Anglia105E

I am impressed with this diorama of yours Shawn, and what makes it special is that this project is your first diorama, and your first experience of weathering. I am well aware that weathering is a difficult skill to get right, so your results are really good . . . David

That is one beautiful Ferrari 250 swb Pierre . . . and not a red one ! Perfect in every detail too . . . David

Some further interesting facts that you have uncovered there Dennis . . . I have made the decision to have black wire spoked wheels on my Phantom III, so I won't be fitting any wheel covers to this one. However, that is useful to know that those wheel covers on the 1:16 scale Revell Phantom II would fit nicely onto Phantom III wheels . . . Although the wheel covers for the model car will not fit onto the wire spoked wheels, they were apparently fitted to the real cars in that way, purely to save cleaning time for the chauffeur driver or owner driver. Your time test fitting the wheel covers and wheels from both kits is much appreciated, and by no means wasted ! David

Email sent David

Well, funny you should ask me that . . . I am indeed intending to add more detail than is included in the excellent Gunze Sangyo kit. One example would be my hose clips for the two cooling hoses that go between the radiator and the water rails along the top of the engine, and other detail plans might include headlamp and tail lamp lighting from a 9 volt battery that could possibly fit inside the luggage compartment . . . Certainly, I would welcome any diagrams or images that you would be happy to share, regarding PIII cars. David

Thank you Dennis . . . You know how you get a gut feeling about the colour of a particular car, well that is how I feel about this one. I can already see in my mind's eye this Phantom III looking gorgeous in black and cream as you say . . . This paint scheme will be further complimented by the dark brown interior. David

Thank you Skip, and you are right about the seating fabric, many Phantom III cars would have leather for the front driver's seat and then cloth covered seats in the rear compartment behind the division . . . Many cars would have leather for both front and rear seats. Thanks for the photo, and the interior colour matches the shade of brown that I have chosen, so I am pleased about that ! David

Thank you so much Pierre . . . Delightfully British sums up Arthur J Webb perfectly ! The decision is made . . . Black and cream with dark brown interior and seating, black wire spoked wheels and absolutely no whitewall tyres . . . This is very much an English Rolls-Royce in every sense. David

Thanks David . . . I tend to use the Vallejo acrylics for the figure painting, and then a combination of brushed Humbrol enamels and Tamiya aerosols for the car models . . . I still can't believe that I actually found those two tiny parts on the floor, and especially the single finger which is only 4 mm in length. David

Painting of the figure in the top hat was progressing well, until disaster struck . . . The figure fell off the blob of Blu Tack that he was mounted on for painting, and hit the hard wooden floor from a height of around two feet. Surprisingly, there seemed to be hardly any damage that I could see, although I was primarily concerned with the top hat . . . Then today, on closer inspection, I realised that four fingers of Arthur's right hand were missing, so broken off as a result of his recent fall. I set about searching the floor of the loft, immediately below my table and chair . . . I wasn't optimistic about finding a tiny part that comprised four fingers, but a small miracle happened and I did find a part. Sadly, there were only three fingers, so I began searching again for the remaining fore finger, the fourth finger in fact . . . Yet another miracle happened. The missing finger was found ! All four of Arthur's fingers have been super glued back onto his hand, and after further painting the break is barely visible . . . Boy that was lucky ! Here are a few photos of the missing digits, and the happy ending that followed . . . David

As other members have commented François, the photographs of the real full size Bentley Blower and those photos of your 1:12 scale Airfix Bentley Blower are both equally convincing, in terms of realism . . . Also, I think your statement that 25% of this build is Airfix and 75% of the build is the work that you have produced is totally justified. . . David

Well David, the real problem with the gold paint scheme is not so much the colour funnily enough, but more to do with the fact that I simply cannot bring myself to put whitewall tyres on any Rolls-Royce motor car . . . For this reason alone I shall most likely follow my original plan, and then probably not have any number plates / license plates on the car at all. You see, the previous comment regarding how ' British ' the black and cream colour scheme comes across, is precisely the point really. Therefore, I would describe the gold paint scheme and the whitewall tyres as being more ' American ' . . . This of course is purely a matter of taste, and there is a distinct difference regarding how we like to see cars styled on each side of the Atlantic. and neither view is right or wrong . . . just different. If you want to see an example of what I mean, take a look at the Phantom III that is widely known as the ' Copper Kettle ', which might not even appeal to some British and American car enthusiasts ! - https://www.mecum.com/lots/388752/1937-rolls-royce-phantom-iii-freestone-webb-sedanca-deville/ Ironically for me anyway, is that the Copper Kettle has bodywork by Freestone and Webb coachbuilders !!! David

I agree that the gold paint scheme is quite unusual, and as such would make for a nice model . . . Sourcing those two paint colours could be tricky though. Had this been during the Summer I would have completed the exterior paint spraying well before now, but as we are still struggling to reach 9°C, the paint work remains on hold . . . How are your temperatures up there in the Orkneys ? David

So, the actual car that the Gunze Sangyo Phantom III kit is based upon, does exist and it is owned by the Toyota Automobile Museum in Japan. This means that car number FV 8910 has a paint colour scheme that is two shades of gold . . . There is an excellent vehicles database on the museum website that has four very good photographs of the real car, showing front three-quarter view, front view, rear view and also the dashboard layout. The interior colour can be seen clearly on the front seats, and this is very close to my chosen colour of brown. This car does have whitewall tyres, as displayed in the box art for the Entex version of the kit. My predicament is now, do I abandon my chosen paint scheme of black and cream, or do I try to reproduce the actual two-tone gold ? Do I build this Rolls-Royce Phantom III as ' FV 8910 ' in gold, or do I choose a different registration number and finish this model in black and cream as planned ? . . . Referring to the Gunze Sangyo instruction sheet, they suggest two alternative paint schemes, neither of which are gold. One is black and silver, and the second is all ivory, so one colour. Usually, I do like to build a scale model Rolls-Royce car that accurately represents a real car, including specific paint colour, registration number and as many other details as possible. It seems that I have to make a decision regarding this build ! David

