Matt Bacon

Well, this: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0760346445 just arrived. Plenty of inspiration between THOSE covers... bestest, M.

Technically, of course, Henry Ford II didn't "build a Ferrari killer", though he did pay for it. He wanted to win Le Mans, and thought that the best way to do it would be to buy Ferrari. When that didn't work, he came to visit some plucky Brit "garagistes" instead: Lotus, Cooper and Lola. The GT40 (Mk1 at least) is pretty much a Lola Mk6 with a Ford engine, built in the UK, and overseen by Roy Lunn, the only Ford engineer with experience of mid-engined cars, and John Wyer, who'd made his name racing Astons. To begin with, Ford had no idea how to make an engine that would run reliably for the 24H, or indeed a car that wouldn't fall apart. After the first, failed, season, they gave the project to Carroll Shelby, who had "form" with big Ford engines, to make it work with a new engine and a new gearbox... And this: http://www.amazon.com/Go-Like-Hell-Ferrari-Battle/dp/0547336055 Is a really fantastic book on it. Written like a thriller, but all true... bestest, M.

True, but an SR22 does run $500K -- $800K ;-P GE Plastics, in particular, spent a lot of hours and dollars in the 90s looking at how large structural automotive components like spaceframes could be mass-produced out of three-dimensionally woven fibre reinforcement with plastic resin injected into and around it, and getting not very far. Nobody has really figured out how to mass produce reliable composite structures to the standards needed for today's cars. McLaren knows how to do it for supercars, but to get the cost down for THEIR new "entry-level" 911-beater at a mere £130K they've switched to aluminium body panels rather than the composite ones on a 650S. Lamborghini is supposedly the "testbed" for VAG, pioneering carbon fibre moulding techniques, but the Huracan isn't mass-market by some way. I think it's probably crash-testing rather than excess electronics that's really driving up the weight of cars (though, while the CIrrus may have the same level of electronics as a modern car, I bet it doesn't have six electric motors in each seat to move them in 3 axes, firm up or relax the lumbar support, and even give you a massage!). To get survivability to the current levels, you either need weight (simple momentum reduces acceleration) carefully deployed into collapsable crash structures, or if you have less weight (with aluminium or composites) you need even cleverer energy absorption methods built into the structure, which are harder to engineer, and harder to build (with composites, for example, you have to align the reinforcing fibres precisely through the structure, and build in zones that will absorb energy as the fibres come apart. It's amazing to see some of those modern Le Mans crashes where the driver walks away, but the reason why the car is flying apart around the driver in his tub is that those parts are sapping energy and carrying it away from the driver. If the car was so strong that it retained its structural integrity in a crash like that, you'd be able to pour the driver out of the tub afterwards... Weight, crash resistance and cost are three points of a triangle. You can get lighter weight and the same crash resistance, these days, using aluminium, and a lot of mainstream manufacturers are going that way. But to do it without massively increasing cost per vehicle is requiring miracles of production engineering, and a lot of investment in new manufacturing technology plant. Cars are by far the most complex mass produced (no airplane is made in the millions) thing that mankind makes. They are already amazingly cheap for what they are. To try and reduce weight, while keeping the crash resistance and cost the same is really, really hard... bestest, M.

Thanks, so much, guys. It really is a brilliantly engineered kit, but it pays to read and understand the instructions -- sometimes the diagrams are not so clear! The only thing I'd do differently if I was doing another one would be to fit the door interiors to the outers, and fill and sort out the join before doing any painting, priming the whole lot and then masking the interior structure before painting the skins. That might mean having to use acetate for the windows to fit them after painting, but that's not such a bad idea anyway. I might thin down the door edges a bit as well, at least on the three visible sides... Skip -- this one's a bit of an embarrassment -- I started back in May, but only got the body painted before we moved house (I was distracted by the lovely little Alfa GTA and focused on finishing that instead). I came back to it at the end of November, so there's about two months elapsed time in there, but I really didn't get much modelling done over the holiday season... Now to decide what to do next... a model car that's the closest I'm likely to get to building one I've really bought in my lifetime (no, it's NOT a Ferrari ;-P); one of several bargain 1/48 aircraft that'll take me back to my modelling roots; or a quirky Classic British Kit that presents something we all make all the time in an unusual way and at a much larger (and almost functional) scale...? bestest, M.

