Peter Lombardo

Thanks Terry, great photos....something tells me you really loved that "Groundshaker" altered. It is an impressive build. The Mustang and the true fire flames and stripe looks great too. Thanks for posting them.

Hey Curt....great job on that "oldie but goodie". I built that kit as a kid, it goes back that far. I always like how it looked with the un-even suspension arms because of all the left turns. I recognize your home made intake mesh air filters on the trumpets....they look great. Nice build of an old kit. It brings back a lot of memories for me.

Absolutely....consider it done. I am sure all will go well, this is a rather routine operation today.....but just in case, we are praying and thinking about her.

Usually when I get an idea and design a concept, I follow it through to complete it pretty much as I originally conceived it. Sure there may be some minor “field†changes that occur because of problems scratch building the part as designed or seeing that the 3 dimensional design doesn’t work and a change was necessary. This build, on the contrary, changed quite a bit and those changes came mostly at the end of the build. I think the changes, even though not all on the surface changed this build in a profound way. The original concept for this Chrysler 300EX I designed was a vehicle built on the current 2010 (2005 based AMT kit) chassis incorporating the venerable Hemi engine and rear drive train. The design was more about the “look†and interior updates then the mechanical workings of the vehicle. But since this was to be a mythical future concept, the realities of today’s energy and political environment would most certainly have tremendous impact on any future vehicle designs. With the pump price of gasoline and diesel fuel steadily increasing, any vehicle manufacturer in today’s climate would definitely take these factors into consideration before a pencil, or computer design hit the paper. So, in a moment of clarity, I took another look at this concept vehicle and realized that a number of profound mechanical changes were necessary, if this was really going to be a future design. First, I thought that the overall design and scheme was plausible. The exterior, at least to me, was more futuristic looking. More sleek, smooth and lower than the current 300, I think the car has a “faster†look…..like it is in motion even when standing still. It incorporates a “cab forward†design which always provides more interior space…..more “people†space and less “mechanical†space. The elongated nose, in keeping the large rounded square grille opening, I think gives the vehicle a look of speed, rapid movement and style. The giant windshield is laid back for less wind resistance. I feel that the swept back headlights with jewel lens are a more modern interpretation of the flat and upright headlights on the current 300. The interior, and the ingress and egress, (in and out) have a number of throwback and modern items that I think are interesting. First the driver side only has one door, up front, that opens in a modern “Lambo†or “Scissor†style. On the passenger side, the entire side of the vehicle opens with a wide “Gullwing†style door, hinged at the top……actually I stole the design from a Subaru concept minivan vehicle from a few years ago, so I can’t take full credit, seeing how “Gullwing†doors have been around for at least a half century now. The interior has another unique design feature that I like very much. Back in the 1920’s, Buick, and maybe a few other brands, I am not sure, offered a sedan and coupe high-end line of cars called the “opera†series. These vehicles featured an “L†shaped couch for the back seat. I know this because my brother-in-law had one of each of these cars. My wife and I used the Buick Opera Sedan for our wedding “Limo†when we got married 36 years ago. I always thought the design was pretty neat and though someday I could work it into a design…..so here it is. I added my own little twist to it by having the front passenger seat swivel so that person could turn toward the back so there could be a sort of “roundtable†area where all the passengers can face each other during a conversation. I intentionally gave the vehicle very large wheels and tires as they roll easier and I think they fill out the wheel and fender “extensions†better. To finish off the design, I always planned on a two tone paint scheme with light metallic blue, in this case a Honda Lacquer color and the top is deep amethyst pearl which is a dark purpleish blue. The color break was separated with a thin gold vinyl pinstripe. Now on to the major changes to the design……….I substituted a small 1.5 liter 4 cylinder engine for the honkin’ big Hemi V8. Rather than couple the engine to the driveline of the vehicle, I have the small gasoline (although it could even be Diesel) engine connected to an electric generator, ala, Chevrolet Volt. The main propulsion of this vehicle is electric. There would be a rather large battery pac mounted behind the engine and under the dash area. This battery could power the vehicle for the first 50 or so miles, which are more than the average daily drive for most American’s; according to the stats I have seen. Once the batteries are diminished of power, the small engine kicks in and runs the generator which provides the electric motor which drives the front wheels with power and gives an additional 400 miles of range on one tank full. If more range is needed, you would gas up at a gas station, no different than you would today in driving your conventional gas powered internal combustion car or truck. Now, if you were to drive, say 40 miles in a day, at night you would just plug the vehicle into your home outlet and recharge the batteries in 8 to 10 hours at 110 volts, or 4 hours at 220 volts. This vehicle actually has a lot in common with today’s diesel-electric train locomotives as it uses the same style of technology to power and move the vehicle. But I added one more little twist to the design. At first I planned on having one or two large sunroofs on the vehicle….there is a rather large roof area and I thought an open top would be pretty cool…..but as the new propulsion was kicking around in my head, it occurred to me that a full bank of Solar Panels, on the roof would round out the “Green†aspect of this car. The solar panels, obviously on sunny days, would provide additional power to the batteries to help charge them up. I had my brother ( the graphic designer and sign maker) scale out a design for solar panels and he then printed them onto vinyl, which I covered with clear packing tape, cut to fit and mounted on a piece of acetate cut to fit the shallow well I created on the roof. I think these “Green†energy features on the vehicle, along with, what I think is a more modern design, have created a vehicle that is technically advanced and incorporated many features, both old and new, in a unique way. The only “kit†pieces used on this model are, the two front seats, engine and part of the suspension system from a Honda Civic. The steering wheel from a Corvette and the wheels are aftermarket Pegasus units. Everything else is scratch built.

