Bernard Kron

Thanks Dave. I'm definitely a fan of the Orsi era Masers. I suppose the 450S is the ultimate in Glorious Monsters. I'm afraid that resin casting remains above my pay grade. But I have a suspicion that the seller is actually the creator of this "kit". You might ask him. He's jmswhidbey on eBay ( https://www.ebay.com/usr/jmswhidbey ).

Maserati A6GCS/53 Barchetta – Mille Miglia 1954 In the immediate post WWII period, due to a major shortage of consumer products, automobiles became major symbols of mobility, social optimism and power. Owning a luxury or sports car was a top priority if one wished to show off one’s wealth, and small, specialist manufacturers quickly moved to fill the demand. Many of these makes would become legendary names known even today for their prestige and glamour. The 5 Maserati brothers, Alfieri, Bindo, Carlo, Ettore, and Ernesto, had been producing bespoke racing cars since the early1920’s. The bustling port city of Bologna was their home and the source of the famous Trident symbol emblazoned on Maseratis, the symbol of Neptune, the Roman god of the sea. Alfieri Maserati died in 1932 from complications resulting from a grave 1927 racing accident, but Bindo, Ernesto, and Ettore continued to operate the shop. In 1937 they sold it to the wealthy industrialist Adolfo Orsi with the brothers contracted to stay on a further 10 years. It was Orsi who guided the company from its racing roots to it’s emergence as the international brand it has become today, moving the company to its now-famous home in Modena. This car, the six cylinder DOHC twin-plug 2 liter A6GCS/53, was the pivotal car in Maserati’s rise. First produced in 1947, the A6 series, the first production Maseratis, was based on a motor developed by the brilliant engineer Gioacchino Colombo, who would gain world renown for his 2 liter Ferrari V12, on a simple parallel tube chassis created by Ernesto Maserati. It was the barchetta roadster body modeled here, that first defined Maserati as a player in the European racing sports car scene after Orsi signed Juan Fangio to the team late in 1952. 50’s Masers were all only produced in small numbers, rarely exceeding 50 examples. While only 4 A6GCS/53 berlinettas (coupes) were produced, 52 of these open cockpit racing sports cars were built, their trend-setting curvaceous bodies designed and constructed by Menardo Fantuzzi. So many that they became the weapon of choice for gentleman racers in the mid-50’s, especially in Italy and France, but even extending to North and South America. Fantuzzi was another beneficiary of Maserati’s success, his Modenese shop creating most of the iconic Maserati and Ferrari racing sports car and open wheel bodies extending well into the early 60’s. This model is based on a relatively crude lump of solid resin, a curbside, of obscure and unknown origin that I purchased on eBay recently. The wheels and tires were molded as a single unit, there is a simple chassis piece with a flat bottom completely devoid of any detail, the upper half of the chassis containing the floor and transmission hump of the interior. A separate dashboard, steering wheel, seats, headlight and taillight lenses, and windscreen were supplied. However there was no flange for mounting the clear windscreen, even though it is the correct shape for the car. The solid resin plug of a body is also largely correct as a representation of the car. This was my first effort at building this sort of small production resin car model. I decided I would attempt to use as much of the original “kit” as possible. The wheels and tires were painted flat black. Then I dry-brushed Aluminum Plate metalizer on the spokes and detailed the rims and knockoff hubcaps with Molotow chrome. I added some further interior detail to the somewhat incorrect kit interior. The real cars were totally devoid of any upholstery other than on the seats and the body sides were completely bare with their tubular framing totally exposed. This model had the quilted padding often seen on streetable Italian Gran Turismo cars of the era. For this reason I added some door paneling as well. The kit body was open behind the seats while the real cars hid their gas tanks behind a bare aluminum panel. So I added a curved panel at the rear of the cockpit. This represents an actual entrant from the 1954 Mille Miglia, one of no fewer than 14 (!) entered. While Luigi Musso famously finished 3rd that year in the #500 car, this car, #514, driven by Luigi Bosisio with Pier Luigi Ercole in the navigator’s seat, was a DNF. The 514 most closely matched the kit bodywork and grill, and besides I thought 514 looked better on the car than 500… The numbers referred to the time each car left the starter’s ramp, small displacement production cars leaving first the previous evening, each car separated by 1 minute, with the largest engined, fastest pure racing cars leaving shortly after 6 AM the next morning. The 514 car left at 5:14 AM. The paint is Tamiya Italian Red and the decals are from Patto’s Place in Australia. Thanx for lookin’, B.