Available in any UK household goods/ironmongers/hardware store as "Caustic Soda", used for unblocking drains, serious cleaning of greasy surfaces etc. It's a nasty chemical so gloves, a ventilated room and great care are a must in using it. But whenever I see discussions about how many hours or days you need to soak chromed parts in XXX to get the chrome off, I find myself wondering why people don't just use this common household chemical, which takes literally seconds to achieve the same effect... See the intake manifold and induction tubing here? I did that by carefully dipping the chromed part into caustic soda solution and watching the chrome dissolve away in seconds. You need to fill a jam jar 3/4 with cold water and stand it in an empty sink, and wearing gloves, and safety glasses if you need/have them, stir in about 2 teaspoons of soda crystals, stirring carefully all the time. It will get hot, and steam away some eye-watering vapour, so don't lean over it. When it's cooled down in the sink, drop in the chromed parts and watch the metal disappear in front of your eyes. Once it's all gone, I carefully pour out the liquid down the sink, still wearing gloves, and then run fresh cold water gently into the jar for a minute or two to flush the soda solution off the parts, then fish them out with stainless steel tweezers and leave on a paper kitchen towel to dry. If your parts have a brown "varnish" layer under the chrome but over the plastic, it'll take that off as well, but it'll take a few minutes longer. If I'm planning to repaint with, say, chrome paint then I leave the varnish on; if I'm going to paint some wheels matt black instead of chrome, I take it off before priming. People get very nervous around caustic soda, but it just requires the kind of basic safety precautions I was taught in chemistry lessons three decades ago -- you don't need a fume cupboard, and it's not going to kill you if you inhale a sniff, unlike some of the things we used in organic chemistry practicals... Use it if you feel comfortable doing so, but if you do, you'll never strip chrome with oven cleaner or bleach (or Coke) again... bestest, M.

It also turns off half the cylinders when they aren't needed, has direct fuel injection to allow higher compression ratios, variable valve timing, and a combustion path and chamber design that took 6 MILLION HOURS of computational fluid dynamics analysis to fine tune. It's an amazing piece of engineering, but your dad's 'vette V8 it ain't... ..and besides which, all of that achieves EPA figures of 17/29 mpg. And you wonder why large-capacity V8s aren't the solution to 21st-century gas mileage requirements? bestest, M.

Wow. That video is a real eye-opener. As far as I can see, the 2009 Chevy doesn't even get its windscreen cracked... That's another one for the "factor of three or four": deaths per billion auto miles travelled in 1951 = 70; deaths per billion miles 2010 = 17... bestest, M.

Crazy, isn't it? We had "oil price shocks" in 2007-8, 1990, 1979, 1974 and 1956. The one thing that's certain is that gas is going to cost 2-3 times what it does now some day in the next ten years. The last shock almost killed the US car industry. Talk about those who don't learn from history being condemned to repeat it... bestest, M.

Which website is blocked? bestest, M.

Nope -- the point is that manufacturers are addressing the problem by NOT building same-weight, same engine displacement vehicles. The 2015 Golf Bluemotion will carry four adults comfortably, safely and quickly on any journey the 1951 car could have made, with air conditioning, great sound system and no less than six cupholders into the bargain. I know the EPA estimates and manufacturer's drivers aren't real world -- my point was that the Mobil Economy Run isn't either, and that the manufacturer's figures, based on optimised driving to achieve maximum economy ARE more comparable with the Economy Run, which was also based on optimising driver's technique to achieve economy, and picking a journey with lots of long open highways and very little city traffic. The Honest John 56 mpg figure IS real world, gathered from people who own the car and drive it every day. So compare that to the SoCal Car Club 1951 numbers, and you STILL get a factor of 3 improvement. You want to see what happens when the engineers turn it up to 11 and REALLY focus on economy: http://www.volkswagen.co.uk/about-us/futures/xl1 That gets 120 mpg in the real world -- a factor of two more than a mainstream current car. I'd bet that we'll see 80-90 real world mpg from a practical mainstream small family car by 2020. And I'm really looking forward to seeing what the XL-1 Sport's like with a 200 BHP 1200 cc Ducati engine in it... http://blog.caranddriver.com/the-ducati-powered-vw-xl-sport-is-a-slice-of-ultralight-two-cylinder-awesomeness/ bestest, M.

I hardly think that's fair -- a bunch of cars on a long distance run, driven by people who were specifically trying to achieve high economy and who'd received coaching on how to do it achieved between 20 and 25mpg. If you're going to compare that with anything, it should be with the dedicated "motorway" section of the tests, where they are also trying to achieve economy. Today's VW 2 litre Bluemotion engine gets a Golf to recorded 78.5 mpg. That's 3-4 times the economy achieved in 1951. And yes, you can say that's not a "real world" number, but neither are the Mobil Economy Run figures -- where the report says "Driver training is the reason for the performance obtained during the economy run." If you want to compare real-world figures 1951 to today, the report kindly provides them. 1951 gives us 8.7mpg in urban traffic, up to 22.3 mpg on a free flowing highway. Lets call that about 15mpg in a combined cycle. According to Honest John's real world figures from real drivers, the Golf 1.6 Bluemotion gets about 56 mpg, day in day out. Again, that's a factor of MORE THAN 3. OK, so a factor of three improvement may not seem so much for a technology in these days of Moore's Law, but for mechanical engineering, personally I'd say that being three times more efficient is indeed coming a pretty long way... bestest, M.