Hey, this came out very nice. Good color choice and nice job on the convertible conversion. The lines work very nicely here....looks like an option for this car that Ford should have offered.

Terry, you may want to look for one of these front axles. This is RDU-2451 under the name of "Curbside Dioramics". Here I used it on a Fiat Altered that I started about 10 years ago (one of these days I will complete it). Anyway, it looks like a close fit. In fact I have a Mickey Thompson Attempt kit that I brought many moons ago to build the Moon Eyes dragster with, and yes the front axle on that kit is way too narrow, which is why I have the metal axle in the picture here for a substitution. Just thought this might help you out......by the way, you did a great job resurrecting that poor old "beat" pick up....it looks great now.

Very impressive....great job. First rate scratch building technique.

This is very nicely understated. Nice mix of flashy sparkly paint with a smooth body. I like this....You can never go wrong with orange paint on a Willy's. I have a number of these kits, only one completed though (orange and orange red two tone...see, orange is a great color on these). My biggest complaint with this kit is the rather high stance of the kit as the kit parts build up...I know Perry's resin has a lowered frame to fix this...but I want to fix it myself before I do any more. Anyway, I like how you did yours.

I am speechless....really, I am.....there is nothing I can say except that my mouth is open and no audible or recognizable sound is emanating from that cavity. Amazing work, done so nonchalantly, so a-matter-of-factly.

That is really well done...I love how the paint scheme works on it. Nice and clean both inside and out.

Very nice.....I have this kit and keep saying I have to build it....I have to build it because everytime one of you guys build it, it looks great. Nice Job....the blue looks really good with the saddle interior.

Nice job....I am also sure your Dad will love it.

Mine came in the mail last evening....I also got the "B" version. I like the look of it so I will do it as the kit supplied decals call for. I am not a fan of Anime, but I love the way this looks with the bright colors and animation characters....after my Monster Energy Corvette, I guess I have a thing for cute girls on the hood of a race car. These are limited edition runs, and on Hobby Link Japan (HLJ.com) they show these as sold out and discontinued so these will not be on everyones shelves. My only two complaints with the kit is the lack of engine detail, which seems to be the norm with Japanese kits these days, and the lack of English on the instruction sheet. I will have to "wing it" on a few colors and way some of the decals are cut to fit......I think I can handle it though.

Nice job....I really like the dull look to the paint. It makes it look very understated....I also like the whitewall tire up front, nice period touch,along with the drop axle.

It was a real shame that Jairus was forced to rush the video, I really like the concept. I really liked the music...who was that? Can you get me his name? I will have to look into getting a hold of one of our video cameras for NNL East. Perhaps I can even get hold of a HI-Def unit. I would love to get a video and maybe a few short interviews.....I will have to look into this.

Very nice...this looks great...it is one of the very few cars that looks good dressed in magenta. A nice tidy and tight build.

Great idea....this looks really cool. I want to see this one when it is done....it should look fantastic. That T-Bird tonneau cover sure gets lots of uses outside of T-Birds. Very cool.

I made them. I located a number of Monster advertising images on the internet. From those images, my brother downloaded the ones I wanted into his computer program he uses in his sign business. We photographed the car with a scale ruler next to it so we could "scale" the artwork to the correct size. Then I laid out the design I wanted on the car which was green pearl on the back, as green is the Monster color, and black on the front. We then arranged the images on an 8 1/2 by 11 scaled page in the computer....we split the sheet into the Red Bull and Monster Energy images and printed them on white decal paper. I clear coated the decal paper, as per the instructions, and when dry, I applied them. It is really easy to do. I really love the idea of creating my own decals and race car sponsorships.

