sjordan2

A note of interest to any car buff– GM designer Chuck Jordan (no relation) has passed away at 83; this is from The New York Times: "Mr. Jordan was the third successor to Mr. (Harley) Earl as G.M.’s vice president of design, and his boldness echoed Mr. Earl’s. When Mr. Jordan took tailfins to their surreal peak with his 1959 Cadillac Eldorado, he said he was “letting a tiger out of the cage.†The products of his designs included tractors and pickup trucks, Corvettes and Opels, and he contributed to the “wide-track†Pontiac, the baby boomers’ cherished muscle cars. His Aerotrain, G.M.’s 1950s train of the future, elicited wows from design buffs, but did not work well. Mr. Jordan’s classic designs included the 1963 Buick Riviera, the 1967 Cadillac Eldorado and the 1973 Chevrolet Monte Carlo. His vision was as streamlined as the jet aircraft that inspired it: longer, lower, wider — and intended to excite." http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/14/business/14jordan.html?_r=1&ref=obituaries

Here's an in-depth look at what it's all about: http://www.engineeringtv.com/video/Rapid-Prototyping

Tuesday, Tuesday. Tuesday Morning gave me no warning of what was to be... You can never tell what they'll have.

John, I am constantly amazed at the variety of work you do, and the skill with which you do it.

So...maybe we're at the point where we just need to see what the kit is like off the shelf, and what our colleagues do with it. I might add that I wasn't at all interested in the subject of this kit early on, but I'm going to get one, at least just to check it out.

What you said. And, Dave, I certainly understand your frustration over new observations at this stage of the production process after everything you've posted so far. My comments were based on the recent postings of 1:1 photos, and in no way have I meant to slam anything you guys are doing. As I said before, this is going to be an awesome kit and I can't wait to see the first builds.

Dave Z and some others have made a lot of excellent points here; there has probably never been another kit developed where builders have had so much opportunity to provide input to the manufacturers. In larger scale, TDR is another of the enlightened folks.

I think this is going to be an awesome kit. I have a couple of very teeny quibbles about what I see regarding the contour of the rear, the slope of the side chrome toward the rear, and the main center bar in the grille looks a bit off to me, but as I said, I could be wrong. Fix those windows and I don't see any errors that couldn't be easily dealt with. The thing about the windows is, if they were too rounded, that could be easily sanded. It's harder, though, to add material to make them look right. I would further add that the side chrome strips, while they may be totally accurate, might be a bit fat since it's going to take some BMF or paint build-up to deal with them, which will increase their mass. Just one of those things where there's a difference between kit development and 1:1 reality.

Yeah, after I saw those I felt it confirmed my opinion of the windows. I would add that I wish the windshield visor (which I would use anyway) could be a separate part.

A lot of good comparisons between the model and the 1:1 here. However, while I think many of the issues raised here could wait until the final kit is on the shelves to see if there's a problem, there's no question that almost all of the glass surrounds in the kit are too squared-off in the corners and should be more rounded (the backlight looks better than the rest) – and that's not a camera-related illusion. It's clearly something that needs to be addressed. After all, the styling on this car is all about "smooth and rounded," and the windows don't fit in with that.

You could start with the Danbury Mint 1/24 diecast, usually available on eBay. .

I looked up the 1:1 and saw a build journal on it. If you add half the detail I see at that site (love the gearshift mount with fittings that look like hand grenade pins), my hat is off to you. This is really a very cool car.

This is looking terrific. I admire your approach to the plaid interior and your taillight technique is spot on. A very intelligent build.

This is a WAAYYY old thread. Is there any recent progress? A while back, I posted a thread about my frustration with works in progress that vanish into thin air and I got roundly slammed for it. This sort of stuff is really irritating after you get into following a build. It doesn't matter how long the WIP thread goes, as long as there's progress. I love build journals and the opportunity for give-and-take, and exchange of information. But there are a lot of WIP threads here that go nowhere. Here's one that works and has gone on forever, but it's continually updated and loaded with information: http://www.scalemotorcars.com/forum/large-scale-cars/6477-1-8-gt40-mk1-ford-scratchbuilt-why-not.html

Well, that's amazingly amazing. I know you do cars, but which of them would show this same amount of detail?

Brush or spray, I would always paint the separate parts individually before assembling to look more like the real thing. For example, my Mercedes SS needs an aluminum engine block, which will look more real when sprayed by itself. The cylinder head needs to be low-gloss red. The valve cover needs to be shiny aluminum. It's hard to do all that and stay within the lines to look realistic. The key to a realistic-looking engine is to use as many different colors and different finishes as the 1:1 version. The more variation, the more realistic it looks.

*Sigh...* My nostalgia glands are on overload.

Daisy Duke, 2010

Seems to me that most car movies are only appreciated by car nuts. Because of the cars, and beside the often-cited classics like Gone in 60 Seconds, American Graffiti, Two-Lane Blacktop, Vanishing Point, The Italian Job, Bond movies, etc,. I like not very good movies such as: Grand Prix (I saw this first-run in 1966 on a giant, curved Cinerama screen (the precursor to iMax) with multi-channel surround sound, and it's hard to describe what it was like when seen that way. The Racers (Kirk Douglas,1955) Le Mans There's a very good classic French film that car guys overlook: "A Man and a Woman," a romance about a test driver and a movie script girl with featured roles by a Mustang convertible and a GT40. For vintage enthusiasts, there's "The Yellow Rolls-Royce." On a whole different level of man & truck vs. the elements, there's nothing like "The Wages of Fear," remade as "The Sorcerer" with Roy Scheider. Of course, among truck movies, "Duel" with Dennis Weaver, though made for TV, is a true classic. Don't even mention movies like "Convoy." But that's all just the tip of the iceberg.

I don't think the word "movie" applies here. The proper word would probably be censored.

That makes the intentionally cheesy trailers in "Grindhouse" look like "Lawrence of Arabia." And I thought Ed Wood was dead.

I'm about your age and have collected several kits along the way, many of them multiples of the same kit. I've realized I'm never going to attempt them all, and while I have no problems now, there's no telling how well my eyes and hands will function in the years ahead. The clock's ticking. Having downsized my living quarters from a large house to a mid-size apartment, over half of them are in expensive storage since I don't have room for them all. I may even have to downsize further in the future. I've decided that I need to unload quite a few of them, just down to the ones I'm really interested in. I can always get more as time goes on. So I've already bought all the kits that appeal to me now. Next stop: sell off the excess on eBay. (This is a legacy my family shouldn't have to deal with down the road.)

For better pictures, just back off further. Then crop into the pictures tighter before you post.

I have no interest in fanning any flames, but it just takes a few seconds to proofread a post and make your message easy to read. It has nothing to do with whether or not you have anything better to do.

What youse said.