Hoffman

Fantastic, Mario! I appreciate the detailed response. I'll be on the lookout for your Duel truck. That was such a great movie. It's one of those you have to watch again every so often and it never gets old. ? Thanks!!

Terry, I've always enjoyed your work over the years. Great job! By the way, there's a feature on the Bangshift web page right now you should check out. It's Gene Winfield's recent party at his shop in Mojave. Several of the movie cars are in the article. https://bangshift.com/bangshift-galleries/gene-winfield-car-show-photos-the-2021-winfield-watson-custom-car-and-hot-rod-gathering-did-not-disappoint/

Mario, your model is great, and I love the photos! This might sound silly, but I'd love to see what your base looks like; the platform you placed the model on for the shot. The depth of field is really good. The background and foreground are not wildly out of focus or obviously distinct, one from the other. The way the model is positioned in front of the background, it looks in scale, blends right in and is very convincing. I've just been doing sort of 'in studio' photos up to now but would like to try outdoors. It looks like you know how to do this really well.

Very nice! What are the colors, exactly; the red and the blue, please?

Grant, that's radical! Very imaginative and excellent execution. Go Tillers!

Dave and Max, the truck looks GREAT! ?

Helmut, well done! The colors are very close to factory offering cumberland green and colonial white. Looks great!

Bruce, you did an exceptional job on this Rolls Royce. Beautiful!

I Like it! ?

Gentlemen, thank you for all the nice compliments! ? Glad you like it. Jim B, this is 1/24 scale.

Pico, it looks great now! And I agree, the Kellner Coupe is arguably the best looking Royale of the bunch. I got to see it in person when it was still owned by Briggs Cunningham and on display in his museum in Costa Mesa. I was 18 at the time and just completely blown away by the car. So huge, yet so perfectly proportioned, elegant, stately, just amazing. This is on my list to scratch build. Getting back to my Italeri '33 Cadillac convertible coupe project now. Just finished reworking a Danbury Mint Hispano Suiza for fun, now it's back to body work. If I grab another die cast before finishing that Cadillac, Eric Macleod will punch me. ?

The idea with this project was to disassemble the model and repaint everything to better match some of the few full size examples still in the world. The Fernandez & Darrin cabriolet body appeared both on the J12 cars and K6 as well. Hope you enjoy the photos of the updated model and some prototypical Hispano Suiza's I looked at for inspiration. Exterior- Dark blue shade is original Danbury Mint color. Light blue is Tamiya Color for Aircraft, #AS19 Intermediate Blue, followed by Testors #1834 Wet Look Clear lacquer. Panel lines on the trunk and vent doors on the hood were done with Indian ink in a Koh-I-Noor pen. Chrome trim added to the beltline is a combination of Bare Metal Foil and Molotow chrome pen. The Sedanca style canvas top was brush painted a custom mixed tan color in water based acrylics, then sprayed over that with Krylon chalk clear coat. Added a combination spot light and rear view mirror from a Mercedes 500K, which is a match for what I’d seen on one of the full size Hispano Suizas. The license plate is a photo reduced copy of an actual vintage California plate. Wheels and Tires- Monogram classic series tires (Duesenberg, Packard, etc). Wheel back halves are modified Monogram Packard, front halves are modified Monogram Rolls Royce. Hubcaps are cut down Hispano Suiza caps from Danbury Mint. Tire walls painted with Liquitex water-based black acrylic. Treads are a mixture of gray/brown Liquitex. Interior- Monogram Rolls Royce Henley Roadster bench seat in place of stock buckets. Floor and door panels painted with water based acrylics first, then door panels painted with artist oils over that to give them the look of leather. Oils used to wood-grain the door tops and dashboard, then clear enamel for gloss over that. Engine Compartment- Model originally had a shiny chrome plated firewall. Experimented with Krylon clear Chalk over that chrome to make it look more like the aluminum firewall on full size HS J12's. Also, the model originally had large, square gaps in the engine compartment flooring around the exhaust pipes. Not correct. Added material to complete the flooring like a full size HS J12, covered that in chrome mylar tape, again over sprayed with chalk clear to make it look like aluminum. Detail painted the valve covers gloss black, mixed up a blue/gray/black color for the exhaust manifolds, painted the engine block a warm kind of cast aluminum color, painted the hood sides, added the fabric weather strips common on 1930's cars around the edge of the firewall and radiator.

