Zoom Zoom

Thanks Bill! It certainly was an "oddball" in terms of design, but it's a blast to drive. I got a chance to put a few miles on one for a charity event. The M Roadster is even more fun if you like the wind in your hair They always have been a relatively rare sight; especially the Z3 coupes (the lower HP/non "M" versions). The new M Coupe is drop-dead gorgeous IMHO. Finally a new BMW that looks "right" with none of the electronic gizmos like the SMG transmission or I-Drive that are ruining other BMW's even if you can stomach the odd styling details.

Way cool 8) Can't wait to see more of this.

Thanks! I'd love to tell you what secret I had making them look so good, but I hang my head in shame... They were prepainted and looked too good to bother to refinish. The centercaps are the stickers from the kit (no decals, just stickers... :roll: ) carefully trimmed out so they look like decals. The entire kit was prefinished like an AMT Pro Finish kit, I stripped the factory paint from the body w/91% rubbing alcohol and painted over the interior two-tone blue/black to this car's black and white theme using Tamiya flat black and white primer. The instrument sticker is quite accurate, and the center stack sticker is also very accurate, I had to carefully remove it before repainting the stack itself. With the thick glass in place you really miss a lot of the interior detail. The blue plastic did bleed through the white primer a bit, so I applied a mid-coat of Zinsser B-I-N primer/sealer under the next primer and finish coats. When it's dry it sands as nicely as any primer.

Thanks! The trademark flag-style decals used by BMW on some of their race cars were "borrowed" by the tuner crowd long after BMW had been using them :roll:

This model depicts the last of the first-generation M Coupes made at BMW USA’s Spartanburg, SC plant. BMW has started production of a sexy new M Coupe based on the Z4. The final three cars off the Z3 production line prior to changeover to the Z4 were a red M Roadster, white M Coupe, and blue Z3. When I saw this M Coupe at the factory museum called “The Zentrum†I realized this was how I wanted to build my 2002 M Coupe kit. The kit was made by Dragon (an update of their M Roadster) and was sold by Revell in Europe; it's always been scarce/hard to find in the US-I got this from a friend in Europe, though they do show up occasionally on Ebay. It’s not a particularly good kit as it’s got a number of sketchy details and engineered glitches but it’s sufficient for a basic curbside. I disassembled the prepainted body and painted it Tamiya Pure White, and designed and laser printed the trademark BMW flag decals for the car. I also lowered the ride height a bit and made a sunroof by simply painting that area of the roof with Tamiya gloss black. I scratchbuilt the rear license plate holder, the plate reads “Proud To Call South Carolina Homeâ€. The basic body and printed decals: The 1:1 on display at the BMW Zentrum:

I think AM is planning to do the roadster.

It would be great; but if Tamiya did it in 1/12 it would end up being diecast. Actually I'm surprised that someone doesn't offer the SLR in 1/12 diecast (maybe they do?) since the Enzo and McLaren F1 were done in that scale for collectors. Though personally my dream is to see the Cobra Daytona coupe and McLaren F1 made into 1/24 scale kits.

You guys are nuts if you think Tamiya's ever going to do a Cobra Daytona! Accurate Miniatures is the best bet; if they keep their promises. They claim they have the license to do any of the "transverse-springed 289's" which means they can do the Daytona coupe if they so desire. They certainly are planning a number of them, though I didn't hear them actually say a Daytona coupe. Considering Gunze's Daytona was always a very expensive kit from day 1 (IIRC it was a $50 kit when released), and never easy to acquire, I'd think AM would be nuts not to do the Cobra Daytona.

Kit #24290 will be a 1/24 scale Mercedes McLaren SLR. No other details yet, it's in the "coming soon" section of their website. It's about bloody time :roll: Maybe there is hope they'll do a Ferrari FXX too.

The yellow looks great, and I'm also a loud proponent of CC paint! Great stuff. Sometimes I add a few drops of Mr. Color Thinner but normally it's not needed. I need to go down to the workbench and get some body prep done on my Z06. Think mine will be Tamiya Mica Silver, I was most impressed with it on the 904 I built during LeMans.

