Bugatti Fan

Looking at Rob Hall's post, the photo he included of Lady Penelope's car from the Thunderbirds movie was interesting to see. The original car resides at a UK motor museum at Gaydon in Warwickshire. It is Ford badged and huge!

The tired old 1/25th scale Revell E type Jaguar that has been re re re re issued many times since the sixties is a good example of an offering from clapped out tooling. But just recently Revell Germany have issued a completely new retooled kit of this iconic car in 1/24th scale that will probably be very good, and much less expensive than if Tamiya did it.

Self driving automated cars.........I believe that at least one pedestrian has already been killed by on it these! Not convinced! Also, if the controlling mainframe is cyber attacked......Chaos! Plug in electric cars? Surely we need the investment put into generating more widespread power first. What happens if everyone buys plug in electrics? Over here in the UK the big thing is renewab!e energy sources and taking out coal fired power stations too soon as well as one of two of our nuclear stations needing to be replaced in the interim. It is all very well government trying to meet emission targets, but one has to be realistic and get enough of the renewables up and running first. Flogging electric cars now is putting the cart before the horse at present. I am waiting for the day when everyone plugs their electric cars into the grid and all the lights go out! Toyota have the right idea by making self charging hybrids in the interim. Electrics are alright for buzzing about town but simply do not have the range for any distance motoring. It is not as though you can just top up from a gallon can go keep yourself going, is it?

This might be worth a try as it worked well when I tried it. First coat was white automotive primer (aerosol), When dry it was rubbed VERY gently with worn wet n dry, just enough to take away the powdery feel that you get with primer paint. after dusting off I sprayed with an aerosol polished metal finish. I let this dry thoroughly and went over it with Johnsons Klear ( I think it has been renamed Future now). This dulled the shiny finish a bit but left a hard coat on the part when it had dried. Now for the finishing touch I used C1's polishing powder and it buffs upwell to a high shine. The beauty of this stuff is that you can handle it afterwards.

Correction!!! In my last post 'creates a deal' should read 'creates a seal'. Sorry about the typo.....Should have checked!

Two angle poise lamps on my bench with 100w equivalent white LED bulbs does it for me!

Marvellous writer. Read many of his books and sad to hear of his passing. Did not know that he had a collection of classic cars though.

A 'Lazy Susan' turntable for cake decorating might fit the bill, and be cheaper than a Tamiya one.

Rather than getting ready punched whitewalls invest in an Olfa Circle Cutter that is a little tool for cutting out circles for artwork. It is used like a compass and can be set to different diameters so you can cut whatever diameters you want. Just make sure that you cut the outer circle first when cutting a whitewall. As there will be a point mark in the middle a series of outers can be cut and then a series of inners by relocating on the mark for each.

Fantastic model! I will have to arrange a mortgage for the MFH kit I would like!

A headache at the daunting thought of reading nearly 25k of replies to this thread! Lol!

Having looked originally at the MPC Rolls Royce, Darracq and Lanchester on a small tablet I could not make out that they were customisable kits. Although Airfix and MPC had dealings, the original Airfix kits were not custom cars. Do not know if MPC used the Airfix kits and stuck custom goodies in the box or not, or whether they were totally different kits altogether.

Cruella De Ville ( played by the Bunny Boiler Actress Glenn Close) in 101 Dalmations actually drove a car in that movie named the Panther de Ville that looked like a parody of a Bugatti Royale. It had what looked like a UK reg no DEV 1 L on it. Incidentally Panther also made a custom twin steer 6 wheeler way back in the 70's I think. These esoteric customs are a bit way out for me, but, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Just recently I started to use some C1 polishing powder. What I did was prime the part with grey automotive primer followed by a craft shop shiny chrome from an aerosol. When this had dried thoroughly I went over it with Johnson's Klear (now Future) floor sealer. This hardened off and dulled the chrome finish a bit underneath. I then buffed up the parts using the C1 polishing powder. This gave me a polished aluminium finish that I was trying to achieve. What is more is that when the C1 is buffed up it is quite resilient to handling unlike many other products. C1 claim that you can apply deals straight on to it. If I go for a chrome finish I will try gloss black over the grey primer and use the C1 on this and see what happens next time I use it.

