Farmboy

This is purported to be the one and only factory Ford Mustang built for Ford in Italy as a test shot when Ford was deciding on different designs for the new pony car in '65. Note the sloped roof, relocated gas door and trunk extension. It appears they removed the rear window piece and simply moved it back leaving the rear quarter windows and B pillar with minimal modifications. I had actually made rear quarter side windows for my build but decided it cluttered up the look and removed them.

looking at length, well...it is a station wagon after all. I did quite a bit of research on real life mustang/wagon conversions and they all suffered from the same thing. They all looked like Pinto wagons. They all looked like they had a wagon piece forcefully added to them. I noticed also the roofline of almost all these vehicles followed a downward curve toward the tail, and almost all had a smooth roof from front to back. The finished product looked....uncomfortable. These are my personal observations incidentally. Here's a look at the overhang. I thought of shortening the roof and side windows but that would defeat the point of a station wagon. I also thought of moving the whole issue forward but then the side pillars would be past the door frame. What I did was cut the rear off the mustang immediately behind the wheel well. This was the most likely spot as it had straight edges top and bottom, no curve to worry about. I then set the roof in position where I wanted it and marked the with on a piece of sheet styrene..and voila.. Note the angle cut in the roof. more on that later. The roof is overlaid on the mustang roof, note that the mustang roof has a downward slope I don't want. This explains the angled cut as I had left the mustang roof too long under the wagon roof causing the front part to bend down. Cutting it to just over 1/8th of an inch or so solved the problem. I wanted a 'big' look to the car so instead of making a long flat roof, I went for the two level VistaCruiser look minus the windows up top. I think the look works. This is how I got the double step. There is a raised section on the wagon roof. Instead of cutting straight across as seen here and trying to hide the seam, I hid the join in plain sight with a piece of tape following the angled raised section. That gave me the roof top, a narrow step down, and the mustang roof beneath that. lots of work to do yet. more to come

there were 3 factors to consider in the graft. I can only imagine how tuff this would be to do in metal. Firstly, there's the width, secondly the length, and lastly, where and how to join to the mustang roof. Here's what I did: The actual width of the wagon roof was, for my purposes, basically spot on! The bugger was the splay or spread of the window frames, This made it necessary to remove a section from the rear and gently massage the pillars in to a narrower, more vertical stance that would agree with the hips and rear end of the 'stang. I started by sawing the bottom of the frame and snipping away a little at a time. No measurements, just trial and fit over and over till I got it right. If you look at the bottom left, you can see the stress is turning the plastic white. This was the most radical point of bending as it had to remain horizontal after getting the side pieces to line up. I ended sawing a small 45 degree notch on the inside to ease things a bit and filling it later. \

Nice stuff!

and this is where I cut the mustang... more to come.

...and this is where I cut it.

the first thing that need doing is figuring out the back end for the station wagon. This is where a decision had to be made. Keep the origianll "B" pillar slant from the mustang, or go with the angle from the chev? Went with the chev.

I've had these two models for a while. Neither one is a great build by itself (my actual 1:1 first car was the '66. I towed it home in 1977. Anyway, I felt no remorse cannibalizing either kit so here we go...

Thanx guys. yes, I shall return. Dan, we moved away from NB 40 years ago to NS, moving back.

This is one of those 'life gets in the way' moments. We're moving. It's a big move so the project gets packed away with the other packed boxes that say 'shop stuff'. Sorry couldn't complete it right away. It may take a while but I will be back with the continuing build or the under glass version. Sorry to anyone following the build. Oh well.....

Thanx guys. A bit delayed at the moment but the build isn't forgotten.

Still in primer awaiting minor touchup and finish sanding but for all intents and purposes, finished. One nose....nosed. Comments and observations welcome

Clean build! Nice job all 'round! I have one to start pretty soon but with the sand interior. Hope it comes out as clean as yours.

onto the nose.... Quite a bit of changing and adjusting since the last pic of the section removed from the nose. It's been widened a bit in this shot... ...and after a quick primer coat to better see the lines, it wasn't wide enough for me ...so I widened it a bit more, readjusted the hood line and now it's more like I envisioned. lots of sanding, sweetening up the bottom piece, and more sanding and forming to do. Comments and observations welcome.

