Russell C

Good suggestion. I was originally aiming for just classic Ferrari red but with the yellow emblems on the side depicting a prancing ̶s̶t̶a̶l̶l̶i̶o̶n̶ snake. Twin pipes out the back each with twin outlet tips would complete the look along with one of my usual concocted stories about a young Carollo Shelbyani who later took his ideas to the UK and America...

Well, it came in pieces and I had to put it together. Surfed across this on eBay where the seller had lousy photos of a couple of its parts, and I remembered vaguely how spiffy these looked in stores, so at the end of the auction when it still had 0 bidders at only $9.99 (+ $18 or so for shipping), I put one bid on it and won the auction. Came in the original Paramount Studios box which was messed up by the post office tape that stuck to the studio wording. No instructions, so it took me over 3 hours to figure out how it went together, with some assistence partway through from an internet photo of an assembled one, since I could not remember exactly what it was supposed to look like.

The caption for the magazine photo says "Russel[l] Cook's future winner is a combination of Jaguar / Cobra / Ferrari parts. This one is going to be tough to beat!" Might have been Rex Barden who took the picture of it on the "in progress" display table. Problem is, the photo is from the August 1991 Plastic Fanatic magazine. As in 22 years ago and counting. There's a particular person I know of who has given me much grief about this thing remaining "on the workbench" for this entire length of time, as recently as just a couple of months ago. I really should get my act together on it...... Monogram 427 Cobra, intended to mimic the overall look of a Ferrari 250 SWB with a shortened Porsche 911 roof, Hasagawa Jag V12 engine, Herb Deeks wire wheels......

Walker Model Service kit, less "under glass" and more "in clear plastic bag", still. Let's just say that a long time ago, this one wasn't too happy being mailed to a model car contest while being bolted to its display base. Something about the physics of heavy white metal mass not remaining in place upon sudden stops...... But in its glory days, it was pictured in the March/April 1986 SAE in the Model Truck Lines section back when Don Shenk used to run that column. One day I'll repaint it and maybe mod it into a 4300 long hood while lengthening the frame.

"Hot" being a somewhat relative term. Earlier this week when some weather was cooling things down a bit, I was thinking of putting on my long sleeve shirt. Can't say I've encountered problems with warmth & low humidity, but it is annoying to see the ol' stored bottle paint has turned into dry rocks....

My tastes evolve over time, but I admire any customizer who can take a basically ugly car and turn it into one I'd seriously consider stealing. Case in point.

A person does what he must do while living on tight budgets. Plus that model occupied quite a bit of space. I think I heard about the rescued model you speak of since I haven't missed attendance at GSL since 1990 (budget requiring me to stay at the nearby Motel 6 rather than at the contest hotel the last few times) but I forget which model it is.

Yep, I was thinking I could salvage the Vette since I pretty much see that the original customizer had in mind, but it's one of those things where it's "most of the way there but not quite". If anything, the hatch itself is too much of a distraction that makes a person think the Vette is trying too hard to be a Volvo, when it was just trying to be a sport wagon. And I'm really not liking the lower slab area between the wheels, even though I took a couple of feet out of it. Same length on the Volvo where it is acceptable, looks weird in proportion to the other stuff on the Vette.

Yep, always liked that one, too - it's Joel Dirnberger's, currently on display at the International Model Car Museum in SLC. Don't know if he is a member here....

Thanks! I promise not to stir up too much trouble.

Thanks for the kind words, everyone. Kit-bashing is my middle name, building a pure box stock would be one tough assignment for me.

Yep, I finished it up a couple of months ago, he was amazed at the small size of it. He'd been a machinist since 1937, still has a '50s era Logan lathe in his garage which he uses to this day even thought he is getting toward 91 years old. BTW, there are model vehicle parts in it. The blue electric motor on top is actually the end of a white metal 1:87 semi truck transmission, and since I'd lost the two crank handles in the kit for each end of the table, I substituted a pair of crank wheels - both are 1:87 scale truck steering wheels, each with a crank handle added into the rim.

