Bugatti Fan

It's surprising (well maybe not) how many people when using a calculator miss key and get an answer wrong, but think it is correct ! Maybe it is a generation thing, but when I was at school we learned the Times Tables until it was ingrained in our memory. The point being it gave me a feel for numbers, so when using a calculator and use a wrong key I instinctively know if the answer does not look correct.

Amazing model. Was it displayed at IPMS SMW at Telford last year ? Looks a bit familiar with that figure of Nigel Mansell. If so, I had a good look at it close up of it is one and the same model. Incredible work and detailing done on it.

A December birthday. I have one, but it was always treated as a stand alone event from Christmas. My late mother in law's was on Christmas Eve, but we made sure it was also treated as an individual celebration.

No dedicated Motor Cycle section on this forum. A bit annoying having to wade through aircraft, afv, science fiction, figures and so on to find any threads about bikes. Big rigs have their own thread, but as they are not cars as the title of this forum implies, why should motor bikes be segregated? They are mainly civvy vehicles like big rigs after all !

For some of the older classics and newer exotics I find looking on auction house sites like Bonhams, Sothebys and Christies a good source. They put up sets of numerous pictures of each vehicle so a very good place to look for model research. They don't keep them up forever though, so if you see a set that you think will be useful, download them.

Never seen that Eastwood product advertised or sold in the UK. It anyone knows if it is, please advise where obtainable.

Nice one Matt !

Nice variety there Helmut. All good models !

I have read about and used a few 'chromes' over time. Some good and some poor. The only thing they ALL seem to have in common is that they are outrageously expensive ! Maybe, just maybe, some day someone will make a very durable and inexpensive chrome finish that would be the holy grail as far as modellers are concerned.

Yes Dann, It was fun to drive back in the day. The van. Very basic to say the least! Sliding door windows, a pull cord to open the door from inside and the instruments all clustered within one large dial. Two basic shelves under the dash I think, two big door pockets and that was it. Unlike the cars, the vans and pick up trucks are very rare, and restored examples fetch good money. The Riley Elf and Wolseley Hornet versions likewise. Original restored 1275 Cooper S cars are really sought after.

Nice model taking shape here. Reminds me of many customised minis I have seen. Back in the day there were many custom goodies for Minis over here in the UK. Never owned one but did hundreds of miles in a Van version with my job. Cab Driver posted about making a pseudo American built under licence Mini. When the Mini was first made, most American cars were the size of barges ! But hey! Anything goes on a model right?

You latched onto my last post whilst I was editing it Les. Not heard about a Cornish language, but who knows ?

That made interesting reading Les ! I was completely unaware of Doric. Is Doric similar to Gaelic in any way ? I often wonder if the Gaelic and Irish languages have some similarity but Welsh seems different altogether. Perhaps they all have Celtic origins whereas I think English might be of Anglo Saxon origin ? Also unaware of that other old Danish language being spoken by a very small island community on Foula. You learn something new every day.

Looks like Welsh. Mostly spoken in North Wales The UK and Ireland has 3 indigenous languages apart from English. Gaelic is spoken in parts of Scotland and the Western Isles. Irish is spoken more towards the West coast of Ireland.

Michael. Does your dentist drive a Ferrari by any chance?

How about a laugh ? Yep. That's the one Bill ! John. Quite philosophical and I guess what you are saying is that the thread got locked as a result of misuse ?

Minor irk ! Didn't there used to be a 'Funnies' thread on here to post jokes on ? if so, what happened to it ? Deleted ? Locked ?

This build has shown just what can be done with that old Autokits white metal kit that dates back to the sixties. Many of those very old white metal kits get overlooked a bit with the plethora of resin kits out there that became more popular as a manufacturing medium for car kits. The Autokits range does have some very interesting 1/24th scale classic cars in its range, as does the Wills Finecast range, both being absorbed into the South Eastern (ex Wills) Finecast company many years back. A company named Squires in Bognor Regis, Sussex, UK has acquired the ranges fairly recently and are now still available from them as far as this writer is aware.

Happy New Year to all our readers (and writers) !

Wishful thinking. Mk1 Jaguar E Type Convertible in 1/12th scale. By Tamiya no less. Dream on !!!

The late Gerald Wingrove's books The Complete Car Modeller 1 and 2 have been mentioned on this forum before. The CCM books are specifically about passing his techniques on for others to benefit from. But there are two others that I would like to make people aware of. The Model Cars of Gerald Wingrove, a large coffee table book with mainly photos of his models he made up to a certain point in his career. Not much text in this book, being more of a photographic tour de force of his completed works. The Art of The Aufomobile in Miniature by Gerald and Phyllis Wingrove. A much later publication, again chock full of photographs but this time supported by much more text about the original cars and about the models themselves. I have both, and can say that the latter has more in the way of information about each model. As Gerald tends to be associated with car modelling, he was also a proficient ship modeller too! I'm fact his first book was about building a ship model that was published by Model and Allied Publications. 'Not a lot of people know that!' To quote a well known Michael Cane phrase. He built a huge shipyard diorama that is the centre piece at Bucklers Hard Nautical Museum in Hampshire UK that was commissioned by the late Lord Montague of Beaulieu. The shipwrights cottages and slipways are still there to see adjacent to the museum itself. The diorama is absolutely breathtaking, having visited it some years back.

Bob has summed it all up quite eloquently in the first sentence of his last post.

I think that Bill put something up about stupid internet questions and answers some time back. Someone asked on a Q&A site named Quorum I think. 'Why do the British speak English, an American language?' You just could not make it up! Whoever asked that question must be lacking a bit in the geography department !

I have seen a number of the late Cherry Hill's wonderful model engineering masterpieces over the years at the British Model Engineering and Modelling Exhibition. Her models are exquisite and finished to a very high standard, even more so as she excelled in making her models to a smaller scale than most model engineers work in, a number of which are now on permanent display at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in london. There is a book about her work named Cherry's Model Engines, published by Crowood Press in the UK.

Some people unfortunately get a bit too wound up about things that in the wider picture are really quite trivial and unimportant.