It warms my heart to see Ferraris painted in anything but red Nice work! Black is a great color for a Maranello, and the F355 looks like it's 30 minutes from being done 8)

I'm psyched on the Z06, got mine in the mail last week. I'm watching this one as well because I may try to sneak this one in the loop in the next week or so. I can vouch for the efficacy of Zinsser B-I-N as a sealer if one is using hotter paints. I used it between coats of Tamiya white primer on my recent Monogram (molded in red '70's plastic) Porsche 924. The original coats of primer turned pink, except in the areas that had filler. A good layer of B-I-N was airbrushed (go ahead and buy a can of it and mix it well and airbrush...the spray can nozzles are Testors-worthy :roll: ). It dries fast and sands like any other primer. Hit it w/a bit more "regular" primer and it works quite well. No more pink primer and my white 924 is white. It's tempting to spray my Z06 body in Tamiya Mica Silver (great new color) w/o primer because normally it goes on beautifully w/o primer when the plastic is smooth and pure white. I'll go ahead and prime it w/Tamiya gray to be safe.

Mikey pulled a pretty good prank on me a couple months ago, so now we're even :twisted: . I have a WIP Miata coupe concept, we were working on a Sunday afternoon in the same workshop, and I was in the other room doing some decal artwork on the computer. I returned to the workshop and saw my Miata transformed into a donk with a huge and horrific home-brew GT wing on it, riding really high on scale 30's (or bigger) :shock: All I could do was totally ignore it. I didn't say a word I don't know if they got a picture of it or not. I guess if they did I'm going to have to show it :shock: :roll:

I wish that was my workspace! The workspace belongs to Wayne Webers, the guy who built the Ferrari. I was just a visitor

I can vouch for it being his first plastic kit. We coached him on the paint; the C5R body is smooth enough to require little sanding of mold lines before paint, and he micromeshed the areas he sanded. Tamiya spray over white shiny plastic resulted in a stupendous finish. So good that we were jealous So jealous that we pulled a bit of a prank on him. While Mike was upstairs we took this picture to make it look like we were going to sand it with a heavy duty sanding stick and pour superglue on the roof. Then the host decided to take his half-stripped black/silver Goodwrench predecorated body and spray the Tamiya yellow on it. Then we switched them in the dehydrator :twisted: We had an 18 year old heart attack victim :shock:

It's MCW's 2064 "Lt. Blue" aka Gulf Blue. Don't know of any hobby paint that's an exact match. I have no idea of the code nor of a production car that was painted that color. There's no way I would have gotten the color right mixing by memory. The blue that Fujimi molds the kit in is nowhere near the correct shade of blue.

Thanks! That GT40 is the Fujimi kit; Matt painted it in the #11 paint scheme so he wouldn't have to mask/paint the nose orange like the #6 or #9 car; all the orange was on the decal sheet. He cursed it several times (especially the rear suspension) but as you can see he did just fine with it. You never know w/resins. I have a Profil 24 Gulf McLaren F1; it's a horrible kit to clean up but I really want to build it. Their newer kits are far better, the McLaren was their first kit and it shows.

I drive a convertible year round; I never lock the doors, don't leave anything of value to steal, and when it's too hot I hit that button called "A/C" and leave the top up :wink: It's also nice to drive around w/the top up but the windows and rear window down; lots of breeze but no direct sunlight. As for driving w/the top down and windows up, sometimes it's nice to have a little extra warmth and less wind but still open-air. My convertible has the best heater I've ever had in a car; it's a better winter car than my sedan because it heats up faster and is plenty warm. Of course it's a bit different living in the south where you can ride w/the top down all 12 months of the year (though Dec-Feb it's not too often). It's a fun car, I wouldn't feel the same w/o it. I know it's limitations, and the benefits outweigh the negatives. If you don't get it or don't like it, don't get a convertible!

Thanks guys, it was Rob and Evan that we talked with @ dinner at the NNL East; we were talking racing and we found out that both of our groups were planning similar builds around the race. I've been around sports car racing since high school autocrosses, and thankfully a good number of ACME members are also sports car fanatics-thought we also equal it out w/the Atlanta Dragwa and Atlanta Motor Speedway crowd :wink: I looked at my Monogram ex-Aurora kit and while it should build okay I didn't think it was a good "speed build" subject. Parts fit looks a bit tricky, some body details need tweaking, looks like more TLC required. With a speed build you need to pick something that you actually think can be finished in time (like picking a car to race at LeMans that you think can make it the duration). The C5R was a good one as the hood doesn't come off, so no engine detail, and the body was so clean that polishing the mold lines was easy and Tamiya paint takes to shiny white plastic like it's made for it; no polishing necessary at all.

