mrm

Thank you, Rich. Thank you, Chris Thanks, Wolf. Yeah, there is no cruizin' in the left lane in Germany, like here. There is no driving discipline in US.

Thank you for the kind words, Mark. I have a soft spot for Koenig Specials too. Right after the Iron Curtain tumbled in '89, my family immigrated in Switzerland. My grandfather had done that back in '69 and my dad has a half brother that is Swiss and only a couple years older than me. His dream was to work with military helicopters, which in Switzerland were unicorns at the time and to get such a job was quite the achievement. Fresh out of high school, he's plan was to get a job with as a mechanic with some high tech machines and he got hired in an exotic car dealership owned by his buddy's dad. He brought me to their showroom, where they had an all white Ferrari 308 by Koenig with a single turbo. He talked a lot of trash about the car, complaining that it is a poorly made plastic junk. I was shocked, because in my teenage mind, coming fresh from the eastern block where outdated soviet BLAH_BLAH_BLAH_BLAH was the norm, this white Ferrari was the automotive equivalent of the Millenium Falcon. We moved to live in Lausanne, which is in the French part of Switzerland, away from my uncle, who lived in Wohlen near Zurich, which is in the German region of Switzerland. In Lausanne, by the lake was located a very posh hotel and Ferraris and Lambos were a common site. The little Ferrari service in a near by side street helped with getting familiar with prancing horses, as the mechanics actually enjoyed my enthusiasm and company and let me loiter around the cars in the shop. And then my dad took us to the Geneva Auto Salon, which was a couple hours drive from us. Then I saw the Koenig booth and my jaw hit the floor. The crowd around his display was quite thick, but I managed to elbow my way through to the front to try to get a picture of the insane 1000 horse power, widest car ever, wide body, Testarossa based, twin turbo Koenig Specials Competition Evolution. To my disbelief, Willy König (he added the "e" to his name to differentiate his company from other tuners with the same last name as his) showed up and actually picked me and asked me if I would like to come on the stage for a closer look at the car. I got to sit in it, which at 15 years of age almost made me pee myself with excitement and to top it off I got a brochure, a poster and a little Lapel pin of his KS logo. That lapel pin mysteriously disappeared some years later, the poster has gone in the trash long ago and I am not sure if any of my pictures have survived. I am aware of few twin turbo Testarossas in US, but none of them were Koenig Specials. It would be interesting to find out if any Competitions are still in US. Most of them have found their way to Japan, where they are crazy about Anything Koenig Specials.

Thank you Glen. Thanks Mike

So, what happened with the Pagani...... Well, I got a little overdone on the carbon fiber and started seeing everything in striped patterns, so I needed a little break. Then I needed to paint the body panels and I wanted a little blue stripe following the curve on the bottom of the doors/hood, like on so many real ones. I decided to overcomplicate things with the paint, perhaps because I tend to overthink most things. My wife even bought me a sign long time ago to make fun of me, which I found really funny and keep on my desk. LOL So I first painted the center of the rear hood black, then covered it with carbon, then clear coated it and masked it. Then sprayed Tamiya white primer. For the Nth time I reaffirmed I hate Tamiya white primer with a passion, as it almost ruined my part. So everything got sanded with the carbon still being masked off and sprayed with Tamiya grey primer, which for the Nth time I reaffirmed I love. Next I sprayed the bottom edges with blue and then masked it off. Finally the parts received a coat of the base coat of Bianco Fuji, followed by Tamiya Pearl White. The idea here was to leave the white to be the raised paint coat over everything else. Because I don't want any raised edges between the colors or between the paint and the carbon fiber, I will most likely need few coats of clear with sanding in between them to level everything off. So I wanted the carbon to be the lowest, kinda like a recess getting filled with clear to exaggerate the carbon effect. Also, if I went a little heavy on the clear and if it "pooled" slightly on the bottom edges, it would just fill in the lover coat of the blue stripe. At least that was the plan. What actually happened was that the masking tape scored the clear over the carbon, which freaked me out and made me walk away from the model in anger. After a day of cooling off, I very carefully wet sanded the clear over the carbon smooth (which I still don't know if it is not going to "ghost" after the next coat of clear), just to find out that I don't like how the blue lines on the hood and doors align. Mask the carbon AND the white on the doors up to shoot a slightly corrected line of blue on the bottom edge, just to find out that now it dried just a shade darker than on the hoods. So mask up the everything AGAIN and reshoot the blue to match the doors. At this point the blue stripe is as dark as the blue carbon, instead of being a contrasting brighter blue, which was the whole idea of it, rendering it pointless. But, there is no way in hell I am redoing the whole thing. At least everything matches and the lines are good. It is staying the way it is. This brought me to the front hood and the light clusters which are at least partially carbon on the real cars. For the life of me I could not make decals line up the way I wanted and look realistic on the lights. After three failed attempts I gave up and decided to seek alternative solutions. Through trial and error I found out that the best solution would be to paint the carbon on by hand, by first painting the clusters gun metal and then painting black "stripes" with a fine point marker. It actually works quite good, except that at that point I was left with scars and spots of unremovable decal fragments on the edges of the light pods, so I had to respray pearl white to repair them. So, round two of the paint saga begins, dealing with the lights while the final coats of Rosso Barchetta dry on the Maranello and I tackle the carbon on the door panels and some other details. Hoping everything goes well, so tonight I can lay some clear on everything saving some time and airbrush cleaning, which is my most hated chore. Stay tuned.