Ok Randy,these links bring you to my Flickr page where the pictures are housed. I hope this helps you follow along. http://www.flickr.com/photos/jpl3k/sets/72157624873433940/ Viper build http://www.flickr.com/photos/jpl3k/sets/72157624902762611/ Audi build

Actually, not a stupid question at all. Rather than attempt to give you a credible answer on my own, I went digging to see if I could give you a more in-depth answer. Here from a blog on race cars is a pretty well explained explanation of a rear defuser. Gofast 11-01-2003, 12:38 PM Originally posted by Kevlar I thought the rear diffuser was designed to increase downforce while helping to reduce the vacuum created behind the car... When the car is travelling at high speed a hugh vacuum is created behind it. With the diffuser, it helps pick up some of the air that travells under the car and puts it toward the vacuum lowering hte pressure difference. Actualy, that's what spoilers do. It's hard to talk about car aerodynamics sometimes, because people call wings spoilers and so on, so sometimes it's confusing as to what you're actually talking about. It's true a vacuum is created behind a moving car, but since conservation of mass says that roughly all the air there before the car came through should be there after the car passes, there's enough air to fill the vacuum. It's a matter of doing this cleanly. Without help, air will shed off the back of a car in a random and constantly changing set of vorticies, collapsing back to fill the hole the car punched in the air. This creates a lot of drag. At the same time, a car has a curved upper surface, and so tends to create lift via Bernoulli's principle. This lift generation is bad, partially because it tends to pick the car up at high speeds, but also because lift generates induced drag. Spoilers energize the flow, meaning that they create a set of vorticies at a fixed point. This vortex generation helps the air shedding off the back of the car to spill cleanly into the void behind the car. This reduces the profile drag of the car. The spoiler also reduces the lift on the car, and therefore reduces the induced drag. Many of what people refer to as diffusers are actually spoilers under the rear of the car. A true diffuser helps to mediate between two areas of differing pressure (such as behind a car and under a car). This also helps reduce lift, induced drag, and profile drag. edit: I should add, the e46 ///M3 doesn't really have a diffuser of any kind on the rear. And yes, all these aerodynamic things do stuff on the street, but the effect is pretty small below 80 mph or so as long as the car is well designed to begin with.

This is a neat kit. I have two of them, I stole the wheels on one of them for my Audi R8. I also liked the idea of the gull wing doors and agree with you on the kits shortcomings, but the paint scheme and doors sold me on it. You are off to a nice start.....I am sure it will look great when you are done.

This car is "soooocooool".....have fun with it. I think I would want one of these myself. I just love the wild wings on this.

Jim, nice little build there...you know, if you look quickly at it from the side view, it almost looks like a "pinewood derby" car with the exposed wheels, pure wedge shape and no wings or frills on it....which is not meant to take anything away from the build....1/43 race cars require lots of skill. Nice job.

I always enjoyed building race cars in the past, but for the most part grew tired of them because I found the strict regimen of building cars to be exact replicas of someone else’s design boring. I still love older F1 cars, and I will do them as designed but I enjoy being more creative and like to follow my own direction rather than someone else’s, so doing phantom designs, along with replicas, with custom paint and decals, satisfies most of my desire of being creative. I currently have a Shelby Series 1 “Coupe†conversion to a GT2/3 in the works and I am planning a Porsche Carrara GT hardtop GT2/3, just because I cannot bring myself to build this kit as “stockâ€.

Here are the final 2 of the 4 “phantom†GT2/3 cars that I wanted to build. I previously posted pictures of the first 2 cars, so here is a refresher shot of them: The first car I did was the Dodge Viper ACR-X converted from a Revell Viper ACR. Basically the changes are : The wheel wells were bulged out, doors opened and the main modification is a “snake-skin†decal overlay on the custom green paint job and a snake head graphic on the rear window. The second car is the Audi R8 coupe, converted to a R8 GT2/3 race car. This car has conversions of: bulged wheel wells, reworked air vents, opening doors, a rear wing and custom decals replicating red, yellow and orange “splashes†over silver with the addition of Jagermister sponsorship. The third car in my series is the Polar Lights ( tough kit to build ) Ford GT street car converted to a Red Bull sponsored GT 2/3. The conversion here is, all wheel wells bulged, front fenders completely reworked, front cover, doors and rear deck opened, scratch built roll cage, scratch built rear wing and supports, scratch built lower rear defuser and custom made “Red Bull†decals. I de-chromed the wheels and repainted them with a polished aluminum look and the body is painted with Tamiya dark blue metallic paint, clear coated. The fourth and final car in this series, although there will most likely be more â€phantom†race car conversions coming from me at some point in the future, is a Revell Corvette ZR1 converted into a GT2/3 race car with a phantom Monster Energy paint scheme. This car has : bulged wheel wells, new front and rear wind diffusers, opening doors, scratch built roll cage and rear wing and, of course, custom created decals with Monster Energy drink, and one of their “spokes models†( I don’t really understand this…..she’s in a rather skimpy bikini, but has ankle and leg warmers on….lets see, she is hot (Oh, Yeah!!) but her legs are not? ) on the hood. I closed the clear hood window, bulged the hood slightly and added two front and two rear air intakes. The wheels were de-chromed and painted with the same house of kolor green pearl lacquer as on the rear of the body and there is Tamiya black airbrushed on the front area of the car. The roof and the rear wing are decaled with carbon fiber decals from Scale Motorsports.