Junkman

I thought the Mints were made in Korea?

Had you not insulated your garage, put no heater and vent in and not built a paint booth, you'd have had ample time for painting.

Those plastic kits became too expensive.

Some have only paint reaction. Others have zinc pest. These are two distinctly different defects and I'm well aware of the difference.

The '57s are my favourite, then there are the 'forgotten' '58s. I'm still on the hunt for that Sunliner and Sun Star's '58 hardtop, which they did in their superb Platinum series.

This is one of the few models I have that are displaying paint rash. It has become a lot worse since these pictures were taken.

Which film?

Every new diecast I receive is treated with Black Magic, a real car wax with bad reviews on real cars, but which I find ideal for model cars. I use it even on the plated bits and windows. Could it be this what makes my diecasts displaying so little paint rash? That and that I own only very few black cars, which seem to be the most notorious for it? Not seeing a lot of zinc pest is pure dumb luck I guess, but also I don't own many of the models that are commonly mentioned suffering it. The only one I have is the Anson Studebaker Golden Hawk, which decided to shed its doors courtesy of the hinges crumbling away.

Thanks guys. Using the same general principle, I have converted a lot of headlights of my models of French cars. I can only say the effect is very realistic, the photos don't even show this that well. I did the first ones approx ten years ago and the Tamiya Clear I used doesn't show even a hint of yellowing yet.

I do "themed" displays on a rota. So far I have only three models showing paint rash and one showing metal fatigue.

Me likes more '74 Monaco, I.

These are nice! When I started buying diecasts, and I refused them for quite a while, I also thought they will merely complement the kits I have. That was 20 years ago. Meanwhile they have really taken over, since there constantly are new releases I'm interested in, whereas there are hardly any new kits that manage to entice me. I estimate my diecast vs. kit purchases nowadays being 20:1.

Yeah, what a shame. It also didn't have the rear inner wheel arches cut away to allow for them.

This model was part of a partworks test and is now part of an ongoing 1/24 Citroen partwork series. Incidentally it is also upcoming in the Auto Vintage Series in black all over. There are rumours of an upcoming French police cars series, for which the black issue would merely need an orange roof beacon and appropriate decoration added. The rumour is further fuelled by the fact that the recently issued Estafette bus in the Auto Vintage Series has a fold down desk and typewriter moulded behind the driver's seat.

Woah.

Still. Have you traded your soul to the devil for your ability, or how did you do that?

From a time when the fastest French production car had about 130 hp. The model is authentic, the French fuzz indeed used these for catching speeders.

I never found an explanation as to why Citroen called these 15CV despite they actually have 16. In France, the CVs used to be the taxable horsepower (puissance fiscale) and they were calculated with this simple formula. n is the number of cylinders D is the cylinder bore in centimetres L is the stroke in centimetres ω is the engine speed in revolutions per second K is a coefficient depending on the number of cylinders (single-cylinder engine 0.00020 / two-cylinder engine 0.00017 / four-cylinder engine 0.00015 / six-cylinder engine and engine with more cylinders 0.00013) You were then charged an annual tax for each and every CV. By the nature of the formula, cars with big bores and strokes were disproportionally higher taxed, which explains the French love for small cylinders. It's this taxation system more than anything else that drove the big engined old French cars off the road. A French collector once told me that back in the 50s it was cheaper to buy an old Bugatti than to tax it for a year. It's no wonder so many where shoved across the weighbridge then, not least because of their high aluminium content. But back to the model, shall we? Like so many Maistos, it has all the potential to make something truly outstanding out of it.

I would love to see at least the highlights of your collection. I'm very interested in motorsport myself, I just can't collect everything.

It has real fabric seats: I got it really cheap and thought since I've nothing to lose, why not use it as a guinea pig to see how this terrible fixing the headlight lenses with a stalk in the centre can be addressed. So I took the headlights out. Cut off the stalks. I procured a bag of yellow glass beads. I only needed two of them. And two clothes pins. The lenses were sanded a bit where the stalk used to be, then treated with Tamiya Clear. I then glued the beads onto the pins with Tamiya Clear. Then I glued those into the reflectors. Then the lenses were glued onto the reflectors. Tamiya Clear was used for all gluing, because it dries completely - well - clear. And now look how they look like French headlights:

At the time it simply was the best Beetle you could buy in 1/18.

What a crying shame.

You practically nicked it. I wonder what happened to the tooling.