I can see that you are a man who knows his numbers Les . . . Previously I was attempting to match the FV8910 number to a specific motor car, but now thanks to MCM member Skip Jordan, I am aware of the car being in the Toyota Automobile Museum, and you can just make out the FV8910 number plate behind the front bumper . . . Here is an even better photo . . . David

That is a possibility Les, because I don't suppose they had ' personal ' registration numbers in the late 1930's, although F V 8 9 10 is a sequential number (8, 9, 10) . . . interesting ! David

Many thanks Skip for that important piece of information . . . I had not realised that particular car was the one that Gunze Sangyo based their PIII kit upon. Do you have any idea where the registration plate ' FV 8910 ' came from ? I see the box art on the Entex version of this kit does look almost exactly like the photos that you have posted, which is great thanks ! David

Here is a link to the Cortina under glass topic David . . . David W.

Yes, I am rather pleased with how the figure is transformimg . . . One interesting fact, apparently Freestone and Webb were recognised as having two distinctive body styles, one was ' Top Hat ' and the other was ' Razor Edge ' . . . so this Phantom III that I am building has a Freestone and Webb body. David

Thank you David, and I can't actually remember if this topic found it's way to the "Under Glass" section . . . I must check ! David

While waiting for various parts and assemblies of the Phantom III to dry, I wanted to do something with the figure that will go with this car . . . I would like to think that if Gunze Sangyo had included a figure with this kit back in the day, then this would have been a typical subject to find inside the box. He is an Edwardian gentleman in 1:16 scale, and this figure was 3D printed for garden railways and tramways. One thing I did not like about the figure was his HAT, which I regarded as rather comical and made him look like a garden gnome ! So I set about converting his hat to a Top Hat, which I have done by cutting an oval out of thin card and super glued it to the top of the silly hat . . . Then I cut out a strip of thin card, which was wrapped around the existing hat and glued on below the upper rim of the new hat. The gaps were filled with Mr Wite Putty R filler and Humbrol grey primer applied over the white card areas. Today I applied a thin coat of Vallejo flat flesh acrylic paint to the face of the man. Once this figure is painted Vallejo beige brown for his hat, coat and trousers, darker brown for his leather gloves and leather shoes, with a white shirt, crimson waistcoat and a grey beard he will look much better I feel . . . This man will be Mr A. J. Webb, who was Arthur Webb of the partnership that was the founder of Freestone and Webb, the famous coachbuilders from North London . . . From 1923 to 1958 the partnership of V. E. Freestone and A. J. Webb produced some of the finest designs for Rolls-Royce and Bentley bodies, although Mr Webb died in 1955 . . . David

Thank you very much for your comments Douglas . . . Your story is fascinating, and I am pleased to hear that you are returning to scale model car building after all these years . . . Just like you, I stopped building model cars when I was about 13 years of age, and then started up again at the age of 63. During the past 7 years or so I have turning out many models, and I must have spent a great deal of time and money on this interesting hobby. I have tended to concentrate on Rolls-Royce motor cars, sometimes exclusively on the Silver Cloud, but I have built three 1953 Hudson Hornets, the 1963 Ford Consul Cortina, a 1968 Lotus 49B as driven by Graham Hill, a 1968 Pontiac Parisienne 5.3 litre V8 (Canadian), various French classics from the 1950's and most of the Rolls-Royce Phantom range from 1927 - 1937 . . . I hope your Vauxhall Victor Estate goes well as a build, and the FROG kits are really nice actually . . . Their 1:16 scale kits are now very rare, especially the Vauxhall, and you do have to pay a lot of money for them on Ebay. David

Thank you Dennis, and this is beginning to make sense to me now . . . Excellent photos of yours, and they were just what I needed, so thanks again for taking the time, cheers ! David

Well, at the moment Dennis my immediate concern is the door posts for this model car. I have studied the instruction sheet, and examined the relevant parts, but the way they seem to suggest fitting those parts doesn't look too strong to me . . . The base of the door posts puzzles me a bit, and the method of attaching the outer door pillars also. I want to get this part of the build right because this is critical to the fitting of the door hinges. The door posts don't seem to reach the underside of the roof, where there are two square sockets. Don't worry if you can't see what I mean. Maybe if you could take a couple of close up photos of the doors to door post fitting, from slightly different angles? Please don't disrupt your daily schedule for this Dennis, but this would help me figure out the issue . . . David

As regards the wheel covers Dennis . . . This is what I discovered during my extensive research. The owners of the real full size Rolls-Royce Phantom III motor cars, between 1936 and 1939 liked to keep their wire spoked wheels clean, but the tedious job of cleaning those wheels was a headache for the chauffeur / mechanic . . . So, they fitted the wheel covers to not only look stylish but primarily to keep the maintenance of the wire spoked wheels down to an absolute minimum. I was hoping to photograph my completed model both with and without wheel covers, until I realised they were not in the kit box from Gunze Sangyo . . . To be fair to Gunze Sangyo, this is probably because the Freestone and Webb coachbuilders version did not necessarily have wheel covers, unless the owner buyer specifically requested them to be fitted. Just one question for you Dennis, do you have any more photos of your Entex Phantom III kit please ? The photo that you posted is high resolution and very good, thanks . . . David