jaymcminn

That is nice. A really sanitary build in a perfect color combination.

Here we go... the engine received some basic detailing that really makes it look like more than the simplified assembly it is. THe body was painted in the Tamiya Racing White with Racing Green stripe... I'm pretty much in final assembly now, as it's been a fairly cruddy weekend here. Waiting on some VRM roundel decals... trying to decide between black or yellow roundels at this point.

So I lied about primer and paint being next... on to the interior! The 1:1 I based my interior from is an early alloy-bodied car, but it's my favorite color combo/specification. Here it is... First, I had to remove the kit bench seat from the floorboards with my trusty X-Acto saw. The rear part of the cockpit floor is styrene. Seats are Monogram Cobra units, heavily customized. I smoothed out the tuck-n-roll and added scratchbuilt seat cushions with wire piping... I replicated the leather using Testors Wood acrylic with a wash of the same color with white added in and topped off with Micro Satin clear. The flash really overemphasizes the effect... it's much more subtle in person. Here you can see the carpeted seat backs done in dark brown flocking. The floorpan after flocking and welting is added... The welting at the front right looks a little wonky because the CA broke loose. It's since been fixed. For the dash, I drilled out the holes for the instruments and mounted the decals behind clear acetate. I didn't trust the badly-yellowed decals. Again, the flash really overemphasizes the grain of the "leather". Finally, the interior side panels, with a preview of the primary body color... Next up, the motor!

How good would that look with a small teardrop-shaped foot step like the Mercedes SS had instead of the full-length running board? It would definitely fit the rakish look you're going for...

Yup. I was shocked as anybody to see Harry build this one, but he did a fantastic job on it, as usual.

You very rarely see these built up. That hood fit puts a lot of builders off (I've had this kit for years... never felt like dealing with that issue until now!) And I do agree that the stock windshield looks a little tall. I've decided on a color combo...the primary color will be Tamiya Racing White (a light ivory color) with a British Racing Green stripe. Wheels will be wires from the Tamiya Jaguar Mark II also painted in the Racing Green. Interior will be biscuit hide over brown carpet. I've already made a start on modifying a set of spare Monogram Cobra bucket seats to represent early Jaguar racing buckets. I'm not going to go nuts with chassis or engine detail here... the engine is pretty nice, if simplified, and should respond well to paint detail and some basic wiring and plumbing.

For my newest build, I've decided to take on the Revell Germany Jaguar XK120. For those not familiar with this kit, it was originally issued by Monogram in 1979 as one of their metal-body kits, in the same series as the '56 Thunderbird, MG TC, and '53 Corvette. While the others were re-released almost immediately with plastic bodies after the metal kits tanked, the Jag languished in obscurity until Revell Germany reissued it with the plastic body in the late '90s. Anybody who has built the T'bird or 'Vette will be familiar with the way this kit goes together... lots of nicely-molded surface detail, but a relatively low parts count and oversimplification in many areas. One of the nice features of the Jag kit is the set of Brooklands windscreens that allow for building a racing version, as well as the ability to leave off the fender skirts. The plan is to build a mid-fifties gentleman's racer... something that you'd drive to and from the track as well as on it. The body on this kit, while really well-proportioned, suffered from terrible seams and sink marks. After sanding down the seams and filling the sink marks, I rescribed the panel lines and added welting between the rear fenders and body. I also filled the holes for the bumpers both front and rear. The hood took a lot of sanding and filling with styrene stock to get it to fit properly as well. I added a pin at the front of the hood to hold it in position better... otherwise it has a tendency to slide forward. Here's the body just before primer... The hood fit isn't perfect, but it actually matches pretty well with the size of the panel lines in the body. Plus the hood fit on the real cars was actually pretty atrocious too. Next up is paint and primer!

Hmmm, something with looks, practicality, and that would be fun to drive... I would go for one of the new continuation/rebuilt Jensen Interceptors. Make mine gunmetal grey with tobacco hides, please.

Very cool little car.I'm sure you could find some sort of resin figure to convert into Emma Peel.

The key to getting a good one of these is to get one of the ones with the "gold cup" on the box art. These are early releases before the molds started to wear. I went back and forth on the wide whites... I know they're not strictly accurate for a period-correct model, but I think they add a lot of presence to this car. The brown 500K Special in the Mercedes museum has the chrome spokes and wide whites...if it's good enough for them it's good enough for me!

You'll definitely do it justice, Matt. This is a great old kit that deserves to be revisited by modern builders who can really do it justice with modern tools and techniques. After your work on the old Aurora/Monogram Maserati 3500 I know we're in for a great build. Good luck!

I daresay, old boy. Smashing job, but a bit on the rakish side, what? It's all well and good for those bounders that drive Bentleys, mind you...

Definitely saw Harry's yellow/black one. It's a lovely piece of work. I'm leaning toward the cycle fender version with the separate running boards for my SS. as far as the color scheme goes, I'm leaning toward almost the reverse of the scheme on this car- dark red over maroon with a grey interior and black wheels.

