Matt Bacon

Yep… the three cars ran with yellow, white and no band, according to the period docs. It should probably be a brighter “chrome yellow”, but the couple of period colour pics I found show it more like this Tamiya “Camel Yellow”. Mind you the colour reproduction in those photos isn’t great… the car looks almost black! I wanted something that would be believable as “yellow” but wasn’t so far removed from Roy’s orange original. He was normally pretty hot on the details, so I don’t know where the orange came from… best, M.

An ancient kit, more or less contemporary with the hey-day of the original racer. These Merit kits are simple, but the proportions and shapes are generally good, and they make a nice period collection in the cabinet, representing the 1940s-50s era before rear engines, aerodynamics and DFVs changed the way F1 cars looked for ever. The wheels are replacement white metal items from the spares box to model the car at the 1958 Italian Grand Prix. Originally the team tried replacing the wire wheels with cast magnesium solid discs all round, but Stirling Moss in particular disliked the negative effect on the steering, handling and front-end grip that the stiffer wheels gave, and all three cars reverted to wires at the front. The small intake on the nose is for a separate oil cooler which was trialled in Portugal and Italy in 1958. The kit doesn't have it, so I found some plans and plunge-moulded the fairing using a carved balsa master. This build is part of our Classic British Kits SIG tribute to legendary Airfix box artist Roy Cross, who died earlier this year aged 100. Roy also painted a series of covers for the Eagle boys comic in the early 60s, and many of the subjects coincide with the Merit and Auto Kit ranges of 1/24 model kits. This is the cover: Tony Brooks driving the 1958 Italian Grand Prix winning Vanwall. With its display base. The view from the wings. The first two tribute models completed. More to come. best, M.

I would have thought the trend towards much taller and heavier SUVs instead of regular saloon and estate cars over the last 20 years has had at least the same impact as EV-ness or not. We’ve had to replace lots of Armco central barriers on motorways with taller and more elastic dividers over the last decade because SUVs roll over earlier vintage protection and end up the wrong way on the opposite carriageway instead of being contained among traffic going the same way… best, M.

Right, that's the build of this one finished. Time for a bit of a clean and final polish here and there, and off for beauty shots for Under Glass at the weekend... The numbers are Fantasy Printshop precut vinyl "Pit lane numbers" intended for R/C cars, and the Vanwall titles are from Patto's Place to replace the pretty shot 60-year-old kit decals. best, M.

You could go with the scheme that has the lower half black, with burgundy above the belt/character line and a black or paint or vinyl roof above the upper chrome accent over the windows.... that really shows off the shapes... best, M.

The exhaust on the '58 car is different from the earlier models. The kit part has a fan of four pipes coming out from the cowl and merging into a single straight pipe. Roy Cross's picture has three pipes. But what actually happens is that four serpentine exhaust headers merge into two under the hood, and the second pipe joins the first out in the open, then they go into a thicker chromed and insulated single exhaust running alongside the driver. Like this: This is all plastic rod and tube, with SMS Hyperchrome for the brightwork section. I've also glued the cockpit screen in place. Dipped in Mr Gauzy Agent Glass Coat, the kit part actually came up pretty well. Cleaning up the seam and painting the rear section has also been completed. Tomorrow, the wheels go on permanently. best, M.

@1959scudetto you are a star. I have ordered some, as long as I have managed to navigate German eBay successfully in translation... Thank you very much. All the best, Matt

Me too.... I've stashed it away for when I can finally get a hold of that most recent green-box re-issue. I want to build it as Charlie's car from the TV series Poker Face... Plus I'm sure there must be one of those Master Box 1/24 figures that would make a passable Charlie best, M.

Really looking forward to this! And if anyone felt like 3D printing a set of accurate wheels in 1/16, I’d take them like a shot! best, M.

That looks fantastic, Jason. Brilliant work, and the distressed effects are to die for. Bookbinders leather and a pizza cutter, eh? I shall have to file THAT one away in the back of my mind... best, M.

