Peter Lombardo

Yes, this is a well built example of this car. I have the same kit and agree with your assessment of it. Yours looks very clean and precise, nice job and the wire wheels look perfect, just beautiful.

Very "old school"...........nice and clean.......As previously stated, it looks great without the usual markings....the whitewall tires looks great on it too....just like the real thing.....very sharp.

Wow, great job......glad to see the SWC car(s) getting attention.... it was an iconic race car that set the standard for the gasser wars of the 60's. 2 days work is amazing.....think how many builds you could do in a year if you kept up that pace. very nocely done.

Gentleman, thanks for the kind words, I really appreciate it, also, I am heartened to hear that a number of you guys shared the same experiances that I did growing up in the "Golden Age" of model car building...........I know right now is the best time to be into the hobby, with all of the great kits and cottage industries stuff available, and I think it will get unbelievably better once the "Desktop" machines hit their stride, but really, the 60's were an amazing time to be getting into model car building..........boy, if I knew then, what I know now, I would have an amazing pile of vintage kits sitting in my closet. Again, thanks for "getting it".

Wow, that is just about perfect.....only thing missing for me is the ability to hop in and drive away.......really well designed and executed.

Very nice job........I have that kit, along with about 40 more F1's to do one of these days........you did a very nice job ....you are right about Tamiya and the F1 kits.....I have every one of the 1/20 scale kits and they are great to build......the Fijimi and Hasagawa are great too, so try one of them......I have a few Studio 27 and MFH multi-media ones too and they are more difficult. Well done, We need more F1 builds around here.....glad you posted it.

After posting the SWC cars, It got me thinking about the Roth cars that I mentioned......so I thought I would do a quick post on them. There is nothing too special about those cars, the three were built basically box stock with the usual additions like spark plug wires and fuel lines. Tweety Pie, painted with Tamiya purple pearl raddle can spray whicle the Beatnick Bandit and Outlaw have a Mopar pearl white finish with the kit decals......like I said, pretty typical builds Now the last car is my interpretation of Norm Graboski's famous Kookie T featured back in the 1960's on the TV show, 77 Sunset Strip.......where the car hop, Ed (Kookie) Burns was driving this car. I made a few changes to the car to fit my own tastes. Here is the real car, and here is my version of it.......... I started with the Tweety Pie 2 kit, and used Modelhus wheels and tires but I did my wheels in red to contrast the blue body color.....I used 1960 Ford dog dish hub caps and then continued the flames over the cowl center area. I did not care for the Graboski exhaust end tip the way it came up in the back, so I left that off. Since I did not have the same carb. inlet trupets I went with a generic round inlet Thats it, thanks for looking.

That is different...kind of a mix of a few styles...but it works very well.....the decals really set it off and the red injector stacks add some nice contrast....I like it.

