W-409

This started out in 2017 as a Monogram 1/32 scale Snap Tite kit. As far as I know, it's the only available plastic model kit of a G-Body Malibu, even though some resin kits do exist in 1/24 or 1/25 scale. The kit is really simple with low parts count, so I took the challenge of trying to make it presentable. These cars were sold new here in Finland, so I wanted to build something that could have rolled out from the dealer showroom in here, back in 1979. The kit builds up as a police car, so I had to fill mounting holes for the police lights on the roof and mounting hole for a spotlight on driver's door. After that the body was painted with automotive spray paints, polished and chrome trim was done with BMF. Grille, headlights and tail lights were molded to the body, so those had to be detailed with BMF and paint. Headlight lenses were separate, but all other lights had no clear lenses so they had to be painted on. Also the grille was really tricky to BMF smoothly. I ended up doing the wide horizontal bars with BMF and the grille mesh between them is chromed with Molotow and black washed. The kit also has zero chrome parts, so bumpers and side view mirror were "chromed" with Revell's Chrome Spray. Old Finnish register plates and GM mud flaps were drawn on computer and printed on paper. Interior is very simple, too. The kit comes with bucket seats and a center console, but I wanted a bench seat on mine. So I modified the buckets into a bench seat. Other modifications include removing all police equipment, adding scratchbuilt seat belts, column shifter, turn signal lever and a rear view mirror that was scaled down from 1/25 scale part, because the kit didn't have any of those parts. Other than that the interior is just detailed by paint. Chassis has everything molded to the chassis floor, only separate pieces are wheels and tires. I changed the kit's wheels and tires to resin parts from AirTrax, because I wanted to have regular steel wheels and Dog Dish hubcaps rather than the kit-supplied wide steel wheels with raised letter tires. Hubcaps are machined aluminum. Otherwise the chassis is just detail-painted carefully. Overall the kit was a lot of fun to build and I didn't have any major fit issues. With some extra detailing these kits do build up into a decent looking scale model. If you want to see the build thread, it's here: https://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/topic/127180-78-chevrolet-malibu-4d-sedan/ though it's mislabeled as a '78 Malibu even though it really is a 1979. I just couldn't figure out a way to edit the thread title.

I sanded mold lines and other flaws smooth from the bumpers and then I "chromed" them with Revell's Chrome Spray. Lots of positive comments were heard about that product and now I understand why. Incredible chrome effect straight from the spray can, and it's much more durable than Alclad. Not cheap, but worth it in my opinion. After that I did a bunch of small things, for example dry-brushing the Chevrolet and Malibu emblems with silver, adding period correct Finnish register plates and GM mud flaps to the back (because mud flaps were mandatory in Finland back in 1979) etc. Now the Malibu is finally finished! I will try to shoot some pictures of it tomorrow and post it in Under Glass.

I just went through this whole thread and I have to say that you're doing an incredible job with the fabrication on this '55. It's definitely going to be one of the better models built from this kit. Not saying that the kit is bad, but it needs a bunch of work. I built one of these as a Gasser a few years ago and had to modify a lot, but you are taking a few steps further and I like it.

I listen only to Rock 'n' Roll / Rockabilly music, so mine are a bit different from the most here in this thread.... Maybe one of the best guitar riffs is Crazy Cavan & The Rhythm Rockers' Rollin' Through The Night. Lyndon Needs on guitar. The best solo.... Hmm, another tricky one. This one is definitely on top of my list, Gene Vincent And His Blue Caps - Race With The Devil. From 1956, Cliff Gallup on guitar.

This turned out incredible! Really like seeing these a bit more unusual subjects being built, and this definitely fits in that category. It's hard to say anything that hasn't been said already, so I'll just say that I really like the way this one turned out. Very nice work.

