Cpt Tuttle

Chassis glued together, painted and sectioned to get rid of the almost 4x4-like ride height it gets out of the box.

A yellow Esprit was a childhood dream for me....

Tamiya pearl yellow.

Quite a nice engine in this kit! This model is said to have problems with the suspension sitting too high. The easiest way of solving it is to cut down the frame tunnel to allow it to slide up further in the body. So I did such a modification which seems to have turned out well.

I think you could fit my Mini into your crankcase.

Engine and gearbox glued together and painted.

One thing is for sure, beating you in having the most wicked engine will be hard.

I had to do some cutting of the floorpan since the limited space under the hood requires remote mounted radiator and turbo. Though since I am planning a conversion to coilovers in the rear and doesn't need the weird rubber spring elements the Mini are using, this will probably be OK. I am thinking about having a beam between the rear shock mounts to beef things up instead. Also I painted the floorpan a rear sleeper color that the body will get later - brown with satin clearcoat. Though I wanted the engine bay and frame rails to be black, so black it is. Don't ask me why, I just wanted it this way......

Compared to the 90s version of the AMT 37 Chevy convertible, it's a beauty....

It could as well pass for a real bike if there was no size references in the background. Absolutely stunning.

What a beauty! Nice color choice and impressive build quality, very good.

Interesting back story and very nice build.

Despite all their flaws the AMT deuces are among my favourite kits, they have lots of potential for being such crude kits. Your build really proves that. I especially love the roof insert.

Now that's a really clean and well built bug. Beautiful!

I felt like I wanted to upgrade the front suspension to a more conventional type so I started building some struts for it. It's a combination of Honda and Porsche parts. Porsche control arm and lower part of the strut, Honda brakes and upper part of the strut. I wanted something bigger than 10" wheels but finding something still tiny enough to fit a Mini was hard. Finally I found the solution, wheels from the Fujimi VW Golf mk1 was filed down a bit and the tyres from the Mini kit stretched over. Seems like it will work. I felt like I could as well build a flipnose if I was going to build a completely new front end anyway.