Stones, Woods and Cook 1941 Willys times 3 Like many of us “old timers”, back in the early 60’s, as a youth, I built a number of what today we call “iconic” kits….a few of the Roth custom rods, the Orange Crate, Black Widow and the Silhouette to name a few…..but of all the old kits from that era, my favorite was the Stones, Wood and Cook Willys. I am not exactly sure why it was the stand out kit for me, maybe it was the fact that it was highly detailed (for the day) with opening doors, or the Roth painted signage on the car or even the name, which always seemed to roll off my tongue easily, heck, it could have been the box art with the photo of the car coming off the line….. I just don’t know, but one thing was for sure, with my relatively limited modeling skills, I, like most kids back then I butchered that kit. I mean, those door hinges were impossible to get right, and the suspension parts and tedious working steering did not enjoy being glued together, and having to use only tube glue that was slow drying and had a nasty tendency to get on all of your fingers and then mysteriously on to the body…..man what I ended up with was a preverbal glue bomb. Well today all of those builds are long gone, tossed out by my mother, along with my collection of baseball cards from the 50’s and 60’s (long before the crazy prices of the 80’s for those collections) and my home made slingshots, Swiss Army knife and Tiger Battle Tanks when I was in the Navy…..Oh well, back then it was no big deal to me as I was interested in Girls, Cars (real), music and beer after discharge. Sound familiar? Anyway, back in 1990 when I got back into building, one of my goals was to find all, or at least many of those iconic kits from the 60’s that I had built and build them now with my improved skills. I know this is not unique……many of you have expressed the same thoughts and goals. Today I find it extremely rewarding to hold one of those kits in my hands…..it takes me back to a simpler time. No real worries……no mortgage payments, no job stress, no car payments, and no parenting worries ……man, the only concern was getting my homework done so I still had time to do a little modeling. I acquired the Revell SWC Willys kit in 1992. For 20 years I had it safely tucked away in a draw just waiting for the day when I would finally think the time was right to build it. I was not worried about my skills, I mean at this point I will attack just about any model or attempt any new technique fearlessly. So back in 2012, the time seemed right….after all it was the 20th anniversary of me acquiring the kit, so I began the build. I had a wonderful article from the “Rodders Journal” that recounted the early days of the car…….the variations of it, the time it spend converted to a “street” car and a brief history of the players and some detail of the illustrious racing career of that car. Most importantly, it has some wonderful photos from back in the day, so I was able to model the car relatively accurately to the early 1960 time frame. As I began the build which would ultimately be close to box stock, I know the door hinges were going to have to go….I rebuilt them from scratch and I think they work much better since for one thing, they have metal pins holding them….the other change was giving the model whitewall front tires as in many of the old pictures of the car it was sporting them. The Oldsmobile engine has the necessary spark and fuel lines to complete the engine compartment. Amazingly, at least to me, the decals had held up extremely well over the years, with the copyright date on the kit being 1969. Along with the original SWC car, I have here two additional versions of the car……..as I said earlier, this car has been presented in a number of versions and by a number of tribute builders. As much as I like the original car, I find the candy blue version even more attractive. I really like the gold “Old English” style lettering on the candy blue paint. By the way, the paint is Duplicolor silver, over primer topped with Tamiya clear blue. This is really a Big John Mazmanian kit that I converted with Slixx decals. I opened the doors and made the same kind of hinges that are on the original car. This car was detailed based upon an article in an older “Hot Rod” magazine . In the last version of the car, I took a little “artist License” and changed up the pure black car a little. This is the SWC version of the Big John car Revell issued a few years ago….. Sure, the black looks great, but I wanted a little life to the color, so I used a very deep dark purple which appears almost black but it really isn’t. I opened the doors on this one too, but used conventional style hinges for expedience but gave it working steering. All three cars were clear coated after decaling and were buffed and waxed to get a nice smooth finish. All I need to add to these is a Big John, candy red car, which I have, also with Slixx decals and I will have satisfied my itch to build the 41 Willys Gasser cars of my youth. As always, thanks for looking and I apologize for once again running a bit long-winded.

Very nice, the "soft" interior colors work really well....looking good!

You're off to a great start, should be a interesting build......I love the low stance. Looking forward to more.

Nice simple build with a beautiful paint job.........so clean and smooth......and yeah, the grille could use a black wash to give it the proper depth, other than that, it looks very nice.

Very nice......these cars are not easy to get right with all of the wild decals......I have 3 Porsche's and Z4's with the Aname characters so I know how difficult they can be.....you did a very nice job on it. These builds don't get much play on this forum, but a well made build, is a well made build....this is nicely done.

Healeys have always been one of my favorite British cars.....to get a solid example of one today you are looking at a minimum of $65,000 to $75,000. You can find them for less, but the condition of those examples will require big bucks to make right. You are right, those old Revell kits are not as bad as they have been made out to be, but they still require skill to get the multi-part body panels assembled properly.......clearly, you possess those skills because this model looks first rate, and you are also correct about the color, light metallic blue over white is the premo combination for that car. Beautifully done.