The idea with this project was to disassemble the model and repaint everything to better match some of the few full size examples still in the world. It helps sometimes to dig up older photos. There's a tendency with modern restorations to put chrome wire wheels and white walls on everything, even if that isn't very accurate for the subject in period. Painted wires don't look quite as nice sometimes, which is a matter of taste, but frequently that's what these cars had to begin with. Hope you enjoy the photos of the updated model and some prototypical Hispano Suiza's I looked at for inspiration. The Fernandez & Darrin cabriolet body appeared both on the J12 cars and K6 as well. Wheels and Tires- Monogram classic series tires (Duesenberg, Packard, etc). Wheel back halves are modified Monogram Packard, front halves are modified Monogram Rolls Royce. Hubcaps are cut down Hispano Suiza caps from Danbury Mint. Tire walls painted with Liquitex water-based black acrylic. Treads are a mixture of gray/brown Liquitex. Interior- Monogram Rolls Royce Henley Roadster bench seat in place of stock buckets. Floor and door panels painted with Liquitex acrylics first, then door panels painted with artist oils over that to give them the look of leather. Oils used to wood-grain the door tops and dashboard, then clear enamel for gloss over that. Sedanca style canvas top repainted a custom mixed warmer tan color in water based acrylics, then sprayed over that with Krylon chalk clear coat. Exterior- Dark blue shade is original Danbury Mint color. Light blue is Tamiya Color for Aircraft, #AS19 Intermediate Blue, followed by Testors #1834 Wet Look Clear lacquer. Engine Compartment- Model originally had a shiny chrome plated firewall. Experimented with Krylon clear Chalk over that chrome to make it look more like the aluminum firewall on full size HS J12's. Also, the model originally had large, square gaps in the engine compartment flooring around the exhaust pipes. Not correct. Added material to complete the flooring like a full size HS J12, covered that in chrome mylar tape, again over sprayed with chalk clear to make it look like aluminum. Detail painted the valve covers gloss black, mixed up a blue/gray/black color for the exhaust manifolds, painted the engine block a warm kind of cast aluminum color, painted the hood sides, added the fabric weather strips common on 1930's cars around the edge of the firewall and radiator.

Very Nice, Dave! Love it. ?

Those are cool!

Outstanding!! With the right background, you could easily convince people it was a full size vehicle. Well done, Muldoon! ?

Skip and Kenn, whatever happened to this great SSK/710SS coupe project?

Very nice, Terry! It looks quite convincing. Love the interior colors. Well done!

That is Cool!

Guys, thank you for the compliments. I must apologize though. I should have posted this in the Diecast section. I don't mean to misrepresent the work here. This was just a fun, quick rebuild before I got back to serious body work on a plastic kit project. Following are photos of what a full size MB SSKL looks like, and what a Franklin Mint version looks like, typically on ebay for like $20. ?

This is an FM re-work to make it look more like the full size car and less like a toy. The biggest change are the wheels and tires from the Lindberg SSK kit. They feature carefully painted black spokes, molotow chrome locking rings at the outer edge, and copper brake drums behind the spokes. I kept the FM spares on the back, but painted the spokes black to match. The interior came with a black seat and red carpet. I painted the seat and sides of the cockpit red to match. The front axle and brake backing plates were repainted from black to white, and the edges of the drums painted copper. The outer rims on the back side of the wheels are from AMT '27 T wheels, just the rims with the spokes cut out. I used some black and gray artist acrylics to represent shadows in the lightning holes in the chassis, making them more three dimensional. That's about it. Enjoy!

Looks excellent, Dennis! Reminds me of a Steve Stanford rendering. Very cool.

Claude, that combination works really, really well together! Great job. ?

Testors jade green metalflake! Cool! I had built one similar to this, then rebuilt it in the 80's, using just the body. I've always meant to get back to it and build a nice stocker like the beautiful version built by John.

Outstanding!!!! ?