1959scudetto

After the class winner, now on to the 2nd works car on the decal sheet: Bruno Bonini's # 268 light grey car (DNF): It is the right one in the color shot: should be ready till the weekend...

Paint is looking good, Mark - I would leave it like that.

Chris, this is absolute museum quality ! Can't wait to see the next steps.

Thanks, Niko - I applied some dust from pastel chalks onto it in trying to achieve kind of a post-race look.

Looks much better with the lighter orange color, Peter. The other looks like it has darkened over time. The fauxpas could be: the decals on the front lights are upside down...

Thanks, Trevor - the same here: I was also thinking of buying it or not because of its high price back then. But I'm glad I did (a month ago I saw one for sale for € 150,00 + shipping and that is a good price nowadays). Work carefully and with patience, and it will come out fine - no doubt about that!

Well done, Rich - the first picture let me believe to see the 1:1 car.

The first one is done .... The next one will follow soon...

The old Janis Joplin song comes to mind: "Get it while you can" . Unfortunately, we have seen many aftermarket suppliers going out of business - some after a relatively short time. I'm glad that I ordered their "London-Mexico world cup rally 1970" transkit with excellent decals last year ...

the works cars did have them (also drink bottles):

This is the class winning car of Consalvo Sanesi, one of 5 Alfa Romeo works cars in the 1954 race, where a new class "European touring cars" had been established. He became 15th overall, beating several more powerful American cars. Tamiya TS 69 (wooden deck brown) was a close enough match for the color: More soon !

Finally a little progress: installation of seat belts (from the parts box), cutting new axles from 2 mm brass tube, removing the bumper horns front and rear and fabrication of a (driver's side) bug deflector. The hardest part was finding out the color of the real car and approximating this - there are almost only B/W photos available (see below) - at least 1 color pic turned up on the web (must be a still from a video) I

Great looking Group 5 racer in this seldom seen livery, Pierre. (I saw the Martini works version at the Porsche Museum in Stuttgart almost 3 weeks ago) Sometimes you need easier kits in between your difficult stratchbuilding efforts.

Excellent working truck, Brian - with a perfectly matching flatbed trailer. Suddenly it's 1964.

How could I miss one of my all-time favorites? Excellent model, Anders (as usual !)

While the first one has lost its paint and is already disassembled, ... ... the rest of the bunch is still waiting what's happening next:

I don't know if this is a real WIP (is more or less a modification of a diecast model), but as a long-time Alfa Romeo fan, I simply had to do this . You will need 3 things: a model of the 1900 (I have 5 in grey/beige and a black one), the excellent 3D-printed wheels from Jack Modelling (Jason custom-made them for me and then offered them to the public) and the superb decals from Scale Design/Tom Tanner: The car was first released in 2010 in the "Alfa Romeo 100 years" Centennial Collection: The decals show the artwork of the late Mike Quarterman and were made by Cartograf of Italy. They are the best I've ever worked with - you see here 2 works cars and a private entry (South American competitor) for the Carrera P. (I will build all three) + supplementary decals for the corrected colors of the numbers (orange and blue) as well as Mille Miglia decals (Nuvolari 1931, Fangio 1952 and Sanesi 1956) + dashboard/instrument decals for the 2900 B lungo and several chrome decals for Carozzeria touring and the Giulietta SS. Only issue is that the colors are not always correct - there are almost no color pics of these cars available (several modelmakers goofed also on that) - so some decals will have to be modified a little. Jason's wheels are perfect as always. I will keep you posted if interested.

Thank you Tim - I'm happy to have it in my collection (when it was still affordable, though almost at 5 times the price of an Italeri SWB). It belongs to my favorites.

Excellent model, Rich - I don't know how I could miss that (probably a confusion of mine with your 1/12 model). Anyway, it looks as good as the bigger one.

I had this kit and passed it on - very simplified, lacking detail in every aspect and very crude, very toylike - just look at the box picture: it says "41 pieces". That says all about it (similar to the 905 prototype).

And most important: they are true to scale !

Vehicles like these driving on their limits needs high driving skills !

Long-time project, Mark, finally reaching the finished line. I'm looking forward seeing it in the "under Glass" section.

Driving back home from our winter holiday last week, we took a 200-mile detour to Zuffenhausen for a visit of the Porsche museum which I always wanted to see. My main interest are sportsracers from the 60's and 70's and I was looking forward to seeing them in person. The only problem is that Porsche has a pool of - depending on the source - 400 (Wikipedia) to 700 (Porsche) cars , among them are about 200 race cars. In the exhibition there are between 80 and 90 cars always on display. So the objects vary from time to time, and I missed some of the cars I wanted to see: 910, 907, 908 and 936 were totally absent as well as some of the 917s. Nevertheless it was a wonderful experience as the models on display were marvellous, you could come quite near for making photos, and my personal highlights were the three 917s from the 1971 Le Mans race including the pink pig. On to the pics - here are some impressions: Pre-war and 1940's/50's: The 1960's (starting with the 911 2+2 prototype): The 1970's: The 1980's: Spectacular installation of the 956: mounted on the ceiling just to demonstrate the calculated downforce at 200 mph (= 321 kph) which is equal to the weight of the racer. Theoretically it could drive on the ceiling from that speed upwards... Look at the impressive race results... On display also was the McLaren TAG-turbo of Alain Prost from 1986 (engine constructed by Hans Mezger, Porsche's motor-genius): and finally, the 1986 Paris-Dakar desert rally participating 959 (2nd place with Jacky Ickx): and from the 1990's onwards: And finally the personal car of Ferdinand Porsche, which become a factory test-car ("Versuchswagen 141") after his death in 1951 and has about 250 000 miles on the odometer: It was a rewarding experience and is highly recommended to every gearhead !!!

A perfect out-of-the-box build can give you much satisfaction, Rich - especially when it is done in a perfect way like yours. You don't always to add bits and pieces to let a kit shine - your build is proof of that: very nice !