Thanks Josh! The number decals came from Patto's Place ( https://www.pattosplace.com/home.html ) in Australia so I have been able to complete this model. The decals were of very high quality, period correct in the choice of fonts, properly scaled, sturdy, quite opaque despite the strong red body color, and applied with zero issues of any kind. Highly recommended! I changed out the steering wheel with a thinner rimmed cast metal piece from Herb Deeks which I had in my stash. The kit piece just didn't look right. And most critically and importantly, I mounted the windscreen which, as I expected, took some patience and fettling to get the right angle and curvature. I'll be taking general "beauty shots" which I'll post next. In the meantime thanks to all who followed along. Thanx for lookin', B.

I got quite a number of details done. The basics of the interior are now completed and glued in place, with the exception of the seats and steering wheel. The nose is detailed out. I found I got better results working with Molotow chrome than foil, especially in the interior of the grill. Pre-painting everything in silver and then masking this area before applying the red also helped enormously. The side pipes, which had been the under color silver, were dry brushed with Testors Metalizer Exhaust to achieve the dark color seen in the period race photos of these cars, given that the model has no exhaust muffling. Not shown in the summary photo is the windscreen, where I was able to fabricate a credible mounting flange. I’ll get more in to that with my next update. It will need some very careful mounting! For now I’m waiting for the number decals to arrive from Australia, and for a flip-style gas cap which goes behind the passenger’s left shoulder inboard of the right side of the rear deck. These details will likely have a pretty strong effect on the overall look of the car. For now, with its smooth lines and minimal trim, especially with the dark exhaust pipes, it looks somewhat like a red blob. Thanx for lookin’, B.

Got the Tamiya Italian Red laid down, cured and polished. The headlight rims are hyper-fragile and the right one is currently undergoing repair after fracturing while removing the BMF I used for masking it. Working around the paint should be fun. Next up are the interior details and parts and the biggest challenge (other than the headlight rim) which wil be fabrication a correct and convincing windscreen flange. I have plain Mille Miglia style white number decals coming from Patto’s Place in Australia which will most likely be the only graphics on the car. Thanx for lookin’, B.

One of the more ambitious of the modern issue car kits. I have one waiting for some careful, focused bench time. I recently cracked it open and I agree, the instructions are less than encouraging and clear. That's why it will need some focus. Your rendition does it more than justice. Bravo! And welcome!

Thank you so much Dave, and those you work with, for all you do for us. There's no better general interest forum for auto modelers to hang out at!

