Okay, this time we’re continuing where we left off four weeks back, as we work our way through my main display area. Just try to ignore what’s in the back row behind these, I know it isn’t easy….
We’ve seen the Austin-Healey 100/6 before. This is an ancient Revell kit from the fifties, with a multi-piece body – the body sides glue onto the body top, trapping the chassis and interior inside. This can leave nasty (but prototypical) join lines along the front and rear fender tops. I went for an ‘idealized’ look and sanded the joints smooth. I’m sure the designer’s original sketch didn’t have visible joints;
The rest of these are modern kits. That means a single-piece body usually, except for opening panels. Maybe the pans under the bumpers might be a separate part, though the Japanese can usually mold those as part of the main body shell too.
Next up, a modern Porsche. Well, it was modern back when I built it.
This Cayman S is a fairly simple Fujimi kit, but I used colours to the max along with some weathering to enhance the molded-in detail and fool the eye into seeing more depth around the engine than is actually there. And a subtle custom orange metalflake, because silver is so overdone. I’m sure Porsche would have done a custom colour- for a whopper of a price, of course.
Now we come to some Mopars.
While some modellers have turned Revell’s excellent ’68-9 Dodge Dart kits into Aussie Valiant hardtops (different front fenders and grille, and RHD dash), that’s not a conversion I’ve tried.
Here’s a recent build, a yellow/white vinyl top GTS without stripes. In such a conservative colour scheme, it hardly looks like a GTS at all.
And here’s a blue ’69.
Just watch out for that 383. Hemi, you ask? Another time…
Where Darts lurk, can Dusters be far behind? Not around here! This one’s AMT’s street machine version, with a Viper-esque intake and wheels. Otherwise it’s the same (excellent) Duster 340 kit from around 2000.
And here’s a stock one. Well, apart from the paint, that is. And that interior – not a factory choice but it looks good to me. All done with colour.
I do like cars from the muscle era – something to do with getting my licence back then and having to drive the family Falcon. And dream.
So here’s a ’70 Torino Cobra, painted in a period Ford Australia green. We had so many cool colours back then it’s hard to keep them straight in my mind. I think this was Sherwood Green, as used on our Falcon hardtops (the Mad Max cars) which were like a 7/8-scale Torino.
One good Torino deserves another. This one’s a GT, again in a local Ford colour – Yellow Blaze.
There are others – for another time.
Returning to Mopar for our last car for the day, and it’s the ’71 Charger. Another great AMT kit from the nineties, this Super Bee (excuse the R/T doors) is lowered, runs the Hemi, and wheels from a (shh…) Toyota Prius!
Paint is Aussie Ford Wild Violet. Here’s another Charger this time a 440 R/T in a bright metallic pink.
Next time we’ll finish looking at the display before forging off in some other direction. See you then!
Peter: I continue to be amazed at the scope and variety of your models. I especially like the Mopars (obviously, LOL!) and the color combos are fantastic! The mixing of different parts to achieve a desired effect is also great (I will forgive the PRIUS wheels!) Thank you so much for your presentations…can’t hardly wait for the next one!! 🙂
Thanks Moparman. Funny story – as I was building that Charger I knew I wanted larger-diameter wheels to go with the lowered suspension, but I wanted something that didn’t look cartoonishly-large, and with a classic design that said ‘Muscle Car’. These five-spokers fitted the bill perfectly, with a mixture of curvature and edginess that said Modern.
Here’s another Charger for you.
The yellow Dart is my pick, although the yellow Torino is a close second. The underside of that Cayman is amazing.
Thanks Aaron. That Cayman… to my mind the key to successful weathering is having a feeling for when to stop. I try to use colouring and shading to suggest depth and weathering rather then hitting the observer over the head with it. I wanted the Cayman to look as though it had a full separate engine rather than being moulded in a piece with the floorpan. I used several different shades and gloss levels of black for the background, tried to be reasonably ‘correct’ with the metal colours, and finished with a grey wash to accent the depth and details.
I’m not always so particular, but the Porsche seemed worth it.
Correction: where I said ‘shades of black’ it would be more correct to refer to ‘different but really really really dark greys’. Black can have different levels of gloss, but not shades. It’s an absolute. I think.
That green 340 Duster would look great in my driveway, er car model display. I can’t tell from the photo if the door handle is a pull handle or handle with button.
Great work, thanks for bringing these to us to enjoy.
Thanks Lee. There’s something about Mopars of that era that just draws me back to modelling them again and again. As a Mopar fan, I’m sure you understand.
The door handles on the Duster are indeed push-buttons, but they’re moulded with the body rather than being the preferred separate pieces. While this can make assembly easier for the less skilled, it does make applying the side stripes more tricky.
Your comment earns you another Duster! Still want the green one?
Thanks for inviting us in again. I’m beginning to feel like the neighbor that comes over a bit too often.
Loving that purple Super Bee; the Prius wheels are a touch of genius.
Please don’t feel like that, Paul. You’re welcome. Anytime. I’m glad to have an appreciative audience. When you outlive your welcome, I’ll stop writing. 🙂
I didn’t set out to use the Prius wheels; I have boxes and boxes full of leftover parts, but I guess the Prius wheels were fresh in my mind from having built the Prius (and putting it on dubs) a few months earlier. I didn’t research whether the bolt pattern’s the same, the PCD might be a bit smaller being metric – but who cares!
Love the Mopars!
Thanks. The shape and the colours of this era Mopars really speak to me too, though I get the impression the ownership experience may have said something quite different. Fortunately I’m assembling these ones to my standard, and they don’t have to go anywhere!