Hiya Tom! Good observations to be sure, thanx! Moving the wheel wells rearward got scuttled with my lack of planning and foresight and I had indeed planned to lengthen the frame but there's no room. The rear deck is certainly larger than I had envisioned in the beginning but thankfully it is symmetrical. I most certainly didn't want a fastback, in fact the rear deck/inner fenders came from a fleetline junk body! The bottoms of the fenders will be curved and wheel skirts added to add even more mass and I'm nosing the hood at the moment to fatten up the front end. To boldly go...

While the back is going thru a final shaping and finishing sanding, thought it would be a good time to start nosing the beast. I've not done this before so here goes. After a bit of thought, I marked out the section I think will give max impact with minimal work. .....and after playing with construction paper, I cut a shape that will sort of fit in the opening it's important to note here that the vertical piece is not as high as the top of the hood as there is another piece that will be glued to it to form the top and then faired in. Here's the no lookin' back stage. The hole, the vertical filler. Note that the whole operation is to get the front of the nose vertical while maintaining the original body line of the hood.. more to come. Comments and observations welcome.

Beautiful coupe. I thought of lengthening the body when thinking of the project but I like the look of the boat tail speedster, a reason why I wanted to move the wheel wells back but keep the identity of the car. Maybe the next one? Thanx for the input and kind words guys.

Here's the rear end with it's first coat of primer. Lots of shaping to do yet. I've put black marker spots and squiggles where extra filing is needed to bring things in to shape. Lots to go yet but it's a start. I'll be waiting a few hours before I continue. The primer is dry to the touch but not cured and would just gum up my files to start working now. You needn't ask how I know that. Again, autofocus is not my friend. Comments and observations welcome.

Rusty, looks like we're kind of kindred spirits on the rear fenders. I'm planning the same type of profile only adding a little mass, just enough to give it a slight curve almost mirroring the top fender line. The bottom arc would follow the angle from the front bottom of the fender and be carried by the fender skirts to fade in to the rear of the fender. Back in a few days.

Darn, ran in to a problem-ish. Due to the slope on the 'fall' of the trunk, there's no room to move the wheel wells back. Oh well, not line anyone would have noticed.... here's a few shots of the mockup. The boat tail trunk is committed. Glued on rather well, just a matter of making it look like it belongs there.... The mockup... it's on my bench sorry 'bout that, I was fussin' with it and decided not to move it for the shots. Fender skirts will be made and installed, and the rear fender assembly will be rounded on the bottom side to match the top....sort of. IComments and observations welcome

Here it's just about ready for some finish sanding on the joint and you can see that the side piece is being taken down gradually to match the curve in the rear of the car. A paper profile will be held against this so there is a line to work up to. The difficulty will be adjusting the profile just right so the whole rear section has a correct slant to it. The side begins where the white piece stops. Comments and observations welcome.

Oh my, summertime and motorcycles...what's a guy to do? Anyway, continuing on with the boat tail, here are a couple of views of where I've glued the styrene sheet to the modified hood. I used CA (crazy glue) to anchor it, then used good old Testors tube glue to firm up the bond between the two pieces. No attempt has been made to shape it to the body but If you look close you can see the pencil marks for future roughing in of the curve. The 'hoop' piece you see at the nose section is a half-round piece of styrene rod to reinforce the joint. A smaller piece will be joining the forward nose section. None of this will be seen so structure takes priority. Note the reinforcement piece of the hood/tulip panel. Comments and observations welcome

Quite a bit of sanding and tweaking to go but it looks right. I have yet to make the sides for the top of the trunk. . I'll do that in construction paper and copy the pattern to plastic sheet. It'll save lots of sanding and fitting. There's room too if I decide to move the rear fender well openings back a bit.

That's some creative stuff Rusty, thanx for the ideas! Don't know if 'd have the skills to pull that off! Again, thanx everybody for the kind words! I'll post when I have something new to share.