alan barton

That made me smile - what a stunningly beautiful Forty! Cheers Alan

Beautiful - I wouldn't change a thing! Cheers Alan

The HK Ute was a fibreglass body by Jaymar Models The XC Falcon, EK Holden, HQ one tonner and VC Valiant are by Tony Ashton of AAA Resin models but he has retired recently and sold all his stock. You may be able to get some of these bodies (sorry, I am not sure what he has) from Stewie at Dinki-Di Resin Models. This is a small business in Western Australia. Cheers Alan

So crisp! I love everything about this one - nice build! Cheers Alan

Thank you Zack! Unfortunately I am a long way off finishing the second five cars - a lot of interruptions to life lately, plus my dear friend Jerry passed away earlier this year so I now have to source a new supplier of decals. But it will happen! Cheers Alan Sorry, mate, I have friends in Gippsland but have never raced there - I live in W.A. and forty plus years ago I drove in two mechanic's races - one in Paraburdoo, one in Tom Price in the Pilbara region of WA. That is my entire speedway racing history! Cheers Alan

Well done, Michelle, but being a West Aussie, I was hoping to see your West Australian number plates! By the way, you didn't hear it from me but "Vegemite"is Australian for "poison"! Cheers Alan

I can only repeat what everyone else said, but in addition that would have to be the best build I have ever seen of an AMT 34. Drag City Casting look like they do a very nice chop. Simply a beautiful model! Cheers Alan

Neat job, Michelle. It is impressive how well you captured the feel of a Falcon by converting a Torino - not everyone does this as successfully as you did! Cheers Alan

Thanks everyone, it means a lot that so many of you "got" what I set out to achieve. Very gratifying and humbling at the same time. Cheers Alan

Thanks Steve, you unwittingly played a very important part in the completion of this display by so generously sending me the 32 Tudor body for the blue show rod a few years ago. Couldn't have done it without you! I'm glad you like the custom touches. There are a few compromises in the display - the double dragster and the 36 Ford are obviously not the versions shown on the advert - I have them underway but they were not finished in time for the show and I really wanted to debut this in the anniversary year! The body interior and frame of the 49 coupe came in a job lot so I have no idea who built it - I used a 50 grille to hide some glue damage on the lower front fenders. Although the models are all owned by me, several were built by other modellers. The 53 F100 was built by Gary Ritchie (RIP) and the teal Model A roadster was built by Les Hardaker (RIP) of Sydney. The Willys coupe , a genuine survivor, was built by fellow Perth and Districts model club member Ian Catchpole and the 58 Chevy was built by Mark Butt. I purchased the Car Craft Dream Rod in Drumheller, Alberta in 1996 so I would hazard a guess that a Canadian modeller built that one, also a genuine survivor. The 32 Vicky was built by Roger Kelly and restored by me. The purple 57 Fairlane was built by Tony Somers - my version of the 57 is built as a dirt tracker and Tony's version ( which he gave to me when he had to move across Australia and couldn't take them all with him) suited the display much better. The black Model A Tudor was built by my brother Robert in the mid seventies - I recently restored it with a fresh paint-job but used every original part that he used fifty years ago. I enjoyed including the models of my friends in the display, especially those of Les and Gary who I miss dearly. Cheers Alan

Thanks guys, I really appreciate your kind comments. Always nice to finish a long term project and one with a few childhood memories to boot! Cheers Alan