Thanks, Skip! I've got the Minicraft/Entex/etc. 540k sitting in the stash already as a "someday" kit. Years ago I made a start on the SS...the chassis is ready for paint and the wheels are built up. I really need to take another look in that box. That color combo will look stunning on that car! When building this model, I wanted to avoid the look that a lot of the 1:1 500/540K's have now. A lot of the cars you see online were restored in the 80s and 90s when you had to make a million-dollar car look like a rolling jukebox. The car this one seems to be modeled on, for example was restored in a bright red in the early 90s.The engine and chassis are incorrectly painted red and everything else is chrome plated or turned aluminum under the hood. The coil springs are even chrome plated!

The instrument faces are painted. I drybrushed black over the raised details and flowed a mix of acrylic white, silver, and gloss base into the gauges, which settled in and let the raised detail pop. I then used Micro Krystal Klear for the lenses. Thanks, Harry- I couldn't find a gloss paint I liked, so I had to go with a flat and clearcoat over it!

From the rattle can, it is the same color as the cap. The wash darkens it up somewhat.

It's a bit more orange in the pics than it is in real life. For some reason it doesn't photograph well.

So after starting three or four projects and getting bored with them and putting them aside and never actually getting anything built, I decided to do something completely different from my usual state-of-the-art Japanese kits of exotic and racing cars. Something to shake things up. A slumpbuster. The first kits I built back in the early 80s were the Monogram classics. I have fond memories of them and have most of them in the stash, but I wanted to try something a little different. Several recent builds of the Jo-Han Caracciola 500K Limousine had me intrigued, but I really wanted to try my hand at the stunning Special Roadster. I bought an early "Gold Cup" release on Ebay and settled in for what I figured might be a challenging build. Initial impressions of the kit were very positive... the level of detail is impressive for a fifty-year-old mold and the flash was pretty minimal. Sink marks were present everywhere, of course, but some effort was made, especially on the chrome parts, to hide sprue attachment points and ejector pin marks. I salvaged as much of the kit chrome as possible, but a fair amount of it had to be stripped, cleaned up, and painted with Spaz-Stix Chrome. The wheels are the finest plastic wires I've ever seen, by the way. The body and fenders required a fair amount of sanding to get everything straight and smooth and the panel lines were rescribed. I glued the rumble seat down and filled and rescribed the seam after block sanding the rear deck. Chrome trim lines on the body and fenders were sharpened up to better take the application of Bare Metal Foil. The interior benefited from flocking and parts-box door handles and pulls. The correct finish on the steering wheel should be black, but I like the woodgrain effect much better. Under the hood, the engine received a new scratchbuilt air cleaner as well as ignition wires. I used matte aluminum BMF on the firewall and faked a turned-aluminum pattern with a tiny circle of sandpaper on a toothpick. I'm not happy with the kit plastic radiator supports above the engine- I'll do new ones from music wire someday. I narrowed the rear track slightly and cut the rear springs by about 1/16" to get the stance just right...otherwise it sits too high in back. Of course during final assembly the hood, which sat perfectly during repeated test fittings, somehow managed to be off by just enough to tick me off. Oh well. The most infuriating thing about the build was the brittle plastic- I don't know if it was just from age or if it's just Jo-Han's plastic, but there was no room whatsoever to finesse any parts by bending. I probably increased the parts count on this kit by 10% by virtue of breaking parts in half... aaargh. Paint is Tamiya German Grey under Testors Wet-Look Clear. Interior color is Tamiya Dull Red with a dark wash to bring out the highlights. Top and tonneau cover are Tamiya Haze Grey. This color combination doesn't represent a specific car as far as I know, but definitely looks right for the period. I painted the wheels in the German Grey and very carefully wiped the paint off the spokes and wheel weights with lacquer thinner on a Tamiya swab. Chrome spokes on a painted wheel were actually fairly common on Mercedes of the day and it's a nice look for this car. I went with whitewalls instead of blackwalls to add a little extra punch to the wheels. I also painted the brake drums red, but that doesn't show through quite as well as I was hoping it would. The snaps on the tonneau and body are PE bolt heads, but I can't remember who from. Overall I was pleasantly surprised by the way this thing went together... the detail straight from the box is pretty impressive and I could see it being built into a box-stock winner at just about any contest. With a few extras it really pops. It's also got me interested in the pre-war stuff again...I've been looking at the old Monogram Rolls Royce Phantom II Henley Roadster and thinking how far I could take it using what Harry and Cato have done in 1/8 scale as a template. Anyway, on to the pics! Thanks for looking, and questions and comments are welcome!

That is a lot of styling going on there. Not good styling, mind you...

Not bad for the shelf. The lack of a full-detail Veyron kit is still mind-boggling. I'm hoping we get a P1 from Aoshima...

I really want that BMW "batmobile". EBay prices, when they do show up, are prohibitive. The Countach kits are pretty easy to find, as Testors reboxed the LP500 in the 80s. The Stratos is another one I'd love to get my hands on. It might be interesting to bash the Porsche with the Tamiya 934 kit to resolve the engine and chassis inaccuracies, because the prototype Turbo body style is really sharp.

GrandMaster has been a favorite of mine for years. I'd love to see it kitted. As for number 2, it would be a tossup between the Eldorod and Impression.

+1 on the Tamiya f1 cars. I recently built the Lotus 72d and it was an excellent kit.

Stunning work, Harry. Your builds have finally convinced me to have a go at some of the classics gathering dust in my collection!

Knew it from a Jalopnik article published some time ago. I respect Zagato for designing something different and distinctive, and I respect Nissan for having the guts to build it. Having said that....Ugh. just ugh.