Matt Bacon

Made from the Polar Lights pre-painted snap kit, which is rather nicely detailed, if you take a bit of time to paint the parts. The rear end has lost its bumper and silencer box, just as the real Ford GT does when it's tuned up into this 746BHP monster. Paint is Tamiya Orange from a rattle can, polished with Novus. Detailed measurements at the Drunken Monkey's behest reveal that it's more like 1/24.5 than 1/25, but that suits me just fine... Thanks to Mat Irvine for sourcing the kit for me at a swap-meet in the USA and bringing it back to SMW this year -- it's a very hard beast to get hold of this side of the pond, whether in Polar Lights, Johnny lightning or regular AMT boxes! bestest, M.

The body is now on! I removed the silencer box (the big square lump at the extreme rear behind the engine, because that's one way the 720 Mirage saves weight over the original GT. I've cut out the ring through which the exhausts emerge from the rear bumper part, and glued it in place on the body instead. The instructions have you add the rear bumper last, when the body and chassis are together. However, with the Mirage, the body with the mesh won't drop over the exhausts, so I had to cut them off the engine and insert pins so I could plug them in from the outside after it was all together. Just the last few details and decals to add now... bestest, M.

Thanks! And now for the shiny... ...did I mention that it's quite orange? ;-P bestest, M.

The Mirage was certainly made in the UK, based on a "mint" GT imported from the US. There's a complicated corporate backstory, but it's basically the successor to the Roush 600, another tuned GT. If you really felt that your 550BHP was a little lacking in grunt, you could have it fettled up to 600BHP with a more powerful blower. But the guy who did the Mirage reckoned that the chassis was brilliant and could easily handle even more power, so he upped the supercharger from 10psi boost to 17 psi, and now the engine is good for 750BHP, and 630lbft of torque. It'll spin the rear wheels in first, second and third gear, in the dry, if you're not careful. There's no traction control... This is another review: http://www.evo.co.uk/carreviews/evocarreviews/220638/avro_720_mirage.html bestest, M.

A quick holiday build, starting with the Polar Lights 1/25 Ford GT snap kit. The main visible difference between the super-tuned 720 Mirage and the "basic" Ford GT is the lack of a rear bumper, which leaves the back end rather more open. And lots of cool black detailing... The dash responds well to a bit of detail painting I took most of the chrome off everything, leaving only the supercharger body (which, although it is more powerful on the Mirage, is also chrome plated like the original equipment) The wheels end up like this. If I was even more shortsighted than I am, and had a steadier hand, the orange bar in the middle would resolve into "Mirage", but I'm not, so it doesn't. The brakes are moulded in to the back of the wheel, and so rotate with the front, which is the only major compromise to simplify the kit. They are also not handed, which only matters on the rears which have the main calliper and a secondary thingy (I'd love to know what it is -- you get them on most supercar brakes, on one pair of wheels). I'll just have to set the wheels carefully to put the callipers in the right position before taking pics! The plain black plastic cockpit is much improved by a lick of paint. The seats are nicely thought-through, with inserts for the "breather" holes, but they are even better if you strip the chrome and repaint, and touch in the "holes" with a paint pen. So that's the chassis together. Depending on what you can see (the body is one-piece and doesn't open) I might add a few pipes and cables around the engine. I've no idea whether the colours of the bits in the nose section are right, but since I can't find ANY pictures, and you can't see them after it's built, I'm not going to worry too much. Elapsed time to this stage about 4 hours. Now for the cool black detailing! bestest, M.

...if you HAD a Fiat 124 Spider, why would you want to turn it into THAT? ;-P bestest, M.

Go here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0p24kaYw9uY at about 2:20, you'll hear how "discrete" the tailpipes need to be... bestest, M.

The car shape is based on the original Lindner-Knocker Lightweight, which Malcom Sayer designed for racing aerodynamics -- the roofline is lower than a regular E-type, with a more raked windscreen, and the flanks are bigger. The body is all specially made by RS Panels, and if it's anything like the speedster, not a single panel is exactly the same as the equivalent on s standard car... bestest, M.

I think the extra £500K over Eagle's "regular" optimised E-types buys you a bit more than a "mild restyle". The engine is 350BHP instead of 210, and it'll get to 60 in 4.4 seconds instead of 7.4. And according to our man at Octane: "This car is really quite astonishingly savage when pressed. This must be one of the best classic cars I've ever driven, and it's also one of the best super cars I've ever driven". bestest, M.

http://www.lowdrag-gt.com Octane has just done a rather good-looking pictorial and drive review. It's official: I want one of these. Now to find the £650K (or more or less a million bucks) to commission one myself! bestest, M.

The Hasegawa 250TR and Miura are probably the best fitting kits I've built; the Moebius Chrysler 300 is awesomely detailed and great to build, but just slightly on the "softer" side. In the box, though, I think it would be hard to beat the Tamiya 360, Carrera GT, Enzo/Fxx, and of all the ones I've actually GOT, above all the LFA. When the LaFerrari arrives in a few months, I might we'll be adding another to the top of that list... bestest, M.

