Ace-Garageguy

Stupid never sleeps.

When I designed this... ...my inspiration was this...

That's what happens when you have to outsource production necessities because of short-sighted management practices going back decades...

I'd just like to see a design for ANYTHING that doesn't borrow from something that went before it. Let's get real. "Good artists copy; great artists steal." https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/03/06/artists-steal/

Very nice, very interesting work.

Yeah, probably a Vega. I used to buy a lot of "broken" cars really cheap, fix 'em, drive 'em for a while to get the bugs worked out, and then find them good homes while making a modest profit. I usually had several vehicles running at the same time, so if whatever "interesting" car was my daily at the moment needed work, I always had a backup...and I was the go-to guy whenever any of my friends needed a loaner for a day or two. Anyway, I bought a sad little Vega running on two cylinders. It had been badly overheated, the rings had seized at some point and scored the cylinders, and it had fouled two plugs. New plugs and a couple of "anti-foulers" and she ran OK again, but smoked a little...and used oil. I still had to clean the plugs every week or so, but I liked the little car so I didn't really mind. It cleaned up quite well and looked nice (yellow with a white / hound's-tooth interior), was kinda fun to drive, and didn't use much gas. It wasn't the kind of car I could really sell on, as the necessary periodic plug-cleaning was beyond the scope of most people who'd buy a really cheap car. So I decided to keep it as a long-term backup, and had actually been looking into sleeving the cylinders. Anyway, I loaned it to a friend and the shrunk-in fuel line fitting fell out of the carb (typical Vega) while he was driving it. It sprayed fuel on the hot engine, caught fire, and burned to the ground. Like I said, I liked the little car and was really sad when it died...and I never understood why my "friend" hadn't done more to try to save it. End of the friendship, too...though it took me a few more years to learn to NEVER loan ANYTHING to ANYBODY.

Yeah, he does a much better job of keeping his mess localized and contained than most of the people I'm privileged to work with. EDIT: And if he left his stuff scattered everywhere like those guys mostly do, he'd be living under the house rather than in it.

I accomplished nothing today that was on my list, other than cleaning the cat's box. Try as he might, he just can't do it himself.

No sir...it's a curbside, originally made to be motorized, but it just might get some guts at some point. The racing version has a Cosworth V8 engine, with different everything else too, but it's already moved west with the first truckload of my stuff anyway..

I shamelessly copied the fender flare design from the Porsche 944 for a 240Z re-skin and convertible conversion too... I also used elements of the Porsche 904 to do this re-skin on a 914 for another client (though others have taken the credit, all the original design work, and a heavy rework of the nastily bodged full-scale interpretation of it was in fact mine; the car is pictured here just coming out of my own workshop).

Kinda stuck in my mind as the ugliest thing Zagato ever styled...and at a time when I was a Fiat enthusiast.

Danbury Mint 1/24 Chrysler Town and Country wagon, in olive green. I'd previously bought a couple of the convertibles with damage, cheap, and have enough parts to make up a nice one. And this is probably the last diecast for a while, as there's really not much else in American iron I want...though I'd really like to have this car in full scale.

Looks great.

Very VERY nice...all 3 of 'em.

Besides being a source for pix, it's also a goldmine of info on period rods and mods. Many of the guys know their stuff well...and the posers don't get much slack. Good site.

3/4 pound medium-rare burger on toasted artisan Pumpernickel with melted blue and sharp cheddar cheeses, lotsa rich mayo, coarse-ground brown mustard, slabs of beefsteak tomatoes and diced jalapenos...crusty-pan-fried in minced garlic, cracked pepper, and onions. Big glass of a hearty California burgundy. Fresh blackberries in sour cream for dessert, and strong coffee with whipping cream. Man, this geezer can cook.

1/24 Danbury Mint '41 Dodge pickup. Another model that's considerably nicer than I'd expected.

Kinda like a beautiful woman covered in tattoos.

All the way from the Land of the Rising Sun, a 1/24 Dome Zero. Powered by an inline 6-cylinder Z-car engine and shown in 1978, it was an interesting but ill-fated Japanese bid for entry into the high-end sports car market. I immediately liked the sci-fi styling way back then. I already had the LeMans racing version, so now it has a friend.

Finally got one of these for significantly less than they usually bring... EDIT: The real one lives a few miles from me. Need to go get some closeup pix.

Great project, and many thanks for the Tamiya vs. Fujimi comparisons. The 635 is the last of the BMWs I really like, a superb driver's car, but still relatively simple to work on. I've been wanting a model and your most excellent thread here has been very helpful already.

The 275 GTB in Love Hate Love was real. It shows dents like a metal body (replicas are almost always fiberglass), and in several shots where the car shows damage, you can see very obvious scarred bare metal under the paint. The windshield is also convincing evidence it's real. A giveaway on replicas is usually the windshield...stock Z-car on the Vanilla Sky car. In '71, when the film was made, the values hadn't skyrocketed on Ferrari 275s yet. It was just an old sports car. Still pretty expensive, but well within a movie budget to trash one without entirely destroying it.

Nope. The car in Vanilla Sky was a 250 GTO replica based on a Datsun Z-car.