I vividly (and fondly) remember those Revell multi piece body models, but as reissues only. My favorites were the Eldorado Brougham sedan, the Porsche convertible, and the Pontiac Club de Mer roadster. The formally attired couple with the Caddy and the driver and his girlfriend with the Pontiac were nice touches.
Phil, my first multi-piece was another Austin-Healey, then the ’59 Ford, the ’57 Ranchero, etc. I never built the Caddy, (having been warned by an unhappy friend who did, and the Club de Mer never appealled. But the Porsche, yes. That was a horror, which needed a lot of putty and styrene work to correct. Fortunately an old issue of Scale Auto Enthusiast contained templates to correct the body. The ’59 Ford contained casually-dressed driver and girlfriend figures, who have been repopped (pirated?) in resin.
Here’s my Porsche. I saw one in BRG, so….
A very colourful group this week. I do like those Australian paint names. Very different from BMC Maroon B.
Bernard, you get first reply this week. For a feature that didn’t set out to headline colour, this sure was colourful! I loved living through the hippie era, and something of that, along with the concomitant humour, survives in me to this day. If you like ‘our’ Ford’s colour names, have you heard of the ones Leyland Australia used on the P76? Much more ‘period’ than Maroon B: Plum Loco, Peel Me a Grape, N V Green, Bold as Brass, Bitter Apricot, Spanish Olive, Dry Red, Home on Th’Orange….. And there were more, but these were the most notable (to me).
A great time to be alive, if you had a warped sense of humour!
I love all of them, and hooray for the Chrysler focus in this week’s installment! I was going to say the butter-yellow Dart was my favorite, but then you got to those Dusters. I heart. I’m still always on the lookout for a reasonably priced, larger Duster die cast. We’ll see what happens! Another fine assortment of the collection in Peter’s fantasy garage from the Land Of Make Believe.
Thanks Joseph. The Chrysler focus today is sheer happenstance – or it might be subliminal on the part of seventies Chrysler designers? There’s a certain ‘rightness’ about Chrysler’s designs of this era which appeals more to me than the Ford, GM or AMC equivalents. That’s not to say that I haven’t built the others; you’ve seen two of my Torinos today (there are another four…), just that the non-Mopar designs generally don’t have that…something. (My opinion) 🙂
I wonder what colour you’d like your Duster…..?
Likewise I have more Darts, Dusters, Road Runners, GTXs, Cudas, Challengers, etc, etc. And the occasional GM product. Here’s one a Flint boy might like…
A resounding “yes” to the GSX! I like the colors of both of your Dusters features in this essay. For me, I’d want a yellow one like one my dad drove back in the day. Black vinyl interior with black take stripes and the cartoon dust cloud decals on it. I loved that car.
I had a XA Falcon in that green, well the door shuts were that colour the rest of it had faded and rusted quite badly on wet roads you got wet inside the car, It taught me how to buy better Falcons, the 250 6 ran great.
A friend had an XA Fairmont with the 250. It broke down on his honeymoon, but he made it back from Brisbane to Warragul running on five cylinders. Sounded awful, but it got him home – I was quite impressed at that.
Peter, you have SPECTACULAR model building skills. What age did you start at? I was around 6 back in 1960 when I did my first car. Wasn’t too long after that that I started on military planes, battleships, and aircraft carriers. Your cars tempt me but with my cars, my cameras, my aircraft carrier, and my office…well you get the picture.
Finding car models of that era isn’t so easy to do. Finding military plane models seems easier which is good for me as those are what I am after. Have close to 80 still unbuilt in 1/48 and a few in 1/32 therefore making for display issues. Below is an F4 I built based on a former Marine aviator who was security of the Hornet and has since passed away. Right now the ship is restoring a F4-S which I might have to write up when finished.
Thank you! I remember being given the occasional plane or ship model early on, but really wasn’t interested. But cars, YES!
I probably started on the 1/32 scale Airfix models when I was about 8 or 9, then moved onto the larger American kits when I could afford them, in my early teens. Then when American cars got boring, I moved onto the Japanese and Europeans. So I’ve been building cars for nearly sixty years, and still learn new tricks. On this unfinished Toyota Century I’m using a Hasegawa window tint film a Japanese friend sent me. (below)
The trick with finding car models of just about any era is to search online. There are about six I’m keen on getting at the moment, but last week the nearest (only?) hobby shop in my state’s second-largest city didn’t have any of the ones I was after. (They only had about a hundred different cars I didn’t want!) I know I can get all the Japanese ones I want from a Japanese supplier who ships to Australia, so I’ll probably do that soon. For American kits I know of several reputable companies in Australia I can get them through (I hope).
I so get your point about other interests. My writing seems to have taken off this year; between that and the gardening I’ve spent less time modeling. But I’ve just been asked to build a particularly tricky HO-scale Victorian mansion kit for my son’s HO model railroad club – as in, it’s for a club display layout but none of the club guys wanted to tackle the kit! So I can see some more bench time ahead, just with (very) different subject matter.
I see familiar tools and paints in the background. Your paints jobs look great. I’m sure you were like me in that we hand painted when very young, then moved to a can of Testor’s spray paint, before finally using an airbrush. Although a can of spray paint can work just fine. You do have some cool colors.
Actually no! My progress was different.
Testors paint wasn’t that easy to come by here, so I largely bypassed that stage and stuck with brushed Humbrol enamels, moved laterally into Duplicolor sprays, built up a ridiculous range of those, and when Tamiya began making spray paints, adopted them as my ‘weapon of choice’. That Toyota Century paint job is all Tamiya.
Never did get an airbrush…..