sjordan2

I have just learned from Paddy Swire, Martin's wife, that he passed away on March 3rd. Many of you may know him by the screen name, "CRASHER." He was a nice man, one of my e-mail pen pals, and I will miss him. I have no details on this as yet. For those of you who are not familiar with Martin's work, he was particularly interested in fine detailing of 1/16 kits, which you can find here: http://www.freewebs.com/martsmodels/ If I learn any more details, I will let you know, or if you find out details, please do the same.

Beautiful work. But that car's gonna get blasted sitting in the middle of the road like that.

www.tdrcatalog.com

Just one minor cue makes me guess it's a large-scale model.

I think it's a shame that there aren't any good large-scale kits of two of the most iconic cars of all time, the Mercedes 300 SL Gullwing and the Ferrari 275 GTB, which are slowly but surely heading toward the million-dollar mark at auction. Both would be stunning in 1/8 scale. The 1/12 versions originally tooled by Renwal and later sold by Revell are laughably inaccurate, incomplete and out of proportion. The best out there for the 300 SL are the 1/16 Gullwing and Roadster, but even those are lacking in several areas, though it's possible to combine parts from both kits to make either one much better.

Great job all around, and it's especially nice to see a realistic finish of the era that isn't overly glossy.

That's really interesting, since most of the posts I've read on this subject suggest acrylics for whitewalls and dull coat for vinyl tires. If I wanted just to dull the sidewalls without decals or a base gloss coat, do you think Testor's dullcoat would work?

Having also had a 944, I'd say one 944 counts as two 928s. As my mechanic told me when I asked him about the then-current 928, "You buy one of those and I'll see it more than you will." My 944 was not without its own problems, but you could double them on the 928.

As I watch the French Open, it occurs to me that baseball could have an electronic strike zone, just as tennis has for line calls. Coaches could have a designated number of challenges, which they would use up when the replay proved them wrong. These measures are common in other professional sports.

I know where you got that. It's plagiarism.

Seeing what you did and didn't do makes it that much more impressive.

Very, very clean and a particularly nice job on the wheel well chrome trim. I'm always impressed when I see a car that's run-of-the-mill at actual size become a beautiful scale model. In the photos, the headlights look perfect – did you do anything special there?

Bill, I think you put the "Wow" in Wowk.

So what does "papa oom mow mow" mean?

You just saved me an expensive visit to a shrink. Or to an AA meeting.

Interesting about the relationship in timing between this and the Cord L29. The only thing I had to go on was the headlights, which look the same as the L29 but I knew it wasn't a Cord.

It probably has something to do with that. I've been having trouble recently with my log-in preferences not being saved, and haven't figured it out yet. Thanks.

Odd. This category disappeared on my screen a minute ago, now it's back. Go figure. Never mind.

As Harry said: "What Selig should do is institute instant replay, and go with something like football's "Coache's challenge" rule. And also crack down on umpires who call their own strike zones. The strike zone is clearly identified in the rules, and I don't see why umpires are allowed to bend the rules as far as balls and strikes. I'd like to see the electronic strike zone used for TV coverage, and also available if a player or coach wants to challenge a call. Give each team a certain number of challenges per game. That would get the umpires to call a consistent strike zone." Why on earth should baseball be the only major sport without replay challenge rules? That's ridiculous. And Gallaragos was robbed (so far) of a place in history because of it. A situation like this should clearly have a replay challenge opportunity, and it's ludicrous that it doesn't. I agree that questioning calls about the strike zone should have a limited number of challenges. Otherwise a baseball game could last a couple of days if every call were to be questioned (bye-bye, double-headers).

Agree. But if you look at the hood as a sign of glossiness, you're not looking at the sides as a reaction to TV production needs. For example, I was a student intern on the "Banyon" TV series, a 30s private eye drama made in 1972, and we had all kinds of 30s classics, from Packards to Bugattis, etc., and every one was subjected to dulling spray on ths sides to reduce reflections (and sometimes to hide the wiring of machine-gun bullet squib wiring). What a TV or movie car should be is a very subjective matter.

Yes, and that's the one I saw at Barris's showroom. However, the subsequent ones were no more than semi-gloss, probably to avoid reflections of the camera crew and lights. The best reference would be on YouTube or DVDs.

I, too, have seen the original TV Batmobile at George Barris's facility in L.A. (there were a few duplicates), and I agree with Bob that the actual trim color is more of a fluorescent red/orange than a true red. Further, the black body finish is slightly textured, covered with very fine metal particles that were electroplated to the body, and which are rough to the touch. (This means a little orange peel is OK). At most – regardless of what you may have seen in pictures of the car updated or replicas – the finish should be semi-gloss, or regular lacquer with no clear coat.

On a somewhat related note, I see that the Bond DB5 that debuted in "Goldfinger" will be auctioned in October; expecting about $5 million. This might stir up some added interest in Aston kits. http://money.cnn.com/video/news/2010/06/01/bond_car.cnnmoney/?source=cnn_bin&hpt=Sbin

I wish this was possible, but I'm in the same boat of having used up my available memory for direct posting of images, and I haven't opened a Photobucket or Fotki or whatever account. Just go to the photo guidelines links that are posted on this site. They're free.

Keep us posted. I'd like to know the results, since I could use the dry transfer type.