http://cdnapi.kaltura.com/index.php/extwidget/openGraph/wid/0_b94e7mzv Read below and then click on the link above....read this first, then the link......got it? Good. A few weeks ago I was invited with my son-in-law to Monticello Raceway ( A private 4.1 mile race track in NY state) to be the one of the first group of private citizens (not manfacturer or press personal) to drive the new 2014 Corvette Stingrays on the track. We went out in three car groups with a professional driver leading us out on the track. Here I am driving an automatice version, earlier, I drove the 7 speed stick car on another portion of the track which I must say is a much better car to drive fast.......no throttle delay with the stick car and just a better more fun car to drive on the track.......but the automatic version is no slow sled either. On the screen is the view from inside the car, a shot of me driving, the speed, rev's and position on the track....this 4.1 mile track was split into three sections where we drove the cars in different settings.....here the cars were set to "track" mode which is exactly that, set-up more for race style driving.....the car has 5 manually adjustible settings, wet (for just that road condition), Eco, which sofens the suspension and steering, cuts the engine to 4 cyl. on the hyway,Touring, which is the default setting, Sport which is tighter and louder and then Track, which is tight steering, loudest and stiffest suspension setting.....believe me, this car is just amazing....it is far more like a race car than a street car.............on normal roads in average traffic, you could only us about 15% of the cars ablities. I really want one of these....the ride, the fit and finish and the look is all 100% in my book. Chevrolet really got this right. Take a minute or two to watch the video........I was having the time of my life... P.S., remember I was driving someone elses car, so I couldn't go completely crazy.

Tell me, who doesn’t love a Ferrari 250 GTO? One of the most iconic shapes in the automotive world and most likely the most famous Ferrari of all time, certainly the most expensive with one recently selling at auction for a cool 52 million (granted it was a 1963 model with the even more beautiful shape)but none the less, it is a 250 GTO. With only 39 examples produced and all handmade, each one is unique unto itself. A while back while looking through a magazine I picked up on a variety of Ferrari’s I came across some beautifully done photos of 250 GTO chassis #4153GT. Here ia a shot I found on the internet....not as "classy" as the shots in the magazine, but this is the real car. I think the thing that struck me was the fact that it wasn’t red, but a smoothly applied silver with a neat looking contrasting hood stripe in lemon yellow, running from front wheel opening to wheel opening and numberless white roundels. I thought to myself that this would make a nice model, and since I just picked up the Fujimi newly tooled version of the Ferrari 250 GTO, I was all set. I built the car basically out of the box with just the addition of engine detailing and the unique paint. The real car does not appear to have the leather straps and buckles to close and hold the hood, but I left them on the model because I liked how they looked and besides, why couldn’t they be added to chassis #4153 after the photos were taken? Exactly, so they stayed. The front of the car was painted yellow and once dry, the stripe was masked off and the car was painted with Mopar Viper silver and once that was dry it was clear coated. I searched all through my decal collection and could not find any plain white roundels, so I was going to have to have some made. Once again I contacted my sign maker brother who has the equipment to cut vinyl for signs. I asked him to cut me few roundels out of white vinyl…….but being as anal as he is, he needed me to give him the exact circumference of the roundel or he wouldn’t make them. Looking for something to gauge the size I needed, I looked at a nickel and it seemed to be about the right size so I had him cut them to that size. Since finishing the 250GTO, I built a Ferrari 360 Modena (Tamiya) and a F12 Berlinetta (Fujimi) and I figured they would also look interesting in the same paint scheme, so I now have a small stable of Ferrari’s with this paint. Both additional Ferraris were also built close to out of the box, just with aftermarket wheels and a small rear spoiler wing for the 360 and door hinges for the F12.

Truly, a very well executed ( or should I say "electrocuted") paint job......I have wrapped ( I did the design work, others applied it) trucks of a local electrican with a very similar design.....yours is very striking and well done.....obviously you arereally diggin' your result, and you should, it is first rate.

This looks geat, I especially like the under the hood workmanship, very convincing.

Very nice job, I know it took a lot of work to convert the kit.......I looked at this real car and considered doing a version of it......glad I didn't because yours is well done, and this is the model that should stand as the build example of the real car..............nicely done.

I have always loved the livery on those Jags.......I have built a hasagawa 1/24th and still have the Tamiya version for someday.....yours looks great, beautiful decal work, those 1/43rd little guys can be a headache to decal....yours looks great.

That is just insane......1/9th scale is too big for me, but you handled it very well....I love the paint, really different. Very unique!

Absolutely a winner....WOW.....just beautiful. You made the difficult look easy.

Curt, nice little roadster.........those Fujimi Enthusiast Models are not the easiest builds....nice job, I have been playing around with EM # 1, 911 Turbo kit for a few years now.......I really need to finish it and if it comes out close to yours, I think I Be A Happy Guy! Oh yeah, nice curb too.

Absolutely, by all means go ahead.......thanks, Pete

WOW, what a super clean build You know, this kit really does have a lot to offer, it builds up beautifully no matter which direction you take it. Beautiful job.