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By 1962 Eric Broadley, the founder of Lola Cars Ltd, decided he needed to move to the mid-engine configuration, as had Ferrari and Lotus, with their racing sport cars. He proceeded with the design and construction of 3 MK VI GTs for races in 1963 powered by a small block Ford V8. Eric drove the new GT to Le Mans in 1963 and arrived only to encounter issues with the scrutineers which required some significant changes which took time away from practice by David Hobbs and Dickie Attwood. During the race there were problems with the gear change which resulted in a missed shift and put the GT into the wall and out of the race. Concurrently Ford had embarked upon their Total Performance program and company execs attended the ’63 Le Mans. They were impressed with the Lola GT and kept it in mind when negotiations for the purchase of Ferrari collapsed. Ford then put out a request for proposals from Lola and Lotus for the development of the Ford GT40. Lola won and began the construction of the Ford GT Prototypes for the 1964 racing season. The model is a 1/24 resin kit from Scale Kraft in South Africa. Unfortunately, only a few were made before the founder was injured mountain climbing and was not able to continue production. The model is mostly OOB except for a change to the wheels and tires.

My very first car entry on the forum, my recently aquired Lola by Tamiya. This is an old kit; a 1995 re-release of a 1970 mold! This was one of Tamiya’s first plastic kits as far as I can tell- kit number 10004. This is going together fairly well, though out of the box it lacks a great many details to be truly authentic. I set about grabbing as much reference material as possible, and have thereby modified or scratch built a number of parts. I have added considerable body detail- NACA ducts, body pin holes, rear wheel arch fairings and the like. Underneath, though reasonably detailed, I have given the main chassis some metalizer finish (from C1), added some roughly accurate front suspension (other than the geometry which is off due to the models own geometry), plenty of braided hosing courtesy of some guitar strings which are not strictly scale braid, but they due look the part and adapt very well to model making. I have completely ignored Tamiya’s very basic paint references in favour of the compiled reference photos, airbrushing or brush painting where applicable. The sticky-shiny ‘Rubber-like’ tyres were 2000 grit sanded on their rolling face to texture them a little and remove the seam, and a simple rubbing of the walls with my rough index finger took away the ‘brillo’, -I prefer them to look like they have at least rolled into the paddock. The body parts are presently drying after two dust and two wet coats with Vallejo Premium red, which unfortunately will require some light colour sanding all over. I hope there is enough paint... So far I am enjoying this model, spending odd hours here and there, and my first serious effort of pure scale modelling after a few years of radio control, and perhaps 25 years since my last plastic model was built.