Try lemon juice on a rag or get some “Sticky Stuff Remover”… no risk of damaging the plastic… best, M.

Thanks, all.... a quick mockup to settle the seat and dash in place... and to see how it looks! I went for Tamiya Camel Yellow instead of a brighter chrome yellow, as a nod to the orange in Roy Cross's original painting. The British Green is actually green, but you can see why it looks black in some period photos. Now to leave the paint for a few days to harden fully before joining the body permanently and masking to paint the rear shell, so the tape doesn't leave marks. Then it'll be time for a polish. best, M.

Reasonable progress off-screen. First, the dash: Primed with white, Tamiya semi-gloss black for the dials, AK matt black for the "crackle" dash, white markings scratched through the dials to the white primer, finished with Citadel 'ardcoat gloss varnish for the glass. The wheel rim is red-brown primer overcoated with Citadel contrast paint "Wyldwood" brown and varnished with Tamiya Clear Orange.. Body colour is Tamiya TS-9 "British Green." A-Stand "White Aluminum" for the cast magnesium rear wheels and Humbrol Metalcote Polished Aluminium for the front wires. Tony Brooks in his seat. Colors are based on the only color picture I can find of Tony in a Vanwall, possibly the previous year. The helmet is some kind of moulded leather or bakelite, I think. His goggles are not as dark as they look in this! So, he can hold the wheel (which is not glued, to give a bit more wiggle room when we have to fit all the parts together) And I've started the green for the body. The horizontal seam is mostly there as a panel line on the real thing. I've masked the rear shell, which doesn't have a seam, so I can glue it then clean up the seam and reprime and paint the rear shell separately from the rest of the car. best, M.

I can highly recommend BBC Radio 6 Music, which you can stream in the USA with the BBC Sounds app on your phone or via the website: https://www.bbc.co.uk/schedules/p00fzl65 Eclectic music for grown-ups curated by a variety of experienced DJs and musicians… in proper radio shows. There’s a wide range of tastes and styles represented over the week, but Craig Charles’ funk and soul show on a Saturday, Cerys Matthews, Guy Garvey and Iggy Pop’s shows on a Sunday, and Stuart Maconie’s Freak Zone are all favourites of mine… best, M. PS: re below. And NO ads!

I’ve heard lots of people being very positive about Gaahleri brushes… a step up from no brand Chinese quality-lottery products, but not A-brand: https://amzn.eu/d/46gNAVP This is a UK link, but I’m sure they’ll be on Amazon.com. Grex are very popular your side of the pond, it seems (hard to get in the UK so I haven’t tried one), and the Tritium fits your need, if you can find an offer at the right price… best, Matt

Looks great, and no sign of the struggles you (and I) had to get it together. Lovely paintwork. And it’s such an iconic car. It even has all four wheels on the ground at the same time, which means you nailed the landing on this high degree of difficulty project! best, M.

So here's Roy, eyes on the road and hands upon the wheel... and the scoop opened up. The top half and wheel will also lift off out of his hands without disturbing anything. Time for some Milliput and shaping around the shoulders... best, M.

This^^^^^ I AM pretty experienced in building cars, and the Fujimi 288 GTO remains the most difficult kit I’ve ever built. @Simo5555 is doing a great job. But the whole back end around the engine requires dozens of parts to be joined together often with tiny pips or no locating mechanism at all, sometimes in sequences of multiple parts that have two well defined endpoints with nothing in between (I’m looking at you, exhausts, turbos and manifolds…). The suspension that the engine plumbing has to fit round and through is equally complex and multipart, and at the end of assembly all four wheels have to end up on the ground even in spite of the fact that nothing’s weight-bearing until it’s all assembled and the glue is set. Very good work going on here! best, M.