When Curt Raitz first introduced his hand-laced TruWire spindle mount wire wheels a few years back I immediately imagined them on a Fad-T in addition to their obvious use on dragsters. Then, at the last real physical NNL West in 2019 Curt showed a superbly turned out box stock Revell Tweedy Pie II with the one modification of adding his gorgeous wheels. That clinched it. I had been collecting various parts for my own T-Bucket and, in addition to Curt’s wheels I had collected a Revell Parts Pack Cal Automotive Fiberglas T-bucket and a complete Revell Roth Outlaw kit. My intention is to use the running gear and chassis of the Outlaw with the Cal Auto ‘glas bucket to build a classic short-wheelbase Fad-T from the earlier years. Not many people realize that the Ed Roth Outlaw, besides being a genius-level re-imagining of the bucket-T hot rod, is also responsible for introducing spindle mount wire wheels to T-bucket culture. Ed started the then-Excaliber (later renamed Outlaw because neither Ed nor anyone else could spell Excalibur correctly) in 1958 and it featured a long list of firsts, Ed’s first “wild” show rod, his first pure scratch-built fiberglas body, and, after initially showing it with steelies all around in late 1959, it became the first T-bucket with brake-less spindle mount wire wheels in mid-1960. Ed was light years ahead everyone else except maybe Norm Grabowski and Tommy Ivo in radical T-bucket thinking. By the mid-1960’s, with the advent of Cal Automotive’s cheap and available ‘glas ‘23 Ford roadster, T-buckets were all the rage and many of them were sporting Ed’s spindle mount idea. It’s those mid-60’s T-buckets that are my target with this project. I’m using the chassis and drive train of the Outlaw because there’s a beautifully detailed Cadillac V8 with some great side pipes and lots of show-worthy chrome parts. The only change I’ve made is to ditch the air-bag front suspension for a traditional suicide mount using a tubular dropped axle from a Revel ’32 Ford. The only change to the motor will be to go with six Stromberg 97’s instead of the kit’s 4. The fat slicks and mags at the back are from my parts box and of unknown origin. The major challenge will be scratch building a show-worthy interior and executing a proper show-car paint scheme. Below is the first rough mockup held together with white glue and masking tape, to make sure the stance and overall look are OK. The Parts Pack pickup bed was shortened 7 scale inches to get that raked Norm Grabowski vibe happening. Thanx for lookin’, B.

Keeping it nice and nice and simple makes it simply nice... real nice!

Thanks everyone! Such a simple project and so much filling and sanding. But I knew that when I started. I’ve set myself the goal of making as good a model as my skills and self-discipline will allow while using basically only the materials that came in the resin kit, only allowing myself to add detail where it’s appropriate using common modeling materials. The actual model is somewhat inaccurate. The basic shape and stance are pretty good but, as I mentioned above, the grill opening and detail are incorrect. I suspect they were lifted from a 3500 GT and molded into the basic shape. The true A6GCS Fantuzzi barchetta grill opening is more simple, larger and lacks the raised rim and cast trident included in this model. But this grill looks nice, and correcting it would be an epic undertaking and far beyond the scope of this project. Using the kit pieces means making the wheels and tires looking realistic. The actual wheel casting is fairly nice and 3-dimensional so I decided to try painting the whole assembly flat black, then masking the rubber tire area and detailing the wheels by dry brushing the spokes with Testors Aluminum Plate metalizer and picking out the rim edge and knockoff hubcap in Molotow chrome. It came out surprisingly well to my eyes. It was either that or spend $60+ for a set of FPP Modelo wires. As I said – beyond the scope of this project. The outer surface of the resin plug was fairly smooth and the contours even and continuous in most areas. But there were numerous pinholes to attend to and once I began applying primer coats any irregularities became all too obvious. Also, most Fantuzzi barchettas had a panel behind the seats hiding the fuel tank. I fabricated a panel from sheet styrene and molded it in place. All photos of these cars from the 1950s that I found are of pure race cars with no upholstery other than the seats, and with open, uncovered door and fender surfaces inside the cockpit. This model, on the other hand, comes with a quilted covering for the kick panels and the transmission cover. This was a common adaptation during the era to make race cars more usable for the street, providing some sort of sound and heat insulation. Perhaps the source car for the model had this but I have never seen pictures from the era with it. Even modern restorations tend to be as race cars with stripped out interiors. On the other hand I’ve seen plenty of 50’s era photos of these A6GCS barchettas with rudimentary mufflers added, whereas the model has open pipes. So this little kit is full of contradictions… Once again, the spirit of this project is to work with I have been give so I made inner door panels to go with the quilted insulation in the correct style for this sort of car. Lastly the kit omits any way to mount the correct and nicely formed windscreen that is included. So I fashioned a windshield base from soft wire and epoxied it to the cowl. The silver paint you see will be the color of the visible interior surfaces. The exterior color will be Tamiya TS-8 Italian Red. I painted the exterior the same Duplicolor Silver Metallic lacquer because it makes an excellent guide coat to show any irregularities remaining to be taken care of. The upholstery is LifeColor Matt Raw Siena acrylic. Thanx for lookin’. B.