Exactly. The 2-litre turbo diesel in my big comfortable Skoda has run a real world day to day usage average of just over 45 mpg over the last three years. And get it on a nice long motorway run at 65 or so, and it's nearer to 60 mpg. And that's with 170 BHP and 260 lbft of torque. That's three times the economy of a "not bad at all for a V-8", which is why auto makers want to find an alternative... bestest, M.

A fantastic kit of a uncompromisingly old school super car: What a beautifully engineered kit, especially around the "working" features. Literally the only place I used filler in the whole build was a small smear to fill the join line UNDERNEATH the black wing mirrors -- a real "because God can see" moment... There's a bit of extra wiring on the engine (the only bits you can see are the four wires from the cylinder heads disapperaing under the airbox, and then only if you look. The OOB engine is pretty good. Interior paint is mostly Vallejo and Citadel, plus Tamiya Rubber Black and NATO black. Exterior is Zero Paints Giallo Orion and Tamiya Rubber Black from a rattle can. The wing has a masked "carbon" texture, not that you'd notice in these pictures! The main thing I learned from this is that if you are spraying a two-layer colour (yellow base overlaid with gold "pearl"), then you need to keep the pieces physically as close together as you can while you spray, to make sure they come out an even colour. If you look carefully, the doors and airscoops are a very slightly darker yellow than the main body. I've distracted as much as possible from it with big black decals etc so it's not too noticeable, but it's a lesson I've hauled on board. bestest, M.

Thanks, guys. I'm calling this one done now: More and better pics in Under Glass when she's had a visit to the studio... bestest, M.

That's a shame -- I had hoped that they were needles moulded from a solid mix of grit n resin, so they'd stay "sharp" even as they wore away. In that case I'll stick with my hand carved nail files! bestest, M.

It was those needles I was trying to find! Where are they from, then? bestest, M.

Not sure what relevance the B-52 has to the discussion -- I didn't say that old technology couldn't be reliable. There are enough 1920s racing cars, 1940s warbirds and 1900s steam engines around in the UK for that to be a given, for me, not to mention the odd 150-year old wooden ship. You're the one who is claiming that NEW technology is bound to be less reliable because it's more complex -- where's the evidence of that from a B-52? Secondly, the 777 is pretty far from all-composite structure -- about 10%, IIRC. I covered aerospace for an engineering materials magazine in the early 90s, and saw the parts being tested at Boeing, so I know what goes into one. You want an ALL-composite airframe, you'll struggle to find one since the Beech Starship -- maybe the Rutan/Virgin White Knight... The 787 is up to about half composite materials. And of course, it's "yet to be seen" how long aircraft with significant amounts of composite material fly for -- they're designed to fly for a lot longer than they've been in service for. What I do know is that all the materials science, all the extensive fatigue testing to get the things certified over the last 20 years, and all the increasingly incredible computer modelling work that's been done on the materials and structures suggests that they have massively better resistance to corrosion and fatigue than any metal. ...and I wasn't thinking of the F-22 or F-35. If the Pentagon wants to procure aircraft designed to "fight the last war rather than the next one" that's its prerogative, and it's up to you as US taxpayers to tell them whether you want them to or not. Anyway, that's a doctrinal problem, not an engineering one. As for "serviced in combat conditions" -- what does that really mean? The track record of serviceability of Russian supplied MiG 29s around the world isn't anything to write home about, let alone in an actual combat scenario (if you can find one...). A Mig-35 is state of the art modern fighter with the latest Russian and Western electronics systems onboard, intended to compete (note, not "fight") with the Super Hornet, Rafale, Typhoon or Gripen. It's hardly an "austere" fighter for lengthy remote deployments in the field. I don't doubt that it's much more easily serviced in the field than an F-22, but then so's the Starship Enterprise, as has been repeatedly proven... Anyway, I'm not saying that older technology is unreliable. You're asserting that new technology inevitably is. None of those points provides any evidence for that... bestest, M.