That's truly lovely! I can see why people think the rear quarter treatment is better than the '55 model. Apart from the body fins, new rear lights and, I guess non-chromed headlight buckets, are there any other differences with the earlier kit? And I'd love to know if the body is an all-new tool or some super-clever sectional tool where you can swap out the alternative back ends to get either model... Great work! bestest, M.

I got up close and personal with LaFerrari at Scale Model World this weekend: The lighting was a bit rubbish, but I'm not regretting pre-ordering it from HLJ. Not one bit! bestest, M.

Good grief.... are you feeling OK, Harry? You've posted one that appears, from this angle at least, as though it might be quite nice-looking. That never happens! I guess it might all go horribly wrong at the front end, though.... bestest, M.

...just strikes me that if the Fiat group were to take something that's basically an Alfa 4C, but fit a substantially de-tuned version of the 2014 Ferrari F1 1.6L V6 engine (say only 350BHP instead of 600), optimise the chassis and finesse the body a bit with a few nods to 246 history (front end, mostly), then they could launch a rather excellent 2015 Dino, to take the fight to the Boxster and Cayman. Not a Ferrari, of course, but a Dino... bestest, M.

Thanks very much, gentlemen. The kind words are much appreciated! It'll be a while before I do something with that much chrome again... bestest, M.

Sounds like Moebius are the guys for you, then! Proper written instructions with exploded diagrams and photos of the assembled parts as a paint guide, too... Going the Moebius way will limit your choices of subjects, but you'll enjoy building the Chryslers, Hudsons, pickups and huge trucks they offer... bestest, M.

Fantastic kit -- I can't recommend it highly enough. The engineering is brilliantly thought through, the fit is exemplary, and the detail is great. Finished in Tamiya TS-8 Italian Red straight out of the can. Vallejo acrylics for the inside. bestest, M.

I'm planning to rework a Polar Lights Ford GT kit as an Avro Mirage 720. The GT has a prepainted body. Does anyone have experience of repainting one of these? Do I need to strip it back? Can I just shoot primer over the paint? Even better (the Mirage has black stripes over an orange body) can I use the painted markings as a masking guide and apply new paint over old? I would prefer to use either Tamiya spray cans or Zero paints if possible. Any advice would me much appreciated! Bestest, M

Very, very, very nice. I've been thinking the last couple of days that the Daytona is the best looking Ferrari ever, and your build is doing it justice. The colours are great and the detailing is excellent, whether it's prototypical or impressionistic. My only suggestion would be to take a few pictures for a bit further away -- the exquisite balance of the proportions is a wee bit distorted by the close-ups... bestest, M.

Thanks, guys... and in answer to Harrry's question, no I'm not: I'm going to use the rather nice silver decals that the folk at Moebius cleverly included! Anyway, I'm now calling this done. Proper pictures in Under Glass when it stops raining (next weekend, on current forecasts ;-() Just need to clean off some greasy finger marks and top up the polish here and there... bestest, M.

Thanks, guys! A bit of a milestone, this... Some leverage needed to get it the chassis into the body, but when it goes in, it fits really neatly... Decals and final chrome bits now... bestest, M.

Thanks, guys... BMF... I have a love/hate relationship with the stuff. Great effect, but my head literally explodes if I do too much in one session. Now I remember WHY "I don't generally like chrome-laden barges..." ;-P. At least those fine folks at Moebius provide the worst, most fiddley bits (eg scripts) as decals... ...shouldn't be too long before these two can finally be fitted together! bestest, M.

They really thought with that kind of build quality and shutlines that they could compete with a 1990 Range Rover? Interesting... bestest, M.

Hi, Peter... what a great project... When the now-iconic Mini first appeared, it was sold both by Austin and by Morris, two of the British Motor Corporation's brands. It was a Morris Mini, and an Austin Se7en. Sometimes, Morris referred to it as a Mini-Minor (the Morris Minor was an older, bigger, and well-known car, so at the time Mini-Minor meant "smaller version of the Minor"). As the sixties wore on, and the Mini became better known, they just became Morris and Austin Minis. The Mini Cooper was a "tuned-up" version for racing, modified by John Cooper (better known at the time for his Formula One cars). The main differences are around the engine -- internally it was given a bigger capacity, and externally it was fitted with two carburettors instead of one. Coopers also had disc brakes at the front, unlike the base car which had drum brakes all round. I guess what you need to do depends on how closely your dad is going to look at it! You could build the kit as is, and nobody who doesn't pick it up and open the bonnet is ever going to know that it's a Cooper. If you wanted to make it accurate, the main things would be to change the carburettor arrangement so there's only one, and make the brakes at the front look the same as the ones at the back. There may be differences in wheels -- I don't know what's in that Tamiya kit, but racing Minis often seem to have MiniLite alloy wheels, which are very different from the steel wheels with a domed chrome hubcap that regular street Minis had. There's a chart here: http://www.minimania.com/images/bmc-paint-codes-large.jpg with the BMC colours from the period. You'll see there are very few metallic colours. The only one that could realistically be described as silver is "Ice Blue Metallic". On the other hand, there are several greys that could look silver-ish in through the eyes of memory... Good luck with your project. bestest, M.