Back in my teenage years I bought an MPC 1969 Pontiac Bonneville convertible kit and immediately built the ute version. Americans might prefer El Ponchamino! It was a favourite model of mine and I usually had a trailer behind it, built of popsticks, with a racecar of some sort. Unfortunately sometimes, I kept wanting to "improve" my models but my ambition often outstripped my ability. Sadly the Pontiac succumbed to the knife and never recovered! When Model King re-issued the 1970 Bonneville convertible, still with the ute option, I had to have one. Only problem was, I reckon a 1970 Bonny front end is as ugly as a hat full of armpits. Digging deep in the parts box, I discovered the original 69 hood with a coat of red enamel and a bit of glue damage, the original custom grille housings, slightly abbreviated and an original set of 69 GTO custom grille inserts. With these parts I was perfectly happy to surgically remove the ugly schnoz and get started on a cool custom. I wasn't taking many photos when I started building this model but last year I got back into it after a long stall and it came together pretty well. The most challenging aspect was reconstructing the trademark Pontiac beak, I made up some profiles from flat styrene then applied considerable quantities of auto body filler (or bog as we say in Australia) and sanded for nights on end til I had what I was after. A bit like the Monkeemobile but less severe! The rear was a bit easier. I used the back of an X-Acto blade to separate the bumper from the full width taillight housing. I then glued the bumper solidly to the rear of the car and moulded it in to create a custom rollpan. It took a bit of finessing but I am happy with the results. I also painted the centre trim of the taillight area first in silver then clear red to give the impression of a full width taillight. The pickup bed was separated from the interior so that it was easier to do the bodywork around the pickup conversion. IT also made it easier to paint and detail the interior. If you build one of these utes, I suggest you ignore the guidelines that MPC engraved in the body and cut slightly inside those lines. I followed the lines and found I had some filling to do as they created an oversize hole for the tray to fit into. I like to convert all my models to right hand drive and fortunately I still had the very battered remains of my original 69 dash. This provided me with enough extra material to reverse the 70 dash and get it fitting snugly. Final paint is Duplicolour silver base coat, followed by some metallic green in masked off panels on the hood and lower side panels. I then sprayed the entire car with Tamiya clear green followed by Tamiya LAme Flake which is basically clear carrying a lot of ultrafine rainbow flake. It was perfect for the car. The interior is painted in Testors Afrika Mustard. In the tray I built a simple frame from Evergreen to support the Westcraft boat from the AMT 64 El Camino. I bought this very expensive kit at a Toledo Toy Fair only to find when I arrived home that someone had neatly removed all the chrome parts, including the engine for the boat. Buyer beware I suppose but I suspect the vendor knew it was missing! I substituted a new engine using the diecast unit from a Hot Wheels toy called Hyper Mite. It was such a perfect fit that a quick swipe with a file along the back edge had it drop snugly in place - to this day I haven't applied glue to hold it in! The other missing parts were replaced with items from my parts box. Out the back we have, not the Hullraiser boat included with the Bonneville, but an original AMT Raysom Craft drag boat. It is almost stock except that I used the 427 SOHC out of the Hullraiser instead of the 427 FE out of the Raysom. The pinstriping on the deck is done with fingernail art tape. It was nice to have another crack at an old favourite from my childhood. I feel I owe a vote of thanks to Dave Burkett for getting the whole vintage re-issue thing happening way back when. Cheers Alan

Wow, that captures the look of an Electric Blue XY GT perfectly! I continue to be amazed by just how many of these are getting built, and quickly. Us Aussie modellers have waited for over sixty years to get models of our home- grown cars. We have been saying for years that if only someone would make Australian cars we would buy them and now the prediction is coming true! DDA is to be congratulated on their production of these kits. Hopefully they will continue to bring out new and interesting models and they will improve their proportions just a little bit and we will buy them by the case! Cheers Alan

Wow, that's a fantastic response from everyone! I'm so glad it made so many people's day! I guess we all long for our childhood sometimes. Probably the best bang-for-the-buck display I have ever done. It almost seems a shame that it only got one showing as we only have one NNL a year and our IPMS style model comp in two weeks time probably isn't the right venue for this display. - a lot of the guys show little interest unless the model is capable of shooting something! Still, I might just store the board and the signs carefully in case I can put it out at our hot rod show next year. I have started thinking about doing a similar display using Monogram models - they had a poster once with rows of four cars on a lot in front of a dealership. I would have to compromise on that one by just using early Monogram models in general as I don't have a lot of the classic Duesenbergs and the like, nor do I have the multiples displayed of some models. But after the response to this one, I might toss some ideas around! Cheers Alan

