Peter Lombardo

Marcos, that is beautiful. Back "in the day", my friend Pat had that car. His was a little darker blue, but it had the white interior, red lines and the Tri Power carbs. What a fun car. Your build brings back such great memories of high horsepower, low gasoline prices and cheap, cheap White Castle Burgers. The Friday and Saturday nights in the White Castle parking lot with our American Muscle cars...Pats GTO, Jerry and Richie's Chevelle's, Don's Dodge Charger and my Camaro Rally Sport 350....those were the days and your build is exactly right. I think, one of these days I should build all of the cars of my early Twenties. Anyway, thanks for the beautiful Goat and the memories it brings back to me. great job. ( yes, get those taillights foiled)

There is no reason to hide those builds away. They look great. I really like the Ferrari and the Charger....nicely done. See, we don't bite!

Wow, that is nice. I really like the roadster idea. I have the kit and I like the 1/1 car very much, but there is just something about the car that does not work for me.....maybe the carbon fiber panel behind the door, or the cramped looking interior...I don't know for sure, but I know I like the way you opened the doors with the twist hinge and the "topless" look suits it much better. Nice. I may have to borrow some of those ideas when I finally get around to building my kit of that car. I am looking forward to seeing some more progress on this.

You realize that this model is banned in most European countries because you have those evil cigarette sponsorship markings. Oh the horror...oh the humanity...., what am I thinking about?...nice job..very clean, the decals look great. The seat belts look very nice anchored to the rear roll bar as they are. Very nice.

Very nice, the purple and red look great together. Nice mild custom.

I posted the last post before seeing the most recent responces. Thanks for all the kind words, and I can't wait to get this party started. I am so excited about this build that I think about it all the time. This will be fun. I will post a very detailed discription of the entire vacuum form process along with the little vacuum form machine that I am using. I was not too expensive and I think this is a technique that many can use. Again, thanks for watching and thanks for the positive comments.

In the first post I realized that I did not have a rear view or a top view of the car. I took a few minutes and drew up the missing views. As you can see, this car would use video cameras (nothing new here, but certainly not “mainstream†yet) instead of rear view mirrors. There is a large video monitor in the dash center that would display the rear view and any navigation info needed. The video cameras would be mounted on the rear wheel top fender point to give a wide angle view of the cars behind it. The top view clearly shows how the body curves inward in between the wheels in a slight F1 race car style. Next up is the clay styling work so then we will see if the design works for real. On paper is one thing, but in three dimensions is where the truth comes out.

Years ago I built 6 Tamiya F1 cars in 1/12 scale....beautiful kits but they take up too much space, and now they are very costly. I still have the Porsche 934 kit unbuilt that I am saving for "that day", but other then 1/25 - 1/24, I build 1/20 F1 cars. That is it, for me now, just the F1 kits, other than the 1/25 kits.

I am not sure how I missed this before...great idea. I always loved the Chrysler Atlantic show car. One of the best concept cars ever, in my opinion, so any variation on that platform works for me. Very well done...great execution, a one of a kind unique ride. Very nice!

