Matt Bacon

And here's the XJS interior finished: Nice interior when it's done, and looks good in situ. Main glazing in place. Needs some clean up, but I think it's looking OK! best, M.

Thanks @dublin boy you certainly do, though it seems to be the hardest to get hold of by some way. I've has a couple of shots at the VW K70 on eBay, but I've never seen the Peugeot for sale. Many of these Heller 1/43 kits ended up in "Rallye" or Humbrol boxes in later years, but those two never did, so they are truly rarities. best, M.

Here's the Alfa interior finished: A couple with the interior in situ And with the main glazing in place best, M.

A fairly speedy build, to try and get these done before year's end... Colour is a Tamiya Mic Red, doing duty for Jaguar's Sebring Red Shape and proportions look pretty good to me. Chassis isn't super detailed, but not bad for the scale. The Jaguar wheels are really quite a lot bigger than the Alfasud's Interior is quite well detailed... very different from the Citroen that's only a few years older. And yes, this one is quite small... Interior looks pretty nice, I reckon. And now, one of Italy's coolest cars: if only it had been built well with quality materials, and got its hatchback earlier, the Golf GTI might not be as famous as it is... The colour is Tamiya Mica Green, which isn't strictly correct, but looks close enough (you could have this colour on an Alfa GTV6 Coupe but not the Alfasud). Lots of nice detail to be picked out with paint. This one also seems to fit together pretty well... certainly more on a par with the Alpine A310 rather than the Citroen. And this one is pretty small as well... Time to get on with the glazing... best, M.

I think your best bet for the Cortina and Rover is Beemax or maybe NuNu or Belkits. The SD1 would most likely be in BTCC guise. Perhaps our friends at C1 Models or Motobitz might do some street interiors if that happened..? Tamiya has some fast Ford Cosworth hardware in the back catalogue, so maybe Ebbro could do one of their reissues... best, M.

Really lovely work. Great choice of colours... that orange really makes the whole scheme pop. best, M.

More of a distributor, really... the days when Revell actually originated tools in the UK are long gone, though the 1/25 E Type convertible was one. As for British Classics, with the Mini x2, the Land Rover and E Type x2 , Revell has done the true icons. New tool DB5 might cut it, but pretty much everything else is a niche interest, much as I’d like a Jaguar XJ6, Bentley Continental or Alvis TD21... best, M.

So, this arrived today... a very impressive 6 days from HobbyEasy in Hong Kong into my hands: What could be in this huge box that takes up my entire work bench? And what could be in THIS huge box that takes up my entire work bench? These: I might have to do the unboxing piecemeal... I don't think there's enough room for all the parts trees, etch, fabric, tubing etc on my bench... best, M.

Good to see another one of these under way, and @Dann Tier s build as well... I assumed the “working” steering was so you could set the front wheels to the right angle so it would go round and round in circles of whatever size there was space for on your living room floor! Wait a minute... isn’t that the Indy 500..? ? best, M.

I'm kicking myself now. I'd somewhat convinced myself that it was a Pininfarina design, and spent a lot of time looking at all kinds of European cars powered by US V8s. Swiss ones, Italian ones, Italian-American ones, British ones, but not French. And now I look at the rest of the picture, it's obvious that it's parked in Paris (I worked there for a few years recently) and even more or less where it is.... but I didn't notice, so I didn't type "French four door V8 powered GT car" into Google, which results in Monica at the top of the results list and in the image examples! Doh! Zut Alors! best, M.

I’ve developed a very long list of what it ISN’T, mind you. I thought I knew this category of car pretty well, but clearly not.... best, M.

@e30lover Thank you. If I remember correctly, the tire logos were dry brushed (well, actually, more "across brushed"... I dragged a lightly loaded fine paintbrush sideways just above the tire surface) with Vallejo acrylic "Foundation White" which is a very densely pigmented and quite thick pure white. Once it was dry, any paint in the wrong place could easily be removed with a sharp cocktail stick/toothpick... best, M.

I think the stance is a bit low at the back.. the rear wheels don’t actually go up inside the flares, so you can move them out to almost the full width of the flares. The fronts can come out a bit, and thinning the interior of the flared arches will still give them room to turn. As for colours, I’ve seen white, red and charcoal grey metallic as well. Good job on finding them! best, M.