Your got that right! If it's it's fast, stripped down and fit for purpose I'm interested! That must be one fast little street roadster you've got there. The aluminum GM/Rover V8 is ideal for this sort of recreation.

I just posted on Andrew's thread. I don't think mine is a knockoff, strictly speaking. The grill is entirely different, and incorrect in the final analysis, far too much like the mid-late 50's road cars and too small. Andrew's has a flange for the windscreen which looks like its cast in place. Mine may have come with a correctly sized and shaped windscreen, but there's no flange to mount it with. As I mentioned on Andrew's thread, my approach to this will be to stick closely to what I have been offered in the kit, even down to the cast wire wheels/tires, and see how nice a model my skills and self discipline will allow. The basic Fantuzzi design is so compelling that as long as the kit is somewhere in the ballpark there's at least a hope of an attractive result. As Andrew points out, we both have our work cut out for us, LOL...

You posted on the thread I just started on the same car, but far from the same casting, or approach to building it for that matter. When my kit popped up on eBay I wondered why the notion of an A6GCS/53 was so fresh and appealing in my mind. Now I realize that I had visited this thread when you first posted it in March. Do I understand correctly that it's your intention to build a chassis, motor, suspension, etc. My casting is far too thick to even consider such a thing. And mine came with no fancy photoetch. Is the flange for the windscreen on yours cast in place? Mine has none at all, even though it came with a correctly shaped windscreen. Overall I think yours may be somewhat more faitfhul to the early Fantuzzi race bodies. The grill, for example, is smaller and more 3500GT-esque on mine. Also I think yours captures the slightly nose high front end look caused by the large, open front wheel arches. On mine that's somewhat more subdued. Mine will be far less ambitious, trying to use as much of the original kit as possible, even the cast wire wheels/tires. I'm in the midst of clean up and determining what details to change or add. Overall my kit could have been far, far worse that it turned out to be. And you can't beat the subject...

I just “won” this on eBay and received it. My first scale “Etceterini” – a 1953 Maserati A6GCS Fantuzzi roadster, a 3 liter 6 cylinder road racing car from the dawn of post war racing. First produced in 1947 the A6 was Maserati’s first production road car with a twin-plug DOHC straight six designed by Gioacchino Colombo who had designed the Type 158 supercharged straight 8 1500cc Alfetta motor for Alfa Romeo before WWII and the legendary 2 liter V12 for Ferrari which often bears his name. The A6GCS/53 is iconic in sports car lore because it is one of the earliest and prettiest examples of the Italian style of curvaceous full-fendered sports-racing car bodies synonymous with high performance automobiles of the era. The body was created by Medardo Fantuzzi whose small Modenese shop’s handiwork graced most postwar Maserati race cars including the 450S and the Tipo 61 Birdcage, as well as such icons as the Ferrari Testa Rossa/59, the “shark nose” Ferrari Tipo 250 61 sports racing car and many custom and show cars for the smaller Italian sports car specialists such as De Tomaso, Abarth and OSCA. The Fantuzzi A6GCS/53 was the car that set the trend and I have always admired it for its purposeful simplicity and well-proportioned elegance for such a small car. The A6GCS/53 is commonly available as a die cast but I had rarely seen it in kit form, never mind in the 1/24th scale which I favor. This popped up on eBay and I suspect it was being sold by the maker of the kit although I can’t be certain. It’s an ultra-simple curbside with a heavy, thick resin body, a rudimentary chassis which screws to the body, simple but credible interior detail, and even came with a clear windshield cut in the correct shape. It will require a fair amount of detailing and clean up but it is very far from terrible and I’m delighted to have gotten it and plan to get on it ASAP. It has the potential build up very nicely indeed and I hope I can do it justice. Thanx for lookin’, B.