Not sure if we'll do one for Daytona or not, IIRC we were going to do a Daytona-palooza this past winter but there was a schedule conflict. Hope we can do LeMans again next year. We met some guys from Canada at the NNL East that are also LeMans builders and part of GPMA, and we patterned ours similarly (though we allowed primer before the build, they don't). This was our first year, but they've been doing LeMans builds for several years with impressive results. Those Audis were impressive, as were the Astons and C6R's and it was nice to see a customer Panoz win GT2. We saw the Astons up close last year at the Petite LeMans and at the dealership beforehand; they had the Aston on display at the dealership on a Tuesday night; on Wed. practice it crashed/burned and it was rebuilt by a flown-in factory rep before the race.

In conjunction with the 24 hours of LeMans, a group of ACME members met at one member’s home and spent the time during the race building models of LeMans racers. Nobody DNF’ed; everyone finished by the 21st hour. My 904’s were finished at the 17th hour when the decals were applied at about 3:55 AM. I picked Monogram’s simple 28-piece curbside (ex-slotcar) Porsche 904. Originally I was going to build a red 904 for the race, but decided at the 11th hour to build two. I also had a restorable original 904 model missing a couple of wheels that I decided to build as well. 30 minutes in an alcohol bath removed the decals that were placed over the silver plastic. We were allowed to bring the models prepped and primed. I could have done that during the race, there was plenty of time (but perhaps not stamina). I painted the red car ahead of time due to my change in liveries. I saved the polishing of the red car until the race. Modifications included the use of Fujimi slotted Porsche spare wheels from their 911 Enthusiast kits (we have plenty due to a club project building IROC cars). I had to drill out the centers and re-drill some vent slots that had filled in during the years. I also cut away the styrene side glass and made the side glass from clear styrene sheet, mounted from the outside. I opened up the scoops behind the doors, and used craft-store cabachons (think bargain-basement MV lenses) for headlights. Interior-wise I added aftermarket seat belts and hardware to the otherwise simple 4-piece interior. No drama ensued building these cars at all. I was impressed with Tamiya’s new Mica Silver; it applied perfectly in a few light coats over the gray primer, and the clear glossed it up just right. The red car is Tamiya Italian Red sealed w/clear. Next year I’ll pick something a bit meatier to work on. I love how these cars look and they look great together; there’s a lot to be said about Monogram’s simpler curbside kits from the past-they certainly look right, especially w/a few tweaks. The other builds from other group members were quite impressive; a Fujimi Gulf GT40, a Fisher resin Ferrari 312 Berlinetta, and a Revell C5R. Following pics taken by Matt Wadlinger. I've been told I look like I've already been up 24 hours in this photo that was taken within the first hour Time of photo: 01:30: The finishing lineup. C5R by GTMike400, Ferrari by Wayne Webers, Gulf GT40 by Matt Wadlinger: More pics of the mayhem provided by Wayne Webers and others: http://public.fotki.com/ACME-IPMS/modelpal...ours_of_lemans/

That's called a wind-blocker. When driving a convertible the aerodynamics cause the wind to come from the back of the car, and wind blockers shield the wind to make for a less windy ride even w/the top down. They work as advertised, though I only know that from a BMW and not a Ferrari. I'll have to do more research on that

That Imperial is going to be cool! I use a metal straight edge ruler w/cork backing for "non-slip" and carefully cut thin strips of BMF for thin chrome strips all the time. It's a bit tedious, you must use a perfect new blade, but it works. I also notice the vent window/trim problem w/BMF applied over not-so-smooth surfaces. It hides nothing. You have to treat it like paint; the surface has to be clean and neat and smooth before it's covered. I think Alclad wouldn't be a big improvement; and I don't think it's nearly as impervious to fingerprints/time as BMF is.

Gotcha factor X 1000 8) Nice work, a real head-turner.

Looks great! MPC nailed the shape of the T/A. Glad I have a few in my restoration stash. The Monogram T/A needs the drip rails re-arched so the roof won't look so flat. Sure wish this car had made the cut before the big cut at RC2.