This is my next long term project. I plan on taking the new technique I learned, vacuum forming, to the next level. The Art Deco Aero Coupe was a single piece body design. I kept the design more simple since I had no experience with vacuum forming….honestly, I didn’t even know if it would work. What a shock and surprise to me when it worked better than my widest expectations. But that was then and this is now…I must expand my horizons. Ok, in this new era of financially trying times, I figure that the manufacturers will have far less cash laying around for such frivolous things as “Image Enhancing Concept Cars†so I think I should jump in and design and build a concept car for GM. I figure that a new updated concept for the Corvette is long over do so I have taken on the challenge to produce a model of one. I have dubbed my concept the “Corvette XP45C†which stands for eXperimental Prototype 45 inch high Coupe. Ok, maybe that is a little lame and pretentious, but this is my gig and I can do as I see fit. So far, this is just a quick ink rendering of the car along with the main dimensions. I went through a number of ideas, a few with a front engine layout but ultimately settled on the rear engine layout for two reasons. One, I think that is the logical evolution direction for the Corvette platform and two, the current engine and trans-axle when mated up make for a tidy little rear engine combo. The radiator will still be up front, with a hot air exhaust vent on the front hood, ala, Ferrari P330. The body is a little narrower in the mid section with the body work flaring out at the wheel fender covering areas. The design has a full wide track, but the body tapers inward in a subtle F1 race car style. The rear wheel has a “spat†skirt over it because I like the way they look on the Art Deco Coupe I am working on now. There will be no steering wheel in the cockpit, as this car will incorporate the latest “fly by wire†technology. All engine and steering control functions are going to be controlled by a “joy stickâ€. Actually, I think Mercedes just introduced a concept coupe that uses this style of vehicle control management, so I think the technology belongs on a Corvette too. You know, since all the kids today grew up on computer games, autos should evolve too. I have incorporated side scallop indentations behind the front wheels as a small tribute to the early 60’s Vettes. And the two doors will open upward with hinges way up in the front wheel area. What you do not see in these renderings is that I have the rear deck designed low, just over the top of the engine, with a window allowing a viewing access to the engine top, like the new Corvette Z06 showed. The rear sail panels are high but the rear deck is low. I guess I should have done a rendering from that angle also showing the rear panel, exhaust outlets and tail lights. My design has been influenced by many cars and designs that have gone before…a little P330 Ferrari, a little GT40, a little Corvette, a little Star Wars, and a little Cosmic Motors. I love the design work of Galaxion 5000 and the similar designs by Daniel Simon, and his visionary Cosmic Motors. My final design is certainly unique to me, but as all things new, it is influenced by what has gone before. I expect this to be more challenging to mold and I am planning on a two part body. I am planning on building the mold in two parts, the top half and a bottom half. And this time, I am planning on doing it more like the factory design studios did it, I am planning on building the molds with clay. I picked up a “brick†of modeling clay the other day in the art store, so I will try working with the clay this time. My brother told me to try it, so why not. I did a little clay sculpting in High School (Female Torso) so I will try it again; besides, grinding away all that wood is such a dirty and messy job. I have a C5 Corvette Z06 just sitting there ready to give up its chassis components, engine/transaxle and much of its interior for this build so I think I am only limited by my free time. I am seeing this one in a soft pearlescent whiteish / silver with a pale blue interior, although, colors are always subject to change as my mood and feeling toward the build progress. Ok, that’s it for now….I will post the clay, in process, photos as it moves along and once again I will see if I have bitten off more that I can chew. Man, I just love a challenge.

I have slowed down a little on the construction of the Art Deco Areo Coupe mainly from the fact that the leaves are falling and my wife still thinks that it is a nice idea that we rake them up and we spent a week down in south west Florida where I could only play golf, catch up on my Gin and Rum consumption and spend my evenings in front of the TV watching the Golf Channel….no time for modeling…..anyway, I have managed to complete a few things so I thought I would post the progress, as minimal as it is. The chassis is now complete and the Viper engine is installed, even though it is not visible in any of these pictures here. I took the Viper chassis and extended it and widened it up front and narrowed it in the midsection. The wheels are from the Magnum wagon with Pegasus tires mounted to them. I still have a little smoothing to do, as you can still see some rough spots under the grill area and around the bottom. I have debated with myself as to what to do with the grill over and over. I thought of metal mesh or brass bars but I just didn’t like the idea of that. Then I thought that it might look good with a deep bar grill painted to match the body. After all, this is my idea of a modern day retro art deco areo coupe, so a body color grill would work with a modern day design, where a true 1930 design would have to have a shiny metal grill. As you can see, in the end I opted for a deep rounded slot grill. I glued oversized slots to the sides and once the glue set overnight, I grinded down and then sanded the bars to conform to the grill contour. I actually like this a lot. I will paint the grill the same color as the fenders which will be a dark purple pearl with a “pearlized†tan over the hood and top surfaces. I have to build the magnet holders for the wheel cover “spats†and create the interior. I need to finish this up soon as I have drawn out the design for the next project and I can’t wait to get started on that….man am I impatient! I have posted the design in another post….I really like this next project!

Beautiful car. The color suits it perfectly. The only question it raises to me is how would a Mustang style fastback roof look on it? Just a thought, but what you did is certainly gorgeous. I am very impressed. And please drop that referance to Frankenstein....this is no ugly monster.

Curt, great job on a very unique subject. I am very impressed with the scratch building techniques you are employing on this. Great job on the rivets and louvers. I love this...this is exactly the part of modeling that I find the most exciting....finding, or creating, a unique subject and then building it. Just to employ techniques that are new to you expands your abilities for future projects. Like the old "Star-Trek" series used to say "Going Boldly where no man has gone before" (or something to that effect). Keep on breaking the boundaries and expanding our known "universe" of modeling. Congratulations, you have to be feeling pretty excited about the coming concussion of this build. Very cool project!

