Russell C

Andy Martin is merciless about beating me up for not making normal models, but I did at one time in the distant past, when I tried my hand at work-for-hire model building. At the local hobby shop I'd seen a 3x5 card on their bulletin board about a guy wanting classic & muscle car models, so thought I could raise some money by having a bit of fun. Turned out to be an ear, nose & throat doctor in Texas, and it was rather fun to restore one older '57 Oldsmobile (promo?) of his, build another quickie Jo-Han '59 Caddy Fleetwood, and this T-bird, but I ended up becoming too much of an artiste for the '60 Caddy Eldorado convertible he wanted. He was willing to settle for what I thought was too simplistic of an interior, and I couldn't bring myself to finish it out with a substandard interior from whatever resin kit he'd provided, considering how much work I'd put into the nice stainless steel wire trim on the body (designed to fit in scribed-out channels). You know how it goes, you're truckin' along fine until you are stumped on how to do a particular bit right and the whole project grinds to a halt. So what we have here is the AMT '57 T-bird I built for him in 1994, pretty much box stock except for refinements with various metal bits, such as the lathe-turned rings for the taillights, bits of polished wire for the door handles, a little bit of engine wiring, and the then-new photoetch scripts and emblems. The "engine turned" dash piece is just Bare Metal foil, but where I somewhat laboriously pressed a spinning flat-end rod (in my motor tool) into the foil. Took a few tries and ripped out strips, but in the end I got it to look reasonably convincing. Probably various T-bird purists will spot errors in it, but it met my approval overall and the Doc sure did like it. Pics here are digitals taken of my old overly contrasty photo prints.

If kitbashing is an option, a V6 + a V8 = a V14. Haven't seen one of those, myself...

Another idea I had been kicking around after seeing a widebody Datsun 240Z was to take this Fujimi Fairlady kit and graft a 930 backend onto it, ditch the Porsche engine, but drop something spiffy in the front like a Ferrari V12, for a really weird mashup. Might keep folks guessing where the engine is 'till the front hood is popped open. Problem is, after doing this photo alteration, I really think those two cars don't go together...... So, I put this one in the no-go project pile, more for visible infeasibility. ** M.I.A. 240Z / 911 Turbo mashup photo**

Luv widebody cars. I bookmarked this illustration from this guy's widebody work, since he had seemingly captured the look of the 427 Shelby Cobra roadster's fender flares....

'31 Cadillac Flatterphaeton Another model - at least of this particular vehicle - that I won't get to, basically because I've chosen a different and potentially more interesting classic touring car. What prompted this idea was a little thumbnail I saw of this particular photo which somebody's computer scan file must have accidentally compressed vertically, giving it the look of the much flatter Ruxton phaeton… or the appearance of being sectioned. So I took that photo along with two others and erased the section from the top of the rear fenders up to the interior openings. I've lowered the windshield / top on the last two photos, but never got around to lowering the windshield height on the first photo (oops, also cut the top off the front fender light). The last two photos have the vertical strip between the front and rear doors almost completely removed. The rear tires & wheels are wider in all three. Naturally, the kit to use is the Jo-Han '31 Caddy, which begs for either hand-laced wire wheels as in Jürgen Kowalski's thread here, or the alternate method like what Bob Steinbrunn is doing here. Sure takes a lot of the top-heaviness out of the original car, I'll say that.

Hmmm..... doodle your own flame vapors? Click in drag across the screen here: http://www.escapemotions.com/experiments/flame/index.php

Carl Green's Pacer Pickup prototype from 1977 was the inspiration for the flame style & color on my Lambo Diablo Speedster Flambé. I'll have to do an "Under Glass" post on that one sometime.....

Rok, Welcome to this forum! I remember the old days when people could only correspond with pencil and paper, now we have the means to share hobby interests across the globe, and to travel in a virtual way to so many places. I just dropped the name of your city into the Google Maps site, and then arbitrarily placed the Streetmobile person on a randomly picked street, and now I can see that some parts of town have limited parking. Amazing technology. And I remember when diecast cars had very poor detailing compared to what all the companies offer today.

