Harry P.

Ditto x3. That is the Batmobile. The rest are hideous monstrosities.

No, the photos are accurate. It's yellow, all right! I know, not your usual subdued, proper, "dignified" British colour. But remember... I'm the same guy who painted a Jaguar brown! British tradition apparently doesn't quite register with me...

BTW... that's it for me as far as building for the next several months. I don't build during the summer... too much other stuff going on, and the weather is just too nice to be indoors building models. But I'll be back to building once the weather gets cold again, and my next project will be this same subject... but at twice the size. I built this model as "practice," to work out details and problems and figure out exactly how to build a woody from scratch. I'll take what I learned from this project and transform the Pocher "Star of India" RR into a superdetailed 1/8 scale woody this fall.

Here is my scratchbuilt Rolls Royce "shooting brake," used by English men of means to pack up their buddies, their dogs, and their shotguns, and go on a hunt for pheasant, quail… whatever. This is the kit I started with, the Entex 1937 RR Phantom III. The body from the cowl back is completely scratchbuilt of basswood and birch veneer. On the interior, I scratchbuilt the rear floor and the rear seat, which folds flat for more storage area. The shotguns in the gun compartment are also scratchbuilt of styrene tubing, basswood, silver solder, and various other bits and pieces. The chrome trees were useless; the chrome plating was flaking off and satin finish, all chrome parts were stripped and chrome done with Spaz Stix. My version of a "shooting brake" isn't a model of any one specific car, but my own design, based on reference photos I had (plus a whole disk full of reference photos from my buddy Skip Jordan). These cars were custom bodied, so my design is just as "accurate" as any real shooting brake. Way too much to list here as far as what I did to build it, so if you're interested in all the details, a huge step by step WIP can be found here. On with the photos. Comments, criticisms, critiques, and questions are all welcome.

I think that about covers the building process. Next stop: Under Glass!

Next, I took some vinyl material I have that looks very much like leather, and cut out the fronts and backs for each side mount... I glued these discs onto the edges of the strips that surround the sidemounts, and added decorative piping around the circumference using scale model ship rigging... Finally the covered mounts were painted flat black.

Just about the last piece of the puzzle... the side-mounted spare tires. I raided one of my Phantom II kits for the wheel covers I used on this Phantom III. However, the Phantom II had only four covers (no side mounts)... so I had to either A: go with open, spoked wheels for the sidemounts, B: scratchbuild two wheel covers to match the ones on the road wheels, or C: go with fully covered side mounts. I thought mixing wheel covers and open wheels would look weird, and I couldn't think of an easy way to scratchbuild the covers, so I took the easy way out and went with fully covered spares. First I glued the kit's side mount halves together, but without the chrome trim ring in the middle, because I wanted them to be narrower to account for the thickness of the material I would use to make the covers and yet still fit into the fender openings. Then I cut strips of card stock to match the thickness of the spare covers... ... and glued these strips into loops that would just slip over the spare tire covers... Then I glued a wheel front and back into each cover to give me a "center" for the sidemount brackets to attach to.

This week's car is a 1989-91 Autech Stelvio. http://bringatrailer.com/2014/09/14/one-of-200-1991-autech-zagato-stelvio/ Who got it right: Matt Bacon jaymcminn Ace-Garageguy Baduick 13

No way!

Oh believe me, it was a challenge in 1/16 scale too!

What's truly useless is the apostrophe in "posts."

Congratulations to you on a job well done. Now... how much did the wife's getting her hair done at Harrod's set you back? Quite a bit, I'll bet!

Like Bruce said... hundreds. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_automobile_manufacturers_of_the_United_States And that's just in the USA! Imagine all the other countries in the world, and the total may run into the thousands.

Noted. When I do the 1/8 version, that's the way it'll be.

Another question... rear bumper or no?

Also got the lift gate installed. This was hard. There is only a very thin frame of wood with very small glue surfaces to hold it all together... but I managed to install it without breaking any of the corner joints (of course, in real life those corners would be mortise and tenon joints, a very strong joint... but in this scale that would be impossible; the corners are simple butt joints). Should I continue those vertical pieces up through the lift gate, giving the illusion of a three-piece rear glass? Or just keep that rear glass as all one piece?

Here's the gun drawer... it opens up, then the cover that keeps everything in place flips up to reveal the shotguns, I used a strip of aluminum duct tape for the "hinge," in real life this would probably have been a piano hinge. There's no latch on the cover, I guess I'll have to simulate one with some bits of aluminum duct tape...

Got the tailgates and taillights installed... The hunters can fold down the upper tailgate, and if they brought their folding chairs with them, they can sit and have some tea and scones...

A little tweaking of the mortises and I was good to go.

Spaz Stix was originally marketed for use painting RC bodies, I think. They're made of Lexan. But as far as I know there's only one Spaz Stix.

I have to admit it took some finessing to get it there. A little reshaping of the hood panels with sandpaper. Not much, just a little. Usually when you're dealing with a kit from this era with four individual hood panels that all have to be hinged together, inevitably there are misalignments–sometimes big misalignments. In this case, just a little sanding was all that was needed.

The interior door panels are just plain black... very utilitarian. Not even map pockets! I assume that the hunting party knows where they're going. Now that I have the window cranks, door handles, etc. installed, the next step is a big one: gluing the door posts to the body!

Who doesn't like a good woodworking pun?