Matt Bacon

Looks great! Lucky you...here in northern England in January my photo-booth is WAY brighter than the dreary skies, all day long... I read an interesting piece in The Road Rat about Jaguar in the late-60s and early 70s choosing a specific set of colours for California and Lamborghini creating a Middle East palette while Aston Martin have a set specifically for British skies... Silver and maybe a bright metallic blue are probably the only global colours that aren't black! But basically you've built a Lotus Z.... ? best, M.

That looks fantastic. Really nice colour combo, and beautifully executed overall and detail painting. I want one -- both the kit and the real thing! I bet that colour combo would really pop in the sunshine, too... best, M.

That looks really good. Nicely detailed and really well built, painted and weathered. Goodness only knows how they got away with that as a "Delta" for homologation, though... best, m.

The Revell 1/32 kit is very good value for money, and a great build: https://www.hyperscale.com/2017/reviews/kits/revell03944reviewbg_1.htm And it's 56 bucks at spruebrothers as opposed to $180 or so for the Tamiya in that scale, which is only a little more than they want for the Eduard 1/48 kits. best, M.

? Lucky man! There's a nice article in October's "Motor Sport" reuniting him with his favorite Lotus 72 which has got some words from the man himself about this car... https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article/october-2022/89/back-in-black-lotus-and-emerson-reunited-at-brands-hatch?v=79cba1185463 best, M.

Doh! Yes, you're right -- I still haven't got my head around how BIG this thing is. I should have looked at the rear tyres and seen just how wide they are. Yes, the valleys in the outer edge locate the tyres firmly. The little hole in the inner edge is where the inflation valve moulded (and painted) on the rear face of the outer half-rim locates when you join them together. best, M.

Well, that's a really interesting question... I'm not sure what those parts are! If you look in the picture immediately above the two pictures of the polystyrene trays of diecast parts above, you can see the wheel rims to the left -- they have black painted cross-shaped centres on both front and rear wheels. The rims I photographed with the trim parts above seem to be alternative fronts, with pure cone shapes, but I can't find them mentioned in the instructions! best, M.

Mind you if they did rotating wheels and brake discs, with fixed callipers, that really WOULD be a step up in model car detailing! best, M.

Yeah, but… read Thomas Kuhn’s “Structure of Scientific Revolutions”, then Harry Collins’ “The Golem: or what you should know about science,” and then Bruno Latour’s “Science in Action”, and you’ll get a much better idea of what really happens, why consensus isn’t inherently wrong, and why science sets great store on reproducible experiment but can still generate “paradigm shifts.” Unless you would prefer to learn engineering from “Airframe” or palaeontology from “Jurassic Park”… (Discalaimer: my degree is in History of Science, so I _have_ read all of the above…) Best, M.

Well, time to get this one back on the bench after a Scale Model World related hiatus and break for Christmas. That was fun.... not! Trying to wrangle 5 pieces of etch and some painted masking tape so the central ring is more or less over the wheel centre was quite a battle but we got there in the end. Finally got up the nerve to mask and paint the window chrome, which has been putting me off. The front and rear screens are relatively thick but tough clear sheet, and Chris provides templates to cut them to fit the recesses engraved inside the shell. The sheet is flat, but bends into shape when fitted. The Blu Tak is holding them in place for the first round of gluing with Formula 560. Once they are not going to pop out again, I'll go round and close the last few gaps. Chris provides new front and rear axles and springs which are direct replacements for the kit parts and give the required wider track and lower ride height. If you're building one, ease the fixing holes a bit and slightly slim down the tabs on the rear axle. The tabs needs to slide completely into the socket in the spring to get the width right... and the end of the spring with the block goes at the back! Test fit repeatedly before committing to glue... One of the things I'm slowly getting the hang of is that although this is a transkit with extensive instructions, it's not a kit. You still have to build the kit from the original instructions for everything that's not explicitly called out to be replaced. For example don't be caught out like I was by the timing of when the exhaust and rear brake actuators need to be fitted by focusing on the transkit springs and axle instead... The best approach (with hindsight) would be to annotate the kit instructions at each point a transkit part or assembly is used instead and do what in BASIC you'd call a GOSUB to that section in the transkit instructions... best, M.

Thanks, Bill... The printing of the livery on the components seems very crisp, and the overall finish is extremely high quality. I think I have enough reference material, even for one this big! best, M.

Well, the tractors and the Porsche 356 did. The e-tron not so much, but you could say the same of the real thing… best, M.

You can’t tell the difference between the Easy Click E-Tron GT or tractors and a glue kit… best, M.