Wheels from Kyiv. The DB5 ones are going on the Revell kit along with the grille. The GTO wheels are actually for something else, and the Mercredes SLR wheels are an upgrade to the wheels in the old Merit Mercedes 196 F1 kit. 'bay bargain. Spotted this 911SC rally with 15 minutes to go and no takers at a starting bid of £40. Which I won it for. Turns out that these are made to order and usually run about €200, so price-wise it was a bargain, and the quality and detail is VERY impressive. Decals for the colorful scheme of the most successful team rallying Porsches look very nice, too... best, M.

Progress is a bit glacial -- I'm feeling under the weather at the moment with a painful lurgy... but I have got back to the bench. As I suspected, it took several of those scoops I moulded to get a good one that I didn't mess up cutting out, but I got there in the end. I'm not completely convinced it shouldn't be open at the back, but it's not shown that way on any drawings I have, and I can't find a picture of the rear of the scoop at all. It didn't last long on the real thing, and the only pictures I can find of the car with it fitted are naturally, action shots from the front. None of the surviving cars have still got it. So if anyone was hard evidence, I've still got time to open it up... Time to start getting Tony knocked into shape, so this is the first of many trial fits. I've scribed the panel lines, too... my drawings say 1/10" panel gaps, so they are visible on the real thing (though don't worry, the horizontal seam is just the two halves sitting one atop the other...) best, M.

Is there a setting I can use to turn off thumbnail images in index pages, so I only have to load the pictures if I go into the original post? Loading 50 thumbnails into the same post preview takes an age and stops me navigating the index until they’ve all loaded… best, M.

BRG is not one colour, anyway (even Tamiya's rattle cans have two... TS-9 and TS-43). 1930s Bentleys were Brunswick Green with matt-finish olive green fabric bodywork. Racing Jaguars in the 1950s and early 60s were very dark; Lotus race cars in the green with yellow stripes schemes were much brighter. Vanwalls are somewhere in between. Jaguar's E-Type racing green is dark and slightly bluish.... unless it's "Opalescent Racing Green", which is beautiful, but different again. Broadly, I'd go for neutral grey primer. But it's important to make sure that the red pigment of the plastic won't come through and make it brown, so test as @Ace-Garageguy says. In my experience, Tamiya Fine Surface Grey Primer with multiple _light_ coats of colour on top will not leach the plastic pigment. The problem arises if the solvent in the coloured paint layer can penetrate the primer and pull the plastic pigment through. So don't have wet coats, and remember the same thing can happen with the clear coat as well. In fact, the couple of times I've had this problem, it's been with Zero Paints 2K clear (which is intended to be applied wet) pulling pigment through the matt finish porous base coat (which is designed to give a really good "key" for the gloss coat on top), best, M.

Surely if anything will persuade Academy to tool up a new global-market 1/24 state of the art car kit… best, M.

Well, this box art certainly helped me decide I wanted one of these kits... best, M.

This is partly triggered by the "What use is box art?" thread. Which got me thinking... why do I make models at all? Recognizing that this is just me, and we all have our different motivations, I guess I'd say mine are, more or less in order of importance: 1) It's something to do with my hands, tools, and skills that's a complete break from the day job that is all about typing and screens (which is why I don't really fancy learning CAD and 3D printing...) which provides me an opportunity to relax and think different (as I'm sure sports do for many people). 2) It's a problem-solving skill that lets me think around how i want to do things and how I'm going achieve this effect or that. 3) It's a nostalgia trip back to a more innocent time and the less-complex world of my youth. 4) It's about producing an accurate replica of an original 1:1 object that I find cool and interesting that I can put in my display cabinet. I guess all of the above is why I'm currently occupied producing visual illusions of comic book covers from well before my time using relatively simple and somewhat crude kits for the craic (and to celebrate the life of someone who had a significant influence on my childhood.) It's probably also why my work is unlikely to trouble the judges at competitions, but that matters to me very little... YMMV, very much so... best, M.