OK, I will throw in my two cents. According to the book, "Mustang, Forty Years" by Randy Leffingwell, the foundation of the Mustang was firmly rooted in Iacocca's desire to forge a strong future for Ford. They were deep into the theme of "The Lively Ones" which was morphing into the theme of "Total Performance". At the time GM, with Chevrolet and Pontiac were tearing up NASCAR and Chrysler's were the king of the drag strip. Iacocca was clear in his understanding of the phrase, "Win on Sunday, sell on Monday" so he built a group of 8 key managers that meet for a weekly dinner. This came to be known as the "Fairlane Committee. One of the prime functions of this committee was to watch the other brands and see where they were headed. Oddly enough, even though they all considered the Chevrolet Corvair a "Dog", they watched as Chevrolet dropped bucket seats into the car, called it a Monza and sales began to skyrocket. And if you will recall, Chevrolet had a "Hopped up" version called the Monza Spider with a turbo charged engine. In fact, I have read in more then a few places that many think of the Monza Spider as the first "True American Muscle car". I am not saying that I agree with that, but it has been written. Anyway, Iacocca knew that there was "No Manza Option for the Falcon" so the Ford guys needed to look elsewhere. While this was going on, Carroll Shelby had approached Chevrolet with the idea of dropping a Chevy small block V8 into an AC (British sports car) body and was turned down....after all, Chevy had the Corvette and did not need internal competition. Shelby went to Iacocca who handed him a check and said to get going on the project. Ford was seeing the promise of racing victories and needed to have showroom iron to catch the excitment of young buyers. Iacocca set his team working on a car that would attract the "Baby Boomers" who were just coming of age. Designer John Najjar designed the fore runner of the production Mustang which was a 2 seat sports roadster with a strange V4 engine. It was an interesting design with a long front hood, short rear deck but not the street version that would soon sweep the nation. Designer Najjar was a fan of the WWII fighter plane called the P-51 Mustang and he thought that the lines of his design brought back memories of that plane. John Breeden who handled public relations for the design team ran the name past the legal department where the name "Mustang" was interpreted to mean the "wild American horse", and so the name was the same, but the meaning was changed. Designer Phil Clark drew the legionary Galloping horse logo and the "Pony Car" was born. During this time, the Falcon consistently fell behind the Corvair in sales and old Henry Ford II was not a happy camper. Iacocca had an impromptu design competition between the group of designers, and the design manager, Gale Halderman's design was chosen. Iacocca was up against the wall. Henry Ford II was getting impatient with slumping Falcon sales and Iacocca convinced him that the car could be produced quickly and at a reasonable cost using mostly Falcon parts. A clay model was produced and old Henry approved the design on the spot. Production was set at 150,000 units and a budget of $40 million. The rest they say is history. Harry, you may be the best one here to show us why the Mustang was needed by Ford. Why not take a picture of the Falcon and put a true fastback roof on it. I know the Falcon Sprint had a "fastback" roof, but I mean like the Barracuda had.....big honken' plate glass. I don['t think it would have been as successful as the Mustang was and is. Truly the right car at the right time in history. It is no surprise that Chrysler had to steal and build a "cheap" copy of the Mustang concept. They did not have the resources that Ford had. Ford got their $40 million back in spades and Chrysler and AMC were forced to graft on fastback roof lines to their family sedans, well family coupes anyway. GM had the deep pockets so they were able to create the Camaro and then the Firebird to go head to head with the Mustang and early ( first two years of production) Cougars.

James, that is a beautiful build. The paint looks flawless and the BMF trim looks great . A couple of floppy seatbelts, an antenna on the rear fender and it would be hard to tell that this is a model. I built this kit when it first came out and it is one of the very few "straight up" stock cars I have built. I did mine in Turquoise with white trim. Yours looks great in red on red.

This is looking great...The colors and wheels are perfect. This would make a great one to one rod made for Saturday Night Cruise'n.

The only thing missing is Frank and Coach. Well done....the bullet hits are "dead" on.

Clean and aggressive looking without going over the top. I like the under hood and trunk details, but the interior looks really nice. Very good job. I always liked the '65 Chevelle...I like the slightly boxy appearance of it.

Guys, now I am speechless. :D I can't believe the wonderful responses to my post.....thank you , I really appreciate them. I have to admit, the thought of creating and being able to build my own design has me really energized. Being so close to the Areo Coupe design, I see a number of things I would like to change...not big things, but subtle features. The next design, at least I think, will have a few more twists and turns to it. I will get on that right away. Again, thanks for the encouragement.

