Junkman

What exactly is meant with "finish that model"?

There you go : http://ep.yimg.com/ca/I/timespacetoys_2150_66682119

A car like this would most probably have been owned by a very high ranking public figure or an authority. Austria was a bitterly poor country following WW1 until well into the Fifties, so in the late Thirties there were few private people outside the industrial centres who were in the financial position to buy a 540K. The car was most certainly used for official purposes and those were inevitably Nazi between 1938 and 1945.

Also note that the car is right-hand-drive. Up until the German annexation in 1938, when right hand traffic was universally introduced, this was not consistent in Austria. Some of the federal states had right hand traffic, some not. Salzburg was left hand traffic.

The number plate of the car as pictured is pre-war, issued between 1930 and 1939, so it is consistent with the age of the car and could well be its original license. The D was issued by Salzburg, which is consistent with the filming location at Lake Wolfgang, which is in the Salzburg district. But since the film was made in 1965, this would indicate that the car was either not registered when the filming was done, and hadn't been since at least 1947, when the new Austrian licensing system was introduced, or the contemporary license plate was removed and substituted with a pre-war one for the filming. The Austrian licensing system between 1930 and 1939 worked as follows: * A Wien (Vienna) * B Niederösterreich (Lower Austria) * C Oberösterreich (Upper Austria) * D Salzburg * E Tirol (Tyrol) * F Kärnten (Carinthia) * H Steiermark (Styria - native home of Arnold Schwarzenegger) * K Graz * L Linz * M Burgenland * V Wien (Vienna again. 'V' was assigned in 1938, but rendered obsolete almost immediately due to the German annexation. Very few 'V' plates were hence ever issued). * W Vorarlberg (Rhaetian Alps) So it's 'D' for Salzburg, followed by the number indicating the licensing authority. 8 is Strobl, which again is consistent with the filming location in and around St. Wolfgang. This car was apparently registered new in the area. The rest of the license is then a sequential three-digit number unique for the car. As for the condition of the car, please keep in mind: - Very few cars survived the war. Most had been recruited by the Wehrmacht and were subsequently destroyed or damaged beyond repairability. That includes many high end cars like a 540K. Furthermore, lots of the surviving high-end cars were then purchased by members of the allied forces and brought abroad. Old luxury cars were the last thing required by a starved post-war population and often changed hands merely for provisions. How this particular car escaped both those fates is a total mystery to me. - There was no real classic car movement in the Sixties and before. These cars had no real value and whoever tinkered around with them was considered an eccentric. - There was no spare parts availability. No industry catered for the classic car enthusiast yet. Original parts had mostly been used up by the war effort. Hence, a lot was improvised or replaced with makeshift or non-authentic parts, so most vintage cars would not be accurate in all details. The whereabouts of this particular car are obscure. At the time of the filming, it belonged to a local funeral director who let the filming crew use it without charging them a Schilling. The car was later sold to local builder/contractor Matula and I remember seeing the car frequently as a kid. Mr. Matula had an extensive Mercedes collection and also owned a Riva motorboat on Lake Wolfgang. When I moved away from the area in the early Eighties, he still owned the car. The construction company still exists, but I doubt the old man is still alive. I have no idea what his successors did with his car collection. One thing is for sure though. Nobody would have scrapped a car like this from the Eighties onwards.

You mean, from right hand drive to wrong hand drive?

Easy. You sell it to me.

I second the Lada once more. And this time, I want a Rover P6 too!

What kind of a neighborhood do you live in?

Built this over the winter literally from rubbish others tossed out:

Some of the Renwal Revivals.

The original was by Eidai Grip:

How about the 71-76 GM fullsize cars? They constitute the most significant gap in American model kit history. All we ever got are the Chevies and a handful of resins. The real cars went down in history as the largest mass produced cars ever.

Because it is the most politically incorrect box art I have ever seen. This is 30 years in the slammer in Kenya.

I'd like a Auto Union DKW Munga and a Unimog 404. And the Steyr-Puch Haflinger and Pinzgauer. All these could be nicely civilized, too.

What does that have to do with beer?

What's that ruddy thing in the 58 Edsel?

I don't drink beer often too, but frequently and a lot.

Not one of my holy grails is on the list. What's on the list is popular enough to actually stand a chance of being produced eventually. My holy grails will never be produced from new tools. Heck, they won't even be reissued if there ever was an issue at all.

If you extend it to 72 I'm in. I don't own a 67/68.

That's the dangerous thing. They haven't.

Correct. A Mini (the old one) is only marginally longer, needs less petrol, and seats four. Where, one asks, is the progress?

How could one possibly regard model building and beer as two separate things?

There is one on the 63 Riviera annual, complete with an injection system.

19/19, but I only got the AMC 401 right because I had no idea what it is and it wasn't one of the other choices.