Terry Jessee

Getting closer. A friend of mine did the foil for me. I was going to do more with it, but think at this point I'll just build the rest out of the box.

These are all resin--Best Model Car Parts, Profil24, Modelhaus, and Modelhaus (what if Briggs Cunningham had taken Cadillacs to LeMans in 1949? Started by me, finished by Shannon Dimaulo).

Yes, it is. Old All-American Models resin pickup box on a Warlock kit.

I saw this Chevy at a local car show. And guess who has a nice '57 with similar wheels?

Just got a very cool new kit from Profil24 (France). They do some gorgeous, all-original resin kits of sports and racing cars. This new one is the 1950 Cadillac "Le Monstre" that raced at the 24 Hours of LeMans in 1950. Briggs Cunningham was behind the project., which was based on a 1950 Cadillac Coupe DeVille. LeMans rules said that a car must have its' original engine and chassis, but changes could be made to the bodywork. I think they meant "subtle" changes, but Cunningham was able to show that his radical car fit the rules at the time. So the car was allowed to run. The body was designed by Grumman Aircraft, who used a wind tunnel to perfect the shape. Bill Frick (Fordillac, Studillac) built it. It was one of the fastest cars on the track (130 mph on the Mulsanne Straight) and finished 11th. Kit is a curbside but has a nice interior. Surface detail on the body is fine but excellent. Even the scoops have thin openings. Lots of photoetched parts to add detail. It's expen$ive, but so unique that I couldn't pass it up. It is a complete kit with rudimentary chassis detail and decals for numbers, gauges, and other features.

This used to be an AMT Snapfast Plus '50 Chevy pickup, kind of like the first photo. The boom is scratch-built.

No, 1/24. It's Model Factory Hiro resin with metal and photoetch parts.

AMT Chevy Van. They're not right but they're close.

Tamiya Silver Leaf spray lacquer.

This is Model Factory Hiro's Porsche 550, the James Dean Porsche. It's a simple but complete resin kit. The body and interior are essentially two parts, but the kit features a lot of metal and photo-etched parts (some of them are ridiculously tiny!). But it's coming along. At this point, it's just stuck together for the photo.

No, the original MPC '78. The kit came as a 2WD.

Motormax does a 2015 all-black Explorer. They've also done all-black Chargers. The black Taurus is pretty rare, so you'd wind up doing some re-painting. Rhonda Keraly has the decals for all of them at Police Decals & Deals on eBay.

(and diecast). These are all what police car modelers call "blanks"--painted but undecorated. That way you can add your own markings. So I had some fun. The black and white Ford Explorer actually comes with a white rooftop, too, so I had to mask that and repaint it black. There are some other small modifications to get the look. The black Montana Highway Patrol Taurus has a lot of little changes. I lowered it, did some detail work on the interior, and modified the spotlight (removed the passenger side). The light bar came from spares. The "lenses" in the light bar are a pattern I found and reduced, then printed on paper. Then I used clear acrylic as adhesive to apply the lense pattern to the inside of the light bar plastic. Decals are from Rhonda Keraly at Police Decals and Deals. The Fords still need antennae. The Ram pickup is just decals and a light bar. Rhonda Keraly decals again, and the light bar is from spares, too.

This is the Landmaster. It was built by Dean Jeffries for the 1977 film "Damnation Alley." The model is a 3D print in 1/25 scale so it's about 17+ inches long. The main structure came in nine pieces which had to be fitted and glued together. It's supposed to swivel at the center like the actual truck but the mechanism was clunky so I glued everything solid. Beyond that, the center section is the wrong shape so that it can swivel, but correcting that would have meant reshaping nearly the entire shell. It has no interior, but then neither does the 1:1. The girl on the motorcycle gives you an idea of relative size. I've been working on it for about six months and decided I'd done enough. So there it is. I've included some in-progress shots.

Not restored--all original except the wheels.

The graphics on this model are handpainted. I built it in 1980. Went to Salt Lake in 1981 and showed up in the old magazine then--my first time. The original color was hot pink but the Testors "clear" has really yellowed over time. At one point the tires began to eat the wheels so I replaced them with something a little more modern.

My only attempt at a chopped top. This was supposed to be the centerpiece of a garage diorama but this was as far as I got with it.

I don't know if I'd posted this here before, but I couldn't find it. So here... Couple of WIP shots and the finished car.

The Goldenrod, I think.

These are all 1/25: Scaleworks, Jimmy Flintstone, Etzel Speed Classics. All resin.

Hmmmm... the date is a palindrome. And maybe that blue cutdown used to be...