Thanks! I think this is by far the best color for a G-Body Malibu. This is one of those cars that I'd like to own in 1:1 scale, a friend has a G-Body Camino and it rides so good that I'd definitely be happy to have one of these myself, too. Got bunch of work done over the weekend. First I took the kit supplied radio that had molded in microphones or whatever they are called in English. Instead of the kit's police car, I'm trying to replicate a normal daily driver, so those had to go. Looks like I forgot to take a picture of the finished part, but here is the completed dashboard. For the steering column, I added a shifter and turn signal lever, because the kit didn't have any. They are made out of metal wire and the knobs are just a small amount of white glue, painted gloss black. I thought the car needed seat belts for the front seat. Because all aftermarket seat belt materials that I had, were for 1/24 or 1/25 and therefore were too wide for this 1/32 scale kit, I had to make the seat belts from paper that I just painted flat black. Belt buckles are also paper, painted silver. At the same time, I glued wheels and tires on place. The top side of the chassis was painted gloss black so that there is no possibility of white plastic showing up through the wheelwells or anything like that. Next I glued windows to the body. They were a little warped so either windshield or rear window fit nicely while the other one didn't. I solved the problem by cutting both windows separate from each other, and now the windows fit "as good as possible". The kit didn't come with a rear view mirror, so I searched my parts box and found one. Of course it was too big for this 1/32 scale kit, so I reduced the size of the mirror by sanding it smaller and re-chroming it with Molotow. Then I glued the dashboard on place and interior was finished. The painting on dashboard and steering wheel looks kinda rough on this picture, but remember, it's a small scale so the dash is bigger on the screen than what it is in real life... Then the interior was glued to the body. Fitment was great. And last I glued the chassis also to the body. Now this thing is really close of being done, but I still have some small things to do. I was going to chrome the bumpers and side mirror today, until the mirror flew away from my tweezers and I didn't find it. Tomorrow I'll need to search the whole room to find it and then I can continue...

Thanks David! I appreciate the kind words! I've been trying to detail the molded in grille and lights by paint. I started on the front, the grill was really tricky to black wash cleanly because of the small scale of this model kit, but after carefully applying Tamiya's black Panel Line Accent Color a few times I think it's as good as it's going to get. Headlights were glued on place, front parking lights were painted with Tamiya acrylic white which I didn't mix up properly, to create a transparent coat of white paint to simulate parking light lenses. Not perfect, but better than if I just painted them white. Turn signal lenses were painted with Humbrol's clear orange. On the back, tail light lenses were painted with Tamiya's clear red and back up light lenses with Tamiya's white acryl. The area between the lenses and tail light bezels was supposed to be black so I painted that with Molotow's Blackliner.

Been busy and had very little time to work on anything besides 1:1 scale cars. But finally got some progress done on this thing. All chrome trim on the body was done with BMF. Window trims and drip rail moldings were easy, but those molded-in tail lights and especially front grille and headlight bezels/headlights were really tricky to do cleanly. Tail lights were done out of a single piece of BMF each, after some careful work I was able to stretch the BMF so that it covers the whole tail lights and doesn't have many wrinkles on it. For the grill I BMF'ed the thicker horizontal grille bars but between those the grille has some finer mesh, and there was no way BMF could be stretched well enough for the mesh so that I could black wash those areas later. After some thinking I ended up chroming the mesh-areas with Molotow. The end result is not flawless, but I think I can live with it. Obviously, the mesh still needs to be black washed, but that's not before the Molotow has dried properly. Molotow was also used for the headlight bezels, or to be more clear, for the headlight assemblies theirselves, the bezels are BMF. Next I'll need to black wash the grille, paint tail lights and side markers and do some dry-brushing to the "Malibu" emblems on the body.

I sent an order about bunch of parts maybe a month or so ago and have got no response at all. Well, maybe he's just busy, I'll try to re-send the order to get some of my projects going.

The trickiest parts would probably be the grill and some of the exterior emblems, especially the hood and trunk emblems as they are completely different on a '62. Some smaller differences are also in the interior, for example a gauge cluster and door panels, but those could probably be modified from existing kit parts with some extra work. The grill would be tricky to scratchbuild. Sure, someone can do it and actually I might try it in the future, too (because I have 1:1 scale '62 Chevy II in the garage), but I'd say it's too much work for most modelers. Nowadays 3D printing would be one option to create that part, but it would require someone with the skills of creating the part on computer AND a good quality 3D printer where the finsihed parts have zero "3D print texture" (because it would be nearly impossible to sand smooth between the grill bars). The chrome emblems on the body could be created by photo etching, but at least I don't have the computer skills to create the "master". And, as Moebius has done several race car versions of their kits, the '62 tooling would have potential for that as well. Don Nicholson won B/FX class in NHRA Winternationals 1962 with this '62 Chevy II Wagon, powered by a Fuel Injected 327 out of a Corvette.