It’d make me very happy if they’d make a Lamborghini.. they look so cool and come in nice colours, too... https://www.classicdriver.com/en/car/lamborghini/tractor/1960/693081 best, M.

This is the 1960s vintage 1/25 Revell tooling, designed and mastered by Revell UK (in Potters Bar). It's not at all bad, I would say... The cabriolet hood (not bonnet) cover is a bit chunky but the engine bay detail is pretty good... best, M.

Beautiful build and fantastic photography as well... best, M.

One to celebrate rather than be sad about... you know the saying “there are old pilots, and bold pilots, but no old, bold pilots.”? Well anyone who flew combat in WW2, pursued a career as a test pilot and lived to 97 is pretty much the definition of an old bold pilot... Blue skies, Gen Yeager! best, M.

The Aurora XKE is pretty ropey... the “face” looks like a frog ? If it’s a convertible, it COULD be the original Revell 1/25 kit, which was designed and tooled in the UK and is quite nice. The Monogram Aston Martin DB4 is better shaped, and probably the best of those kits, which also include a 250 GTO and Maserati 3500GT... best, M.

Given that I just posted a bunch of pictures that pretty clearly demonstrate that the new Revell XKE windscreen is too short, and also the wrong shape, I suspect we are in violent agreement. On the other hand, I recognise that there are positives in the fit and engineering vs the Heller kit (which has its own shape issues) and I’m happy to try and fix both in different ways to get the best model I can out of them... Absent Tamiya creating a state of the art dimensionally-perfect kit like their 300SL, or Airfix deciding they should create a LIDAR-scanned range of 1/24 British icon kits featuring an E-Type, Mini and Land Rover, we work with what we have..: best, M.

What "looks right" is what looks like a 5'-6' tall person walking past a 1:1 in the street looks like. Funnily enough, trying to take a picture of an 8" long model with a camera lens often doesn't look the same. And much more so with a smartphone camera or a point and shoot... People taking pictures for car magazine features tend to make them look more dramatic as well... On the other hand, you can take the pics to look like a real person might eyeball them... The difference between the first three pictures and the second is that the top three are taken with an 18-70mm zoom at the lower end of its range, and the second three are taken with a 50mm fixed focus macro and cropped. Around 40-45mm focal length is what you want on a DSLR lens to give the same kind of impression as a human eye looking a the real thing. Most smartphone lenses are VERY fish-eye, so never assume that the real thing looks like something taken with a smartphone, especially trade show pictures of prototype models. Equally, most point and shoot compact cameras are by default short focal length. Even with a full size DSLR, the focal length you need to get a whole car into the frame from a reasonably close distance is enough to distort the images you capture significantly... I'd rely on this one for proportions, but not the two above: best, M.

Well, it might be the right scale, but it’s the wrong shape, and a mish mash of features from different Cobra generations. You pays your money and you takes your choice... best, M.

Although interestingly, never used in metric countries... Apart from Heller having a very brief flirtation with 1/125 airliners and 1/50 aircraft, “metric” scales have never been a thing in Europe or Asia. VEB Plasticart in East Germany did some 1/100 kits, but that was a very closed market. It’s always been 1/72, not 1/75; 1/48, not 1/50, and 1/144 not 1/150 for UK, French, and German kit companies. Ultimately, despite metrication everywhere else in Europe, scales are all 1” = some number of feet... best, M.

OK, so let's use photos from EXACTLY the same angle... My model, on my table... blending in the real thing image... And some more... I really don't think there's much wrong there, and certainly nothing that can't be explained by the difference in focal length between the camera I'm using to shoot the model and the camera someone used to shoot the real thing... best, M.

You're jumping to some pretty damning conclusions based on my photo of my build and a web shot of the real thing that are taken from different angles... Did I take the shot you're comparing to the real thing with this lens: Or this one: best, M.

Well, I imagine it's because Revell is a European company and brand these days, having proved that they can't make money as a US model kit maker any more. Do I put that entirely down to picking the "wrong" scale? No. But making odd-scale models of cars that have no relevance or following outside of one market is not a route to staying afloat when that market is not buying enough kits. It seems kinda perverse when the rest of the world, even the metric countries, are buying 1"=12 feet, 1"=6 feet, 1"= 4 feet, 1"=2 feet scale models (the less said about 1/35 the better) to pursue a 1cm=25cm scale, especially when those very metric countries are not making everything 1:100, 1:75, and 1:50... best, M.