I debated whether to put this post in General, Model Cars Under Glass or Dioramas. If I have missed by miles, moderators, please feel free to move it to the appropriate place. As a teenage kid I use to pore over this advertisement, yes, this very piece of sixty year old paper shown framed here, and dream of one day owning every model on this page. Funny thing was, I never really set out on a mission to find them all but as I appreciate all the makes and models illustrated,it stood to reason that I would eventually acquire a lot of them. Back in 2002 I attended the Adelaide NNL in South Australia. I was over the moon to purchase a mildly glue bombed Rayson Craft Drag Boar, a model I had wanted since I was very young. On arrival home, I casually looked at the framed ad that I had kept on my build room wall all these years when it suddenly occurred to me that this was the last one!!! I had inadvertently achieved my childhood dream! This weekend just gone we held the twenty-fifth annual Perth NNL, now known as Model Car Spectacular. It occurred to me that this advertisement was now sixty years old and that AMT itself had been producing plastic models for 75 years (they produced aluminium models in 1948, switching to plastic the next year.) Maybe I should re-create this page in 3-D as a special tribute at our NNL? Some of the models are survivors from the early sixties while others have been built over the decades with the Silhouette trailer and the 49 Tudor only being finished last week. In all there are twenty nine models in the advertisement and they were all represented in the display. My wife and I took less than a day to produce the display board, covering a sheet of 10mm MDF with about $4 worth of orange fabric and some computer generated labels and signs. I will be the first to admit that my wife's fabric skills and her precision in everything she does elevated the display to a much higher standard than I could have hoped for. The response all day Saturday (setup) and Sunday (public admission) was very satisfying. I don't know if it has ever been done before but I can say I have realised my childhood dream and couldn't be happier with how it all turned out. Hope you like it! Cheers Alan

I like it a lot. The interior is fantastic. The whole model has a very contemporary feel which was obviously your focus. Seems like hot rodding model styles have been very fixated on fifties retro builds lately when there are so many styles of hot rods that deserve their place in the sun. The Tim Boyd tribute Model A pickups being a perfect example. One minor point of unsolicited advice, I have been using the Tamiya Gray panel line wash lately - it's not as stark as the black, especially on a light colour. I have also had success with spraying the colour over the highlighted panel lines so that you get a shadow effect rather than an outline. I love your use of Tamiya Racing White - I have used it myself but not on a hot rod - yet! Cheers Alan

Wouldn't change a thing! Excellent recipe of parts to produce this look. Cheers Alan

What a great set! I have 3 of the 5 done ( Little Deuce, Little T and Little Tub) and have plans for the Little Drag. I will be using your Little Drag as a blueprint. And yes, your models are currently on the Sunday Models page of the H.A.M.B. A member there regularly posts photos copied from this site onto that site. Unfortunately he never acknowledges the builder of the model! Some people have taken him to task on this issue but he does not respond. A weird way of doing things to my mind. Cheers Alan

I must have missed this one first time around but like everyone else, I am very impressed with your bare metal finish. Just to back up how authentic it is, here is a local West Aussie car owned and built by Marcel Berkhout from a Brookville body. The car has been on the road for about eight years now and still looks like this. It is a real hot rod having been driven all over Australia, and without a roof! Sadly, local licensing laws force us to run cycle fenders so we just have to put up with that abomination. I'll tell him to add a Moon tank next time I see him! Cheers Alan

That's a very clean box stock build - love the colour! Cheers Alan

Wow, that thing is dripping wet! The changes you made to the roof very much remind me of the 1937 Ford Club Coupe. The proportions are great, difficult to achieve when you cut a 40 Coupe! Cheers Alan

My, my, my, how sweet it is! Your efforts certainly paid dividends. I took the chicken's way out by totally customising the front of mine but I have a woodie planned so I will be revisiting this thread to get that one corrected. Thanks for sharing this with us! Cheers Alan

If Monogram's iconic Little Deuce kit was a coupe instead of a roadster, this would have been the box art! Beautiful build, Ken, it has given me some good ideas. Cheers Alan

An amazing build, Claude, but it's hard to look past that stunning paint job! Those Torinos have a strong family resemblance to our XA Falcon Hardtops from 1972 so if we get one of these in styrene eventually, I could see using this as a blueprint! Cheers Alan

Gee, I hope none of my stash is a 2008 issue! Thanks for the heads-up on the oily plastic. The whitewalls work for the mid to late 50's vibe, straight out of the movie "Hot Rod Girl"! Cheers Alan