Don't know if other modelers do this with customs, but for me, when I get an idea for a one, I can usually see it reasonably clear in my mind's eye. I always feel more confident to butcher some kits after I create an illustration, though. My avatar is one such example, but since that one dates to B.C. time (before computers, for me anyway) I had to sketch it out using pencil tracings from a Porsche brochure. Trained graphic artist that I am these days, I swipe various photos off the internet and hack them up in my CorelDRAW program. Visualize having multiple copies of a photograph and using a virtual scissors to cut 'em into pieces, layering the pieces on until the desired look is achieved. I used to do this stuff in PhotoShop, but I can't afford the upgrade that would make my old version 7 work on my newer iMac. Since Dan Palatnik is showing off his original 3D drawings in his own thread in this forum, I thought I'd start off mine here with a hat tip to two of his pieces. The first one was purely for my own satisfaction, to see if a 3-wheeled '49 Ford could be done to keep up my running joke of such vehicles for the GSL "Group" category. It worked, as can be seen here, Dan's original is at this link, and right below is my alteration of it. Dan had a good laugh at it when I emailed it to him in 2013. Next is a more recent alteration of Dan's set that was a '54 Pontiac, where I tortured bits from his '57 wagon to fit on it (the passenger side headlight is out-of-perspective). I believe the overall idea would work out reasonably well using parts from most any '57 kit and the Monogram '53 Chevy (or whatever else is out there that I'm not aware of), but at the rate I'm going, this is a project I most likely will never have time to get to. Dan is a good sport about my alterations of his work. Then there's this one, where I snagged some photos of a 1:1 Robertsham LLC custom kit car version of the Daytona Coupe (originals are the small inset pics). Much as I love the original Daytona Coupe, the kammback always looked like such an unsightly afterthought, to I grafted on a regular Cobra roadster back end, and then did various other proportional tweaks, as in shortening the hood just a bit while lengthening the cabin just a bit. No offense to the Shelby designers, but maybe it sorta evens out the whole car a bit better. However, this is a project I'll never probably get around to building..... My stuff isn't all that crisp or professional compared to others, and pro photo alteration guys will easily see the flaws in my work, but then again it's just a kind of virtual sketching exercise to see if some of my wacko ideas work or not. Trust me on this, some of 'em just obviously do not work, and I toss 'em into the virtual trashcan. But some are keepers since they seem like they are maybe 90% on the way to being an actually worthwhile idea. Stay tuned, I have a small stack of those to share.

And friends, for those who don't know, Dan has a blog of spectacular 3D auto art he's drawn, my 3-wheeler '49 Ford was inspired by his sectioned '51 Fords. Remember, this stuff translates to 3D printing, as one person has already used Dan's work to do that.

Silly Andy. I recently learned that the oddball designer Gus Marktavson changed his name in the '60s to "Red" Eoth to get away from being plagued with his design flops, thus a model of what folks called his "Mysterysteerin' Rod Agent" yellow three-wheeled car would be a real model. I could even enter it in GSL's Replica class. And by sheer coincidence, Eoth's car was based on a '56 Ford Victoria.

Can't miss it, and I already have a reasonably good idea on how I can torture a '56 Ford Vic to lose of one of its wheels for the Group 15 category...

'20s ragtime cover of a commercial ditty, from da man who made cover songs for really old jazz famous:

Well, 'shriek' is a somewhat subjective term, the Ferraris & Lambos no doubt had that, while others had whatever folks would say V8s sounded like, but the MP4/5 V10s had what I'd describe as a distinctive combo of bass noise that could be felt in the feet along with a really piercing shriek. Just the nature of that cylinder arrangement, I suppose. Whatever caused it, it hooked me.

I was living in Albuquerque in 1989 when F1 came to Phoenix, my brother invited me over to see the free-to-the-public practice sessions. I was strictly an Indycar fan at the time, but the bass/shriek of the V10s hooked me to F1 for that era. What a sound. Then there was the entertaining scene within the skyscraper walkway area where we knew the cars were leaving a block or so away from the pits and would soon come around to our spot. There was some homeless guy staggering around wondering why he couldn't cross the street with all the temp fencing in the way, then he was even more bewildered when Senna came around the corner and flew by making all that concentrated noise, with his $16 million or so salary. Heckuva contrast. I'm a lousy sports photographer, this was the only decent shot out of the whole roll.

Spiffy ol' Dodge, but in dire need of some kind of bumper, so I stole one off the Ford & pasted it there.

Stumbling upon "Cobraman's" 8 wheel top fuel dragster just recently, it reminded me that I needed to dig out a TFD of my own that I built back in 1998. It's not a model type that I'd normally build, but I knew the upcoming contest that summer by the White Mountain Plastic Modelers had a special theme category of "build us a 4x4", but they never specified what kind of 4x4. Knowing that one of the Albuquerque Model Car Clubs's regular attendees at the contest was Big John Pattison, famous for all his drag racing models, I thought I'd do up some fictional main sponsor decals and put them on something that was a cross between Revell's Pennzoil TFD and an AMT Snake Bite monster truck, just to mess with his mind. Ferrari decal on the nose, of course. If I remember right, the front driveshaft scales out to around 16 feet in length. Midship bearing? Naw, just extra spinning mass to slow a guy down. Who needs that? Oh, wait. How many cylinders does the engine have? Well, not 8 anymore. Such an alteration would leave an unsightly forward gap on the head, and we can't have that. Just turn the magnetos 90°, that'll solve the problem. It was quite a load of fun filling in the details for the driver's area and the engine, despite not knowing exactly what I was replicating in various spots. If anyone complains that the oscillation overthruster is missing its fuse link harness or something like that, all I have to do is say this is a top fuel monster truck dragster.