It is amazing how little is needed to make a part look special in a car. No matter in real life or in scale. A simple piece of trim can make all the difference. For that purpose, I took some pieces of solder and slightly flattened them by rolling the handle of my Exacto knife over them. Then the flattened pieces were curved by the seats and glued with 5 min epoxy. Tiny little detail with a big impact... The luggage shelf received some Mollotow treatment together with the window cranks. and the handbrake. The floors were painted and the ashtray received some BMF. The shifter is a cloths pin, not even painted. Now we have a complete interior, which with little extra detail is miles ahead of what the model came with.

After the first coat of primer some things were noticed and addressed. The raised emblem on the front hood had to go and the side markers were removed and holes drilled on their places. Then everything got sprayed with a fresh coat of primer. The family consensus was that the Rosso Barchetta would suit the car best. Few things were taken into consideration. The scale, was determined, would take away from the effect of a TDF Blue paintjob. Blue was the strongest contender together with the Ferrari red and the Barchetta red. The Rosso Barchetta ultimately got chosen, because it is a very classic color that suits the car well, goes great with all brown/beige/cream colors and would look really cool with the BBS LM wheels. The red also had pretty much the same things going for it, but what tipped the scales was that Rosso Corsa is the the classic red that looks good on every Ferrari, while Rosso Barchetta is definitely not the color for any of the other Ferraris I would like to build. And I don't like repeating colors on my builds. So the body received couple of dry coats of Rosso Barchetta, which after about four hours drying time were lightly sanded to reveal some tiny bumps and imperfections in the primer plus a couple of scratches. You can see them on the picture- the grey dots on the roof and the hood are not dust. It would have been really annoying to get the whole thing painted and cleared and then while polishing it, a grey dot to pop up in the middle of the roof. Meanwhile, I discovered that the door cards are 100% wrong, as they are the 575M design and not the 550 Maranello's. The two cars are extremely similar, almost identical. The decal sheet has decals for both and I would not be surprised if Fujimi pulled a fast one and included the 575 door cards in both. I have to admit that , when I have bought this kit I am pretty sure I did buy a 575M kit as well, which was built and later trashed. This was years ago and altho I doubt it, there is a slight possibility I had mixed up the doors of the two. Anyway, the door panels have a very poor unsatisfactory detail anyway, so I was going to rework them regardless. On the upside, the 550 Maranello's door panels are simpler and will be easier to replicate. The body is about to receive a couple wet and final coats of paint today and with some luck, perhaps its first clear coat tonight, together with some Pagani panels. Thanks for looking and stay tuned....

Pretty sharp build.

The 550 Maranello also starts a trend in Ferrari production that is still going strong 'till today. That is to release a new model and then follow it with a limited edition variant based on it. Such was the case with the 550 Barchetta. Now that is a name associated with the car that put Ferrari on the map by winning LeMans - the 166MM. The little open car was nicknamed "Barchetta", which in Italian means "little boat". Ferrari Took the roof off the 550, chopped the windshield and called the exclusive series of only 448 cars "550 Barchetta". FERRARI 550 BARCHETTA PININFARINA - Mattel Elite

You like Diablos? There's more coming. Here are a couple of Roadsters by AutoArt

Beautiful model. Altho, I’m almost sure that is a 575M. Which in real life is an improvement over the 550 Maranello in pretty much every way. Mechanically that is. As far as looks go, I really prefer the 550.