These will be a must have, or at least the stock one! Now I just wish they'd do a '62 Chevy II or Nova, as it is the only year model that can't be built with parts that are easily available. See, '63 can be built out of AMT's reissued '63 Wagon or Trumpeter's Nova kits (not the easiest to find, but they are out there), '64 and '65 are easy to build with the current Moebius kits, but for 1962 the only choice is an AMT annual...

That turned out great! It shows that even though the kit is pretty simplified in many ways, it can be built into a very nice model with a few modifications here and there, and of course, a skilled builder, like here. Nicely done.

Thanks Carl and Scott!

Thanks for the kind words! They're appreciated. David, you're right that the molded in body parts are a downside in this kit, as well as the lack of chrome parts. But honestly I don't think it's that big deal. With some careful BMF work and a "chrome plating" for the bumpers I think they can look pretty good. I got the wheels and tires done. They are both AirTrax resin items, tires are painted flat black and clear coated with flat clear out of a spray can, wheels are Revell gloss black enamel. I wanted Dog Dish style hubcaps for this one, so I made them out of aluminum. Actually, I had done a few sets of those when I worked at a machining shop earlier.

Thanks! No hood scoop on this one, as I couldn't figure out a model that fits the look of the car. Maybe Mopar's Hemi scoop could have worked, but other than that I'm not so sure. Trevor, it has just a Ford 302 Small Block under the hood, backed up by a 6-speed manual transmission. It's hopped up some, but it's nothing that special really... But, it runs ok on the street. Hopefully this summer I can get nitrous installed on it so I could try to run a 12 second ET with it...

During the winter I did some updates to my Ford as the front fenders painted in wrong shade of green and the black hood were disturbing me the whole time. Fenders required pretty big rust repairs before paint, but now it looks a bit better. I also spent some time to make the fenders, bumper, headlight bezels etc fit properly on their places. I think it was worth it. Before: After:

Well, it's been a few years since I've worked on this project, but now that I got my '41 Plymouth done that had also been stalled for a long time (and several times) during the build process, I thought I'd finish something else that has been boxed away for a while. And this one came to my mind. In 2017 I clear coated the body so now that the clear coat was properly dry, it was time to polish it. I had sprayed a little lighter coat of clear than usual because I didn't want to lose all of the thin details on the body, so I had to be very careful not to polish through the clear. The 1/32 scale didn't help either, because all body panels are really small compared to the regular 1/24 or 1/25 that I'm used to. But, the end result came out pretty good.

This was an easy one. I doubt that I've seen one before, but when I saw the picture I immediately thought "Ok that has to be a Packard of somekind". And, after a couple of minutes in Google I found what it actually was.

I've seen some impressive results with polished plastic. But I have to agree with Bill, I think a properly done paint job looks better. So if it was me, I'd paint it.

Me too, and this one was the first one I could afford. Sure, I'll do a WIP thread when I get to it. Hopefully it happens later this year, but we'll see. I need to finish a couple of other projects first.

Trumpeter's '63 Nova SS Convertible came in the mail on Friday. That will be on the bench soon and the plan is to build it factory stock. Hubley's '60 Ford Country Sedan kit arrived today. Even though it looks tiny next to the giant box of the Nova, it's also 1/25 scale. Not complete, but a very good starting point for a build, and while it wasn't cheap, it was affordable. I'm debating if I should build it also factory stock, or then if I should build it as a Mild Custom. Let's see...

Wow! That's really good news! Although, opening this thread is getting expensive each time as basically every car kit that Atlantis has put out lately, is something I need to have.

Great work with the Nova, it turned out beautiful! It's hard to see from the pics, but did you have the issue where there is a gap between the firewall and the rest of the body? I just started building the Convertible version and looks like the firewall needs some modifying. The rear bumper fits a little too low, but of course that's Trumpeter's fault, not yours. Very nicely done build!

This will be interesting! First, I really like these late '50s Eldorado Broughams even in stock form. And second, I think the one that Mr. Watson painted back in the day looks even better. I've had actually plans of building this same kit into a Mild Custom as well, so I'm taking notes how your version goes together. The start looks already very promising so keep the pictures coming.

Or even better, if they converted it into a four door sedan Bel Air. Well, honestly I'm not holding my breath on that one. But, a re-release with stock parts would be cool.