaddysites.com/steve-b-tv-show-car" rel="nofollow -

https://starskytorinodotcom.godaddysites.com/steve-b-tv-show-car" rel="nofollow - https://starskytorinodotcom.godaddysites.com/steve-b-tv-show-car

https://starskytorinodotcom.godaddysites.com/fairlaner%2C-1998" rel="nofollow - https://starskytorinodotcom.godaddysites.com/fairlaner%2C-1998

In Steve's defense, at the time his car was rebuilt, there was NO TEMPLATE available for the TV SWOOP so the shop did like a lot of us did and tried their best to recreate it. Steve had them make a change once it was completed to get it a bit closer to the show stripe. He also did not jog the point over the front wheel arches to match the Hero 1 point because it was WAY TO HIGH above the openings (Joe noted during his refresh of Hero 1 that the points were different from side to side (the swoop portions were also slightly different side to side)). If you compare the "new" (S2-4) Torino point at the start of season 2 with the point in later seasons, you can almost watch the point get higher and higher as they half-assidly repainted the front fenders once they were beaten back into shape and "repaired". Joe shared some pictures of the Hero refresh that would make you cringe.... talk about shade tree!!!

I purchased my car from Steve Casteel (mine was the 7th car he "Starsky-ized") and early on, his stripes left a LOT to be desired for accuracy. Was only later when he became friends with Joe Wright (Steve was also the one who put Joe and I into contact) that he got the template to make an accurate "swoop" on his creations.

In closing, I was never impressed with Brent's stripe kit because I could see the flaws in it. I actually created a swoop template on my computer and printed it out and pieced together a swoop that was amazingly accurate. Comparing my swoop to the TV car (and to Joe's template) mine was off just ever so slightly.....

Again sorry for being so long winded!!

Yeah I definitely knew about both Hero 1 & 2 being owned by Doug Stevenson and know that one had gone to Steve Bordi while the other spent quite a bit of time overseas before it ended up in the hands of Joe Wright and both did an immaculate job - Steve with the full restoration and Joe with the preservation/refresh to keep as much TV history with the car as possible. 

I had no idea he didn't have a real template available. And yes definitely makes sense that they half assed repairs and painting the cars during the show. I feel like they didn't really do close-ups in Seasons 3-4 of the cars and used several replays of driving scenes from Season 1. And definitely have seen pictures of Hero 1 prior to Joe's refresh. The body was in terrible shape and used a razor blade to cut the pinstripe 

And yes, Steve also informed me years ago that you purchased one of his first S&H Torino's. He also connected me with Joe Wright as well as this amazing forum! And no apologies for being long winded, it's been really helpful for me to make all the dots connect after all these years!

Of course the one body fix issues they did during the show that bothered me was the removal of the "Gran Torino" emblem from the passenger fender and filling the holes for it.

Yeah I'm surprised they didn't take measurements of the Hero 1 stripe when they had the perfect opportunity for it. I would have understood if Hero 1 got sold first and they just had to make their best guess on the stripe for Hero 2. In wanting to get my pilot tribute as accurate as possible, I actually got the formula for the red from Joe Wright who had it made from the couple of square inches of paint behind the fuel door emblem of Hero 1. Joe also recommended to use Ford 9M White instead of people using the more commonly known Wimbledon White as it was too glossy for the red used. 

But since the formula for Ford 2B Red has changed a bit over the years and is more glossy than original 2B, maybe the Wimbledon makes more sense when coupled with the new 2B. In any case, while it took a lot of reminders and numerous follow-up's with Joe, I'm glad I got the formula from him and the 9M White recommendation. I couldn't be happier with how it turned out 

Definitely post a project thread with your 75 Sport! What are your goals for it? What needs work?

Here's the #1 TV Hero car...