Thank you for the suggestion, Perry. Ferrari has many blue colors that are gorgeous. However Scuro is not one of them. It is a nice dark metallic, but it is a Lamborghini color. I am 99.9% sure that the beauty on your picture is wearing TDF Blue (Tour de France). I have this color and I was thinking about it. I put the color options on the table and asked the family to vote. So far it’s going towards Rosso Barchetta. with interior like this or black on cream TDF Blue on black and cream, the classic Rosso Corsa on black and beige, Griggio Titanio on black and red, Black on black and british green and Rosso Barchetta on black and tan/cream were the discussed options.

Thank you. for me, personally, this is one of the most beautiful cars Ferrari has ever made.

Hey! I even managed a fresh coat of primer and a mockup before dinner. Together with correcting a little white pearl on the PH. Now I have to finally make up my mind on the color. I'm leaning towards classic Rosso Corsa, aka "Ferrari Red".

I couldn't help but notice, the ripple effect my Huayra build created on here. All sorts of exotic models found their way back on builders benches. Some beauties were shown for all to admire and inspire. And all this is great to see. That's what I love about this forum. It created quite a ripple effect on me too, however. I started it to take a break from the million Street Rod projects and ideas I had and to shut my wife up, who teased me that I can't build anything but old Fords. ? However at one point I needed a brake from it too and it started raining for what seemed like forever, which kinda pulls the brake on my painting. So I looked for small projects. Some models that needed to be finished or other stalled work. This brought me to my Koenig Specials Porsche, which has been sitting with no mirrors and wipers in my case forever. While I looked everywhere for the parts, I discovered models and projects I had long forgotten about. Mainly how many Japanese Ferrari kits I had. The Ferrari F430 is almost finished. The interior is all done, suspension, engine...it's a roller. The body is also painted what looks like Tamiya gunmetal. Not a fan of the color as of now and not sure what I want to do with the model. The 430 Spider and the Scuderia are untouched and so is the F12 plus a couple of Daytonas and few Revell Ferraris which are not in the picture. Not to mention the half dozen F1 cars. One model that caught my eye tho was the Ferrari 550 Maranello. Perhaps because I just posted pictures of my diecast ones in that thread. Or because this car has always had a special place in my heart. Either way, when I opened it, I found a couple of the interior parts glued together, the really simple chassis plate and suspension assembled and the body primed. These models are very simple and have no engine or chassis detail. Their interiors are not the most detailed either, but with some persuasion and love they can be made to look really good. Not that I needed another project (tell me you haven't been there ?) but I decided to give this Ferrari a go and perhaps I could time it just right and clear coat its body together with the Huayra's body panels, which drove me absolutely mad - a topic for the Huayra's thread. The plan is to replace the seats with the optional sport seats from the F430 Spider kit. And use the set of wheels and tires from a long gone Tamiya Porsche GT2, hat was patiently awaiting a worthy project in the parts box. Can't beat BBS classic LMs. First thing I did was fill in the holes for the license plate in the front bumper. Front plates just ruin the design on some cars in my opinion and model manufacturers should stop making their models with holes in the front bumper. Next, as it is my habit, I rescrabed all the hood and door lines. I am not a fan of using panel liner on painted cars as I think that most of the time it looks unnatural. I would much ratter scrape some plastic and then let the paint and it's light reflections do the job. Like on the real thing. Fujimi did not even bother making the panel lines under the rear window and the bottom of the trunk. They just did the side lines, so I had to correct that. That's when I found out I am missing the side mirrors. I have no idea how or why, but the only thing missing are the side mirrors. I vaguely remembered seeing some mirrors in one of my compartment boxes I use for storing loose small details. I don't think they are from the Maranello, but they are very, very close. Actually, I know for a fact, they are not from this Ferrari, but either way, I am going to use them. Because unless you are Sergio Pininfarina you can't really tell. And he's dead. So, I drilled the mirrors I got and installed some brass pins to make them easier and stronger to glue. They will do, me thinks.....

So, one of the ripples from my Huayra build and the subsequent braake from it is that this model parked at my bench again. I don't know what is it with this build, but it just does not want to get finished. It's been fighting me forever. It was sitting in the same case with the Koenig Specials Porsche waiting to be done. After all it only needs exhaust, tail lights, steering wheel and the interior to be glued in place. And that nightmarish roof. I lost track how many times I sanded that thing because I didn't like something on it or the number of times I broke that little strip of plastic under the rear window. Well, I'm determined that August will not end without this little thing being 100%.

The classic red on black and tan 550 Maranello holds a sentimental value to me, but my favorite color combo for this car is definitely silver on black and red. Manufacturer is UT again.