Thanks, guys! Just to re-emphasise the point about the shape… take a good look at the profile side view. The line of the top of the glass peaks just in front of the door handle and curves down to the top of the windscreen. It’s not just Revell that gets that wrong… I’m not aware of any kit, including the big Monogram one, that correctly captures that subtlety of the shape. It completely makes sense that the roof should be highest where your head is, not at the top of the windscreen, but until Airfix came along, no one else had noticed. It’s also surprising how much influence such a small detail has on how “right” a model looks… best, M.

Busy year and mojo-sapping shenanigans at work contributed to rather less output than usual: Jaguar 420, Airfix, 1/32 BMW Race HP4, Meng, 1/9 Corvair "Yenko Stinger", AMT, 1/25 1931 Mercedes SSKL, Matchbox, 1/32 Jaguar XK-E, Airfix, 1/43 Happy New Year, all.... I'm certainly hoping for a more productive one! best, M.

Well, my family were very kind to me this year, so here goes... Given how good Airfix (or Lego) instructions are these days, I reckon in this respect at least Pocher could up their game... What could be in here? Let's have a closer look... Plastic sprues... Wheels, and then... ...between the different photos I realise I've missed the pre-printed plastic sidepods, but they are in the box. Also, in a real "devil in the details" moment, there's a bag full of no less than 12 different sorts of screw, and another with 6 different types of tube or wire... More in the near future, after I have finished the MGC Sebring... best, M.

(L-R Airfix, Heller kit, Ixo Diecast, Jaguar dealer die-cast) Above all, I think Airfix captured the XK-E shape bang on. The kit is quite simple, and the plastic weirdly soapy. The fit is almost too good -- in common with many Airfix kits these days you can't afford to have any paint on joining surfaces if you want them to go together neatly. The windows are super-clear, and the wipers moulded very neatly to the lower edge of the windscreen (which fits from the outside). READ THE INSTRUCTIONS about how to fit the rear glass -- it doesn't just pop into place, but it does fit very well if you do it how they tell you (one quarter-window THROUGH the cut out and then back and into place so one pane is going in from the outside and the other from inside...) The wheels in the box aren't bad, but these 3D printed wires from Motobitz are in another league entirely, and for £6 a very affordable way of improving the breed. In the box it's LHD, but that's just feels WRONG for a Brit to build, so I reworked the kit dash, switching over the steering wheel, instruments and pedals. Would it have killed them to do two dash parts? (I know the wipers would have been wrong, but still...). All in all, a fun kit that makes up into a good looking replica of a petite original -- it's small next to the XJ-S, never mind the later growly big cats... best, M.

The Stradale is really not that different from the rally car. Pinch the seats and door cards from an Integrale kit, and adapt the dash a bit, and no one will call you out on it… best, M.

Lengthy and in-depth interview with GM talking Evo’s Harry Metcalfe around the T.50 design here: what the fans does, why no carbon wheels, and where the luggage goes (clue… it can carry a lot more than you’d think)… best, M.

Looks great to me! You’re right that some detailing in the engine bay goes a long way to adding realism. They captured the shape and character of the car really well, though. Not sure I’d leave mine parked in that neighbourhood, although if I was a typical Mk2 owning villain planning a heist, maybe I’d have to… best, M.

That looks exactly as it should. First it looks like this: And the on goes the clear coat, and it looks like this: The clear coat transforms what the paint looks like. With Tamiya TS or lacquer paint, you can get a pretty good-looking effect just from applying the base paint well, or applying it then polishing it directly with, say, Novus. Mostly, the TS-13 clear coat is an option. With Zero Paints, both the base layer and clear are essential to the final appearance. It's not just the shine, but the clear deepens and makes the base colour richer... best, M.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/miniature-car-models/zn9jcqt I expect more than a few of us have Gerard Wingrove’s books, and quite a few more have heard of him. Very much of its time, but worth 9 minutes of yours if you’re interested… best, M.

It's not as if they've ever really stopped, just slowed to no more than one or two new 1/24 cars per year... NSX, Ford GT, MX-5RF, Mustang GT4, 240ZG, BRZ/GR86, Mclaren Senna, GR Supra, Nissan Z... Still, not a bad selection, and understandable given the license fees that certain real-world vendors want... bring on the Tamiya GR Yaris I say... best, M.

This one had quite the effect on 10 year old me... Or this from the 1975 Weetabix giveaway trading card set: Universally known in the playground as the John Player Special Dalek, even if we didn't know what JPS were... (actually, we did, but no one cared that we did in those days....) best, M.

Oh, yes.... I'll have one of those, for sure... best, M.