Scott, the Lanchester, Rolls Royce and Darracq kits look like the old Airfix ones that were sold as bagged lots say back in the 50''s.

Getting back on track to let peeves..........Spending loads of time and effort modifying a kit only to find that what you have been modifying is due to be released as a kit!

So far the conversation has been about the marker pens and a good number of suggestilons have been put forward. Have any of you guys used this ink through an air brush? Interested to know what experience anyone has doing this? A number of years ago I had a Rotring technical pen that was refillable, normally with their black ink. I wonder if the Molotow chrome ink would be thin enough to use in one of these. Not sure if they are actually made any more as so many disposable fline line black pens are on the market now.

I have a 2mms pen that seems ok. It is about a year old so I will be looking now to see if the performance deteriorates. It is does, I will probably look at using a refill as it can probably be sealed better than the pen. Just recently I had to clean off a build up where the cap slides onto it. I have read that it goes on well by air brushing. I would guess that it would also be ok for picking out fine detail with a fine artists paint brush.

I have a copy of Ralph Stein's book The Great Cars that I bought new way back when. It was the first of many reference books I have acquired over the years. A book I have that I would recommend is titled 'Inside 100 Cars'. The whole book is devoted to cutaway drawings by well known technical illustrators.

You are absolutely right Peter! I can understand why you had a chuckle about the number plates of rather the lack of them. This does not detract from Tomasz making a superb model from an elderly kit, and full credit to him for all the work he has put into it

The 'insistence' by Bentley on the number plate change is probably because since the original kit was produced back in the 70's Airfix have probably become subject to a licencing agreement to make the kit. Just like many other model kit manufacturers are being forced to by corporate bean counters (accountants and lawyers) in these days of corporate litigation.

They were doing the Jaguar E Type as a part series recently. I wonder how a Duesenberg SJ Phaeton would go down? Would make one really impressive model.

I have got on well over the years with EMA's own Plastruct liquid cement for bonding most plastics apart from polythene.

The word 'players' now reads 'plated' in my post. I have corrected it with the edit function, but it is still incorrect in Skip's post where he copied my first original over with this typo in it. With regard to the change of registration number. British registration numbers are owned solely by the DVLA (Driver and Vehicle Licencing Authority) so UK government owned, and not by any individual such as a Bentley executive. Ralph Lauren's blower retains the UR6571 number plate that I would guess he keeps registered with the DVLA although the car is not in the UK. When a car is either scrapped or becomes unregistered the DVLA can transfer the number to any other vehicle. There is a healthy market in the 'sale' of personal registration numbers in the UK, but the buyer is actually only buying the right to use that number on a particular car and not buying the number itself outright. A Bentley executive may have requested or sponsored Airfix to use another Reg. No. but certainly could not dictate its use. Airfix as I said before would have better used the change to sort out the glaring error of the position of the flying B radiator badge instead of changing a number plate. The short chassis blower UR6571 was the car that owner Neil Corner who at that time made tha car available to Airfix to research for the kit back in the 70's. The car was sold on to Anthony Bamford of JCB and subsequently later to Ralph Lauren. I heard that Airfix were planning to make a 1/12 scale kit of the Rolls Royce Silver Ghost in the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu as a follow on to the Bentley but the project was shelved.

De Agostini are serving the 1/8 scale fraternity quite well albeit very expensively when you work out how much you have to shell out by the time all the bits are collected to build one!. The Ford GT looks good, but I think that I will look at the Trumpeter or the new Meng kits to detail up. 1/12 sca!e is quite a nice size without being overly big to display. Howevef, I did see the Bond DB5 that a friend of mine made up in 1/8 scale from DAg and it was most impressive I have to say.