Phoenix Trans Am models 360° of cool
Working an hour here and an hour there for a few months last summer, UW-Green Bay employee John McMillion transformed more than a hundred plastic model pieces into the model Trans Am.
The University’s current logo, unveiled in 1996, was his inspiration.
“The idea has been bouncing around in my head for the last 15 years, something stuck that said, ‘this logo would look good on a Trans-Am.’ After all these years I finally did,” he said.
The 1993 UWGB Regional Analysis grad — an electronic technician for Academic Technology Services at UW-Green Bay — started building models when he was eight years old with neighborhood friends. The kid at heart has been building models ever since and has a collection of more than 100.
As an adult, he joined clubs and started competing nationally. Club members will work on the smallest details of a car, he says, including doing work under the hood, such as spark plug wires and brake lines.
“It gets intense on something that small,” said McMillion. For his UW-Green Bay model he focused most of the detail on the car’s body. The 1/25-scale model is approximately 10 inches long. McMillion doesn’t plan to take this car to competitions.
McMillion doesn’t currently own a full-size Trans Am — he did in his younger days, a dazzling gold vehicle, but not now — and says he didn’t really intend the model version as a prototype for a future ride.
“This was more to look at,” McMillion said, “and the coolness of the UWGB connection to it.”
Story and photo by Cheyenne Makinia, editorial intern, Marketing and University Communication
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