The new wheels, which I ordered from BBR For those of you that don't know, BBR are an Italian high end resin company, which makes ready models in 1:43 and 1:18 scales. They don't sell kits and they don't sell parts. With the exception of these wheels/tires, which are just fantastic. Polished aluminum with photoetched spokes and perfectly plated knockoffs with finely printed Borani logos on them. Polished aluminum with photoetched spokes and perfectly plated knockoffs with finely printed Borani logos on them. The billet aluminum air valves are a nice touch. Compared to the old plastic wheels on the right. The stock suspension and hubs did not fit the new wheels. So I cut the stub off. Made attachment pins from aluminum tubing. And paint detailed the brakes with Mollotow marker and some Tamiya paint. Now it looks waaaayyyyyy better.

Thank you. I don’t necessarily agree about the sealed diecast metal being better. Most quality diecast models have proper hinges.

The Countach was followed by the Diablo. A completely new design, looking considerably more modern, but not much different car underneath the body. LAMBORGHINI DIABLO - AutoArt

Thank you. I don’t even recall how I end up having this color. But I figured this model was perfect platform to try it on. That I do remember.

Thank you Scott

The interior was all cleaned up, received few minor plastic strip additions, the seats were sanded down and properly assembled and everything was primed. And then everything was painted red.

I can't really judge how much interest this generates, but I am going to continue to unravel Ferrari's family tree. So the Ferrari 575M (which stands for Modificata) is an evolution of it's predecessor the 550 Maranello. The 550 is a very special and important model in Ferrari's line up. Back in the '60s the 365 GTB4 Daytona (which actually has never been the official name of the car) was King of the hill. It was Ferrari's flagship model and believe it or not, faster and better in pretty much every way than Lamborghini's ground braking Miura. However that last car changed the face of the proverbial supercar for ever. As the rear engined wedge shape became the standard image that popped up in everyone's head when supercar was mentioned. Ferrari followed suit to please the money people. So the following flagships became the various 365/512s, followed by three generations of Testarossas. The 550 Maranello was the return of the classic Ferrari with its V12 motor in the front of the car, making for a great new Grand Touring flagship. It's design by Pininfarina also evoked the shape of classic Ferraris of the past, incorporating many details from the Daytona and the 250 GTO. To make things even more special for me, I was living in Chicago at the time and was at Continental Motorsport when the first one was delivered tot he dealership. it was all red with the classic black on tan leather interior and it was so beautiful that it hurt. To this day Ferrari's flagship models have kept the 550's formula - front engined V12 Grand Tourers with classic Ferrari shapes of the past. Several model makers make a 1:18 diecast model of it. Bburago, Maisto, Hot Wheels..... But the best of them all is the now defunct UT models. These can still be found for a reasonable prices and worth every penny. FERRARI 550 MARANELLO - UT Models

Thank you Trevor.

I had to take a little break from my Pagani build for two reasons. First of all it did not stop raining for few days and so I don't lose my mind. So I could not stay idle and had to work on something else and I looked in my case with finished models, where they share space with some rojects in various stages of finish, awaiting their turn. Most are Hot Rods, but since I'm in the exotic mood, this little Porsche caught my eye It has been 95% finished for the longest time, but it needed its mirrors, door handles - one of which I knew I broke in half, it's windshield wipers, exhaust tips and license plate. That last item is a necessety, because it looks mighty awful without it. The problem is that this model was almost finished over three years ago, before my move from Colorado and I had no idea where all those parts were. So, I spent the better half of two days going through boxes and looking in weird places to see what I find. Miraculously I found the micro pieces of the broken door handle and the good one, both painted in matching yellow, together with the mirrors and wipers. The craziest ting was that I found the decal sheet in some completely irrelevant box, which made a huge difference for the dash and added the windshield banner. The interior mirror came from the parts box. The e-brake and the shifter were found too in their plain white plastic. The license plate came from the parts box also and the exhaust tips which are probably forever lost, I cut from aluminum tubing. To sum it up: It's a Fujimi Koenig Specials Porsche 911 Turbo Paint is PPG original Lamborghini tri-coat, called Giallo Horus. The seats came from a Fujimi Koenig Specials Testarossa Spider, which got accidentally destroyed for the most part, so it donated some of its organs. The belts are artist's tape, which was painted gloss black. I would normally not do gloss on belts, but I needed contrast with the flat black. When the interior is enclosed it looks perfect. The license plate and it's decal is I believe from Revell's Audi R8. So, except for the seats, it's basically a box stock build. I hope you like it.