Sheer laziness for the failure to spell out my last name in the user name part. Or something. The car might be the one most notoriously tied to my building career, but I don't know for sure. What inspired it is beyond my sorry excuse of recollection, it started out to be a factory replica stock of a 930 cabriolet and I had gotten as far as a fully detailed engine (which is now buried, a few details can be seen when it is upside down), but somehow it turned into a woody wagon. I guess I decided to go for more 'gotcha' appeal midway through the build process.....

Tuning in a bit late here, but while searching for something else, I ran across your WIP thread for it, then had to see how it turned out. Fabulous, and as folks who know me somewhat well will say, I have a particular weakness for demented thinking. Hey, I resemble that remark!

I was impressed, a second room needed for vendors. Got a good deal on a kit I was looking for, and there were some mighty good models on the contest tables. Had to take a good long look at the factory stock yellow '69 Camaro. And in just the 10:50-ish-to-noon time that I had before my weekly 'parental care obligation' required me to leave, I got to at least say 'hi' to Dale Mickley and Tim Pentecost. One of these years I'll have time enough to spend the whole day there.....

Starting at the :32 spot of this vid, seven of James Garner's famous bat turns in a row. I read in the TV Guide back in the day how he used to practice doing those:

Dis one? From Hemmings? http://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/2013/06/19/luniverselle-is-that-you/

Yep, me and a pure ordinary box stock are like two opposing face magnets.

Thanks gents. To avoid any potential confusion, I added a line in my first paragraph above to note that the top photo is mine of Jim's original Dodge model, taken at the International Model Car Museum during the 2005 GSL contest.*** Senility being what it is, I had to rummage through my photos to make doubly sure it was one I took, as opposed to the ones I gleaned off the internet as reference photos when I was building my Stude tribute. Regrettably, when I donated the Stude to the Museum to go alongside several of my other 3-wheelers I'd already donated, it got misplaced. It's there somewhere still, I hope. I'll be at the Desert Scale Classic, but my weekend obligation to take care of my elderly parents prevents me from staying long, an hour or two at most. *** 4/24/20 Edit - put in a photo link instead of Jim Keeler's original Dodge Fever, from the official GSL web page collection. My "Stude Flew" model was found, and is on display at the museum.

Since ol' Jim Keeler has popped out of the woodwork, I thought I'd drop in a few pics of a tribute model I sorta did to mess with his mind at the 2005 Greater Salt Lake contest. Jim is a legendary figure in the model car industry, with his famous Dodge Fever models being among his many claims to fame - photo link for his Dodge Fever 1 here. Long story really short, the GSL contest has long had a special "Group" category where Mark Gustavson and his associate contest organizers choose a particular model in advance and builders are restricted to building that vehicle as though it was 20 years ago. In 2005, I had already built up a minor reputation for a running gag of models for that category that were always yellow 3 wheelers*, usually blaming their design shortcomings on a fictional guy named Gus Marktavson, while referring to other dyslexic misspellings of folks at the contest. With the "Group 5" model being the AMT '53 Studebaker Starliner, I was at first stumped on what to do with it, but when I ran across Jim's yellow Dodge Fever, it all fell into place. Designed by Marktavson and some mysterious Korean fellow named Kim-Jee Ler, with its driver being "Hoggy" Iscano. And what a perfect excuse to have that AMT kit's twin blowers sticking out the sides of the car. Here's a photo link for the lineup of the other Group 5 Studebakers. This particular class is unusual for being a popular choice aware, and despite the other models being better than mine, the humor of it must have carried it to its 2nd place award. Precious to me was the standing ovation Jim gave it at the awards brunch when it was announced, an honor I'll always cherish. * (I later became a lampooning victim of this myself, when "Hollywood" Fernandez pointed to my 3-wheel mayhem at the next contest in 2007, speculating on what became of all those '4th wheels.' He came up with his own answer that was his entry in the category - have a look at his photo gallery of his truck here. Yep, this hobby is full of nutcases, but that's a whole other story. Btw, my Group 7 backwards '40 Ford pickup lampooned Ken Hamilton's Bonneville suicide bike seen in Scale Auto's August 1990 coverage of GSL.)