Yeah, this new-fangled technology is so unreliable that they're designing airliners that will be flying 100 years after they entered service, and frontline fighter jets that'll operate for the same timespan that separated the Wright Brothers from the Bell X-1. All they'll get is software upgrades in that time. People don't get rid of two year old smartphones because they don't work, they get rid of them because fashion and "look at me" make them want to. You're not going to fix that with engineering, no matter how good it is. For a long time, American cars were designed around bad but straight roads, long distances, cheap gasoline, and the frontier ideal that anything that the good ol' boys at the local blacksmith couldn't fix was a pointless complexity. That past is another country; we do things differently now. And as someone once said, "If you ain't part of the solution, you're part of the problem", and I'm darn glad that Ford has decided to be part of the solution... bestest, M. (and no, I don't spend the whole day with my head under the hood; equally, I don't think that the fact that you guys don't spend your lives designing mobile phones means that you're unable to have an informed opinion about them, either...)

But the new engines are built with materials, engineering tolerances, build quality and full computer modelling of combustion, heat, flow etc that engineers even ten years ago couldn't dream of. That's why companies are increasingly happy to extend warranties out as far as seven or more years -- you don't think they'd do that if somehow things were becoming LESS reliable as technology progressed, do you? A turbo's not actually a complex device. And my brother in law's built enough of them over the years to know how dramatically things have moved on there, as well. These days, there's no argument for Keep It Stupidly Simple as an engineering principle... bestest,M .

There are some options: http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234971934-ultimate-sanders/ http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234971924-moulding-flash-sanders/ http://www.artcotools.com/sanding-sticks.html http://www.riogrande.com/Product/Half-Round-Sanding-Sticks/337593?Pos=2 http://www.ratomodeling.com/reviews/flory_sticks/ or even: http://www.walmart.com/ip/BMC-9pc-Assorted-Sized-Mix-Ombre-Colored-Glass-Manicure-Nail-Buffer-File-Set/39323720 With the nail tools, they are usually a sanding grit surface on top of some foam on top of a hard polythene base. You can cut and shape the ends to any size/width/point you want... In general a visit to the "Nail care" section of your favourite local chemist/druggist/pharmacy/superstore often turns up useful modelling tools! bestest, M.

Money's no object, eh....? In no particular order: 1. Series "1.5' Jaguar E-type coupe, "fine-tuned" by Eagle 2. Aston Martin DB4GT Zagato 3. Ferrari 250 SWB 4. Alfa Romeo 6C 1500 5. McLaren F1 6. Jaguar XKSS 7. Avro 720 Mirage 8. Lotus Elan S2 9. Audi RS6 Avant (gotta have at least one "practical" car) 10. Ferrari 458 Italia Speciale (honorable mentions to the Eagle Low Drag GT, 240Z, Triumph GT6 and Alfa Giulietta Sprint GTA) bestest, M.

I'm saying model. But probably not the one that's sitting in my cabinet... bestest, M.

...straight six sounds a LOT nicer than any gnarly old V8, anyway... just sayin' ;-P I'm not sure why there's such a fuss about "the last Ford V8/Ferrari V12/whatever"... Technology moves on. I doubt they sat around for long in the 20s lamenting the "last 12 litre four", or the "last of the real two-cylinders". Personally, I think it's staggering how quickly over the last ten years the power and performance of small turbocharged engines and hybrid drive systems have developed. No one's repeating Clarkson's claim from a couple of years ago that "the supercar is dead", are they? The P1, LaFerrari and 918 are the vanguard of a new kind of supercar that the new NSX and GT are following, and I say "more power to them!". I expect most supercars in the future to have small, high-revving fossil fuel powered generators driving electric powertrains with KERS and batteries, and if one day Jaguar manage to build one with microturbines instead of reciprocating engines, then "Allelujah" say I. The big difference from the 90s and earlier is that today, the things (power/weight, battery technology, energy recovery and management, maximum fuel efficiency, aero, active electronics...) that people learn about from building these hybrid hyper cars have direct relevance to mass market mainstream cars as well. You couldn't really say that about a carbon-tubbed wedge with a V12 that runs to 9000rpm, or an unaerodynamic lump propelled to stratospheric speed by a 7-litre V8... I think if you base your judgement of the quality/value/importance of a car largely on what the engine sounds like, you're missing a few other important points... bestest, M.

Assembly more or less finished (though I mustn't forget to add the little front quarter indicator repeaters or reflectors). The sharp-eyed will notice that I've turned the wing round, thanks to a timely heads-up from a fellow modeller. And yes, the doors do open, and stay open. Now to find out if they close! Clean it up, touch up the paint, and then time for decals... bestest, M.

Definitely Hasegawa. If you have luck, and the $$$, you can get this one: Otherwise, the standard curbside "early production" is still on sale in some places, and there's another curbside race version around that appears every now and then on auction sites. None of them have an LH drive dash, but at least the dash top is symmetrical, so the surgery to "flip it" is probably do-able, but certainly not easy. bestest, M.