Wow, this sure goes back a ways! Thanks for the kind words a decade on. I should revisit this subject with the skills I've acquired since!

Thank you, Dan! I’ve been working on the decal, which, as was usually the case on this era of diggers, is very simple. Basically the name of the car. There will be trade decals, as well, but I’ll probably use stock decals from kit sheets unless I have some serious fit problems. My challenge right now is to find a service that will print decals for me from my art since I’ll need to do white and gold.. I recently taught myself the rudiments of vector graphics software and I can supply master art in any of the commonly used formats ( i.e Adobe Illustrator .ai file, Corel Draw .cdr files, or generic vector formats like .svg). In the meantime I’ve decided to change the cowl panel to a slightly wider and longer one. It won’t change the appearance of the car but the fit will be much better. This work should coincide with the arrival of 3D printed zoomies and, hopefully, a decal printing service. Below is a Photoshop mockup of the basic decal scheme laid into the earlier photos I posted. The yellow edges in the mockups will be gold. Once I get over the decal supplier hurdle there will be little to do except for final assembly. Thanx for lookin’, B.

Thanks Marcos! I got the basic paint scheme laid down. The base color is white done by applying three coats of Duplicolor Clear over Duplicolor white primer. Then the panel edge stripes were created by masking the white areas I wanted to show. Finally Testors Purple-Licious metallic purple was applied. The other item completed was the roll over hoop and brace which were made by bending some aluminum tubing to shape. The tubes will be polished with Simichrome. Right now there’s a fair amount of cleanup to be done on the paint scheme to straighten up the edges and deal with any minor paint overspray. Next up will be designing a the graphic text for the team/entrant and car names and having them printed. They will be white. I also apply various trade decals as appropriate. Then the whole thing will be clear coated and then it’ll be time for final assembly, adding the suspension and steering details, windscreen, front wing, proper zoomies, etc. Thanx for lookin’. B.

Thanks Guido. I got the motor and cockpit area assembled. The cockpit is straight out of the box from the AMT Ivo/Too Much kits with minor adjustments to account for the rear axle having been moved forward. A shortened tie rod will accommodate the radically shortened wheelbase. The motor is the Dodge 392 Hemi from the AMT Bantam Blast kit including the blower and the valve covers. The Enderle barn door injector is from the Revell Tony Nancy Double Dragster kit and the blower pulleys and drive belt are the Ivo/Too Much kit with the idler pulley bracket adapted from the Tony Nancy kit. The short zoomie exhausts are from the AMT Don Garlits Wynn’s Jammer and are temporarily installed for alignment purposes. They will be replaced by a more aggressive set of 3D printed zoomies I have on order from 3D Model Specialties on Shapeways (see inset of an earlier model I did using them). The body work has had the white base coat applied and, after curing, I’ll mask out the scallops and then apply the Testors Purplicious main color coat. This will be the subject of my next update. Thanx for lookin, B.

Thank you Mike. As we both know, despite their enormous significance in hot rod history, dragsters, especially front engine dragsters, are less appreciated these days than the competition cars that succeeded them, the "door slammer" muscle cars and super stocks, and the pure racing machines, the altered wheelbase and funny cars that evolved from them. But that doesn't prevent us from appreciating the shear grace and purity of these minimalist tube-frame exercises in mechanical efficiency, especially in the period before they grew unwieldy as they literally were stretched out to and beyond 200". In other disciplines these might be compared to an F104 or a Lotus 25 or a pre-CFD America's Cup craft.

