DMV black flags replica car

Hugh Winesett is a meticulous craftsman with incomprehensible patience and attention to detail.

He says he once crafted a sailboat that beat Dennis Conner in a race off the San Diego coast before Conner won the America's Cup and became famous.

Winesett also built a one-eighth-scale remote-control model of a P-38 twin-engine World War II fighter with a 76-inch wing span that hangs on a wall in his Las Vegas home.

He can't remember a project he didn't finish -- even it if it took three years like the P-38.

But that was before a recent encounter with the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles.

What appeared to be a perfectly planned and executed project to build a NASCAR lookalike car that would be street legal was black-flagged by DMV.

Two years ago, Winsett bought a 2002 stock car and began converting it into the spitting image of the famed No. 3 NASCAR racecar once driven by the late Dale Earnhardt.

The basic elements -- frame and body -- are from a NASCAR Busch (now Nationwide) Series car that Terry Labonte raced with Slim Jim sponsorship about eight years ago.

"I'm just a tinkerer," Winsett says. "I thought this would be a fun project and a way to pay tribute to Dale."

Winesett, 68, was a longtime Las Vegas custom countertop builder before owning a local 7-Eleven store. He intended to make the black replica of a 2002 Chevrolet Monte Carlo legal to drive on Nevada streets.

It seemed like the perfect project after selling the store three years ago and retiring.

Unlike when it was a purpose-built racecar, Winesett's No. 3 now has windshield wipers, horn, speedometer, street tires, muffler, turn signals and working headlights, taillights and brake lights.

It is powered by a high-performance 350-cubic-inch Chevrolet engine that he says will pass an emissions test.

Before buying the original racecar, Winesett went to the Nevada DMV website and downloaded a form that detailed what was required for a car to be registered for licensing on the street. He used the same procedure nine years earlier when embarking on a similar project, which the DMV approved.

But unbeknownst to Winesett, those specifications changed in 2007 when Nevada Assembly Bill 321 went into effect. Among the changes made by the law: Custom-built cars must use factory-made frames, not ones from "off-highway" racecars.

Winesett's rebuilt car from 2001 used the original frame from a 1987 Monte Carlo. He added a fiberglass body that carried a generic No. 37 race number. The car passed a DMV inspection, was registered and Winesett was issued the specialty Nevada license plate "NASCARS."

Winesett began working on his second car believing he was following current rules.

But it took DMV nearly two years to update the part of its website that reflected the 2007 changes and Winesett didn't find out his vehicle was not in compliance with state regulations until he took it to be inspected and registered.

A DMV inspector saw the car on a trailer last summer at one of its inspection stations before it was painted black and decals applied.

Winesett acknowledged it originally was a racecar and the inspector said "no" to his request.

It wasn't until September that Winesett was told of the DMV's final decision that his vehicle would not be considered for inspection so it couldn't be registered or licensed.

"They won't even inspect it ... won't even look at it," says Winesett, who has $20,000 invested in the project. "It's like I'm on a black list. They told me everybody at DMV knows about the car."

Winesett is soft-spoken until his frustration boils over.

"It pisses me off. I followed all their rules," he says, adding he will appeal the rejection.

"I went by the guidelines on their website," Winesett says. "If it had been updated with the new information then I never would have bought the car and started this project."

Kevin Malone, the DMV public information officer, said Winesett should have e-mailed DMV or called to learn if the standards had been changed.

Winesett's first replica logged only 3,000 miles in three years before he sold it, he says. Now it appears his second won't ever hit the road.

Contact reporter Jeff Wolf at jwolf@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0247.