Thanks for the kind words, all. I've been most negligent in keeping track of all the resin cabs out there, I was thinking somebody has done a 25th scale CL-9000, but folks can correct me if that was never done. If I remember right, I had to fill in the Astro's lower part of the windsheild opening a bit, but for the rest of it, there was just mostly flat surfaces to construct. As with any modeler, I can point to places I'd like to fix on it, such as the headlights and the angled gap on the sides where the cab hinges forward. The Albq guy I sold it to hasn't responded to my relayed messages to say 'hi' to him via the other Albq guys who drop into Phoenix every April for the Desert Scale Classic.

Thanks for all the kind words. Two hole wheels were all I could manage with the smallest drill bit I had. The guy who won 1st place at that GSL contest in the small scale category had a 1:87 customized Ford hot rod with a painted finish and a wired engine. I was pleased to place at all, much less get 2nd.

(borrowed website photos here) Well, when the Willys coupe / pickup was selected for the GSL "Group '03' category was selected, I figured nobody would expect a cabover. But I had it in my mind that the thing should face backwards and have a vertical steam boiler in it. So the first pic below shows the front of my model with a windsheild bubble were the driver sits, and the second pic shows the back of it.

Being a fan of the Volvo P1800ES (and I'm guessing the Vette is using a Volvo hatch), I can see how such a wagon look really improved the Volvo, but this Vette needs a decent amount of tweeking.... So if the original car lost an inch or two off the roof height, lost lots of length, lost the middle pillars, and knocked down the height of the reaf fenders at the window line, then the thing would look more like a sport wagon and less like a hearse.... maybe....

And now for the "yes it really is that small" category, scroll down this page a little ways* to the 2nd place category at the 1999 GSL contest for my Mack COE. (*April 28, 2020 update: link no longer works, so I substitute a more recent photo) The story behind it is that the guys at the "Greatest Little Model Car Contest in Arizona" had a special theme category for 'small scale', but they didn't say how small. So I took a line drawing of a Mack and arbitrarily scaled it down to match the front section of a photo-etched model railroad shopping cart, since that resembled a Mack radiator grille. Everything else was scaled off that piece, which worked out to be something around 1:250. Might actually be smaller, one of my old notes says 1:275. But I'm really lousy with math. The cab is actually 5 blocks of different shapes of pre-colored styrene plastic that span the width of the cab - the lowest is the red block for the fenders, the white block above is notched for the fenders to fit under it, and on top is a smoked clear solid block that is the windshield & side windows. Behind it is another white block and a blue 'cap'. To make the blue and red stripes, I just scribed the lines into the sides and front and glued in stretched sprue strands of blue and red and sanded them flat to the sides. There's no paint on the truck other than the orange for the marker lights and turn signals and red paint dots for the taillights. The mirror brackets are some kind of computer wire with photo etched bits of 25th scale seat belt hardware that happened to be the right size to resemble mirrors. I laser-printed the Mack mud flaps on ordinary paper, I lathe-turned the wheels, tires, air tanks, fuel tanks air horns (what an absolute pain those were) and mufflers, but the upper stacks are stainless steel hypodermic needles that my dental surgeon gave me after some major $700 tooth fixing - arguably each stack is worth $350. He's the person who also used his macro lens later to photograph the super close-ups below, since he demanded to know why I wanted to keep the needles in the first place. He didn't think such a use for needles was possible. Although it may look like there is an interior to the thing, that's just an illusion from the block of clear plastic. To keep it from rattling around too much while transporting or storing it, I had to create a little form-fitting garage for it within a film cannister. Even still, I managed to knock loose one of the mirrors. Unfortunately the trouble with untreated plastic is that white styrene isn't happy with skin oil, so it has turned a not good shade of yellow.