While I build mostly hot rods, customs and straightline racers, I’ve gone since the end of 2019 without build a drag competition subject, instead building a couple of sporty cars, a Ferrari 250 LM and a Lotus Seven, in 2020. So this project is kind of going back to my roots. The inspiration was a chute pack rear body offered on eBay by Joe Curtis at Fremont Racing Specialties. My favorite length chassis front engine digger is on either side of 150 inches for the wheelbase. So, because Joe also offers a variety of different length dragster nose shells I ordered a short length to match. I’ll still need to remove a bit of it for it to fit. My idea is to build a fairly fancy full bodied fuel dragster of the sort seen at the various dragstrips around the L.A. and Orange County area in the mid-sixties – fast, loud with lots of chrome and polish and slick paint and lettering. I started with the late 60’s very long (210 inches) chassis found in the various AMT digger kits such as the Tommy Ivo FED, the Too Much, the Young American and the Garlits Wynnscharger. My usual approach to shortening it is to remove 2 bays just aft of the nose, resulting in about a 150” wheelbase depending on which front axle setup I choose. The Fremont chute pack body, however, is designed to fit the MPC Ramchargers legs-under (driver’s legs pass under the rear axle) chassis instead of the legs-over design of the AMT frame. To get the body to sit right I needed to relocate the rear axle forward of the vertical frame tube instead of behind it (yellow circle vs. red “v” in panel A of the composite photo below). The result is the 145” chassis I’ve got here. The motor is the 392 Hemi from the AMT Bantam Blast kit with an Enderle Injector from the Revell Tony Nancy Double Dragster kit which also offered up its front axle. The injector scoop is from Altered States Models. The whole project will be a sort of “greatest hits” of my favorite dragster parts. The photos below are a mockup held together with white glue. The bodywork is pretty far along although the cowl area stills need some massaging to fit right. The chassis, too, is well along, and the motor half built, so, except for the (I hope) fancy paint job and decals, this project should move pretty quickly. Thanx for lookin’, B.

Thanks Claude. What cars/classes did you enter?

Entries continue apace with only one week to go! Too many to count accurately for these tired eyes, but there are clearly several hundred, closing in on the standard shown by the physical show. And as I suspected, it looks to be nationwide, if not worldwide, in scope. I encourage you to join in on the fun! I'm not sure if it it's relevant, but I was the OP on this thread.

The first months of the new year means NNL West for me, the one car model show I'm sure to attend each year. Even though I live in Seattle, Washington and have to fly down to central California to do it, I've been going since 2008. Last year we got in a real live show just before the Covid19 shutdowns. But this year we're just battling through what we all hope will be the end of this thing and NNL West 2021 had been canceled. Until a few days ago... Roy Sorensen, one of the chief organizers of NNL West each year, in conjunction with Fine Scale Modeler magazine, has put together a virtual NNL to replace the cancelled in-person version. There's no entry fee and you can enter as many models as you like, with a 3 photo maximum per entry. There are 7 adult categories plus an under-12 junior modelers class. The deadline for entries is March 31st, 2021. Voting for the traditional People's Choice award runs from April 1st until April 7th, 2021. Here's the link to the announcement: https://www.nnlwest.org/index.html The link on the page takes you to more details about awards and prizes, etc. To enter you must register which happens as part of uploading you first photo. Is anyone here participating? NNL West as a live event has a reputation as the USA's largest model car show, with over 1,000 cars in most years. With it being virtual this year, modelers from around the world can enter online, leading to the possibility of this number being eclipsed. So far, with entries open since the first of the month, it looks like there are already over 350 cars on view.

Thanks Alan. The decals were high risk and only done because I still don't airbrush, which would be a far better way to do it. But I do like the overall look that I got. And, as always, your thoughts are very much appreciated.

Beautiful craftsmanship on your project. I did a '29 based on the 555 car a few years ago and researching it gave me a real appreciation for the workmanship and detail that went into cars like the Triple Nickle and the two versions of the Tony Nancy car. Capturing that aspect is one of the great challenges of doing these things in scale. I think you'll pull it off. Build on!