I made some headway on the Art Deco Aero Coupe. Up front, I incorporated the Viper headlights and added road lights below them. I opened the hood and hinged it forward. I will add mini struts later. I opened the doors and hinged then in a gullwing style like the Mercedes sports coupe from the 50’s. They will also get mini struts. I opened up the rear windows in kind of a 1963 sting ray style. I always loved the split window design so I stole it! You should be able to where I screwed up the window openings. I made the original opening come too far forward at the upper front portion. It did not look right so I glued and puttied in fillers and then rounded all of the corners, which I think looks better now. I have opened up the wheel spat’s and have made some nice little art deco wing designs for each wheel spat. (Pictures not yet included.) I have run a molding strip down the hood from the radiator opening to the windshield. I hope I can come up with a sharp hood ornament. I want a “flying lady†looking thing…we’ll see. I also ran a molding down the sides, over the doors and it meets up at the duck tail. I have run another molding along the bottom, which will connect to the “art deco wing designs on the wheel well covers. All of the moldings will be covered in bare metal foil. The wheel well covers will be removable held in place with a few of those mini magnets. I have added the tail light openings which are opened on the rear fender sides and mimic the Viper headlight openings. The chassis is an extended Viper unit and naturally the engine is a Viper V-10 and the wheels will be huge honkin’ suckers with huge art deco style painted disc’s hiding under the spat’s covers. I am contemplating adding some more art deco chrome trim sweeping up the front of the rear fender right behind the door area. I just haven’t decided yet. I am planning a two tone paint scheme in deep amethyst pearl (dark purple) and cream up top. Not too different than the paint combo I used on Cybele. My thinking on this car is that is a modern throw back to art deco style. This car has modern running gear but retro styling…not unlike the Chrysler Atlantic concept car from the mid 2000’s era. In today’s economic climate, models that we build may be the closest we will get to seeing factory concepts any more. I have begun work (wood buck shaping) on a two place sports car roadster, but I may put that on temporary hold as a more appealing design has popped into my head, so that one may get pushed up to the front of the line. If so, I will post some design sketches of it and than the start on the wood buck or bucks as this design may require multiple pieces. This is getting a little crazy.

Well, Bill, I am sorry that I got your name wrong…I was having one of my all too frequent “Senior Momentsâ€. Anyway, I always look lovingly at the MG-TF’s when I go to a British car show. They really had the look perfected just before the “modern, sleek MGA†entered the market. The MGA really was a very well designed car and truly was a major step forward from the open wheel “T†series. But that doesn’t stop me from appreciating the beauty of the TF. Simon, I did the best I could in shooting the engine and the carb area of the car. The engine bay is dark and tight and it was not very sunny for the 5th weekend in a row here in NJ. I also included a shot of the license plate on the back. I think it looks great. It is a replica of the actual plate on the car. My brother created it on the computer so the plate number is correct. If you look closely at the plate, you can read the “Garden State†and the tiny “historic†on the bottom. His printer is amazing. He prints huge banners 40 feet long by up to 4 feet high on that printer and it can still turn out a 1/25 license plate that is perfect….ah, technology, ain’t great? Sorry to keep resurrecting this thread…this should be the last of it.

I almost missed this thread because of the name "Frankenstein"...this is no ugly monster. Beautiful build...this is exactly what I think model building should be...allowing ones creativity to think up, design and build something that has never been seen before. This is a great bit of kitbashing...not over the top at all. Subtle but unique. I personally, would not worry about a name for it....it's design speaks loudly enough.

I like the two tone better than how just silver would have looked. These were pretty nice little sport coupe in their day. I ran a Chry. Dod. Jeep dealership when we sold the Dodge version of this car so I drove quite a few of them. The turbo models were very quick and fun to drive. You have a very nice "basic" build there....simple but well done.

Well, Will, A few years ago Bill Geary began a 196X (I don't remember the year) GTO convertible with a beautiful working convertible top mechanism. I don't think he has completed it yet, at least I haven't seen it completed, but I remember seeing it on the primer table at an NNL East a few years ago. The mechanism is all brass and a thing of beauty. Hey Bill, if you have not completed that yet, you really should because it was very impressive back than, you sure know how to solder. I have built two pick up trucks with motorized tops that retract into the pick up bed. There is not a set of instructions for such a thing that I am aware of. I winged it. It worked pretty well. One of the trucks has 5 motors mounted under the truck in a wooden stand. The hood, each door, the top and the tonneau each had a motor, and while I was at it, I powered all of the lights too. One day I want to build a working top on the 62 T Bird and I would like to motorize the Revell '59 Ford Sunliner kit that is on my shelf. We'll see...it just depends on time.

Boy, a quality camera really makes this car "Pop"...it looked great before in the earlier post, but now it looks amazing. Very impressive. Right up there with the best detailed drag cars that I have seen.