As I mentioned in my intro, I built trucks exclusively from the late '70s to the late '80s. As one popular adage from the internet goes, "show pics, or it never happened", so here's one old project I finished in May 1982 that doesn't require me to rummage far in my scanned image collection. I just had to take the one photo below with three pics in it since my scanner isn't functioning lately. Basically, an Ertl Great Dane with a reefer engine modified to be a Crown 500, with a kitbash of a Chevy Astro cab and lots of sheet plastic and semi-scratchbuild bits, painted up in blue/silver in my own stripe design, and having a Double-O 92 Detroit Diesel. The grill material was the chromed plastic stuff in the Revell Custom Parts for Pickups box. Originally, it was supposed to have a whole electric light system in the trailer with fiber optic lines going to all the lights and some means of making the signals flash, high & low beams, on or off fog lights. But, that ended up being way over my head back in 1982. Later when I really needed cash, I sold it to one of the Albuquerque Model Car Club guys, I hope he still has it. It didn't turn out half bad, but it could have been a lot crisper... but what does one expect from a 17 year-old builder?

Fascinating. That appears to me to be a '60s vintage one-off custom that was probably inspired by the much more famous Bob Nordberg 1964 Revell-Pactra contest winner. Phil Gladstone at the International Model Car Builders' Museum allowed me to take the photo below from the Dec 1964 Car Model Magazine which showed more than one photo of it. Prior to that, all I'd ever seen of Nordberg's model was a side view of it in a 1964 Rod & Custom Models magazine.

I used to think ordinary automotive store brands were pure junk, but when I was in somewhat desperate need to a quick yellow coat for this model a couple of years ago .... (borrowing somebody else's photo here) .... I was amazed how well an ordinary can of Ace Hardware Premium Enamel Sunshine Yellow Gloss flowed out, hardened up, and polished out to look like a metal painted surface. No clear coat needed, it shines up quite nicely.

I have a particular weakness for mix 'n match illustrations à la Harry Pristovnik. It's the main reason why I switched from building only semi trucks to a bunch of mix 'n match cards like my BMW Cadillac and my Lambo 300, I wanted to see my ideas in 3D. Those of mine were done prior to my getting to computers and graphic arts. Now I can butcher cars in PhotoShop in moderately convincing manner (or lately in CorelDRAW since my newer computer can't handle my old PhotoShop 7 and I can't afford a CS3 upgrade). Such as the section I did to this unfortunate '59 Fury... Or transforming what I consider the 'worried look' of factory Jeep Libertys into something more retro... Can't wait 'til when I can get into the sort of virtual 3D drawing as seen in this 3D drawing blog.

My model railroader brother bought this Sierra West Scale Models 1:48 scale milling machine kit to build as a Christmas gift to my machinist dad, but due to his free time constraints, he asked me to finish it. Taking some license with the appearance of it, I upgraded it to include its own electric motor/transmission power source.

For a while, I had these two. Tough economic times forced me back to having just the GTI. It's an '86 with a few assorted upgrades, and around a quarter million miles on the odometer. The other was my '77 Blazer Chalet, an impulse purchase that was supposed to turn my Colorado tent camping vacations into 'farther backroads' adventures. But, not enough money to devote to further restoration, and the thing only got around 10 mpg when the price of gas went to $4.50 per gallon.

Ditto on the creative use of the aerodyne sleeper. But, having once owned a Blazer Chalet, and being the current owner of the blazerchalet.com web site and nutcase researcher on all things pertaining to the Chalet and the GMC Jimmy Casa Grande (that's my former rig at the top of this April '09 Hemmings article), I'd recommend going the scratchbuilt route to replicate the camper unit. If anyone is ambitious enough to undertake such a project, I can probably point out where the nearest full size one is for reference purposes. I'm kicking around the idea of doing this myself as a killer factory replica stock contest entry, but I'm not sure how much work is needed to correct the usual shortcomings found in the various Blazer kits.

Yes, actually, to entice folks to build a full size one. Alas, the fates have instead been not so generous with me ever since, where the lack of money never allowed me to pursue such ideas. I also thought my BMW Cadillac combo was a viable full size project (perhaps on a less collectible Caddy coupe with the roof sawed off), along with a full-sized altered Lambo kit car based on my Chrysler 300 / Countach which had its 15 minutes of fame on the cover of Model Car Journal in 1994.