Search the Community

When this kit came out, I was not interested in it at all…….so I didn’t get one. Then a few months ago a friend contacted me and asked if I could turn out a few clear hoods for the car……in his research of the car, which he really likes, he saw that Oldsmobile offered a clear hood (not completely clear, but with clear sections) to show off the engine under that hood. When I told him that I did not have the kit and therefore no hoods available to make a master from, he offered to send me a hood, but I figured I would just get the kit and work from that. It took a few weeks for me to find the kit, but once I did, I was able to make a vacuum formed master and then made a master mold from the inside of the formed hood. From that master I was able to make the clear hoods. But that has nothing to do with this posting. While the kit was sitting on my work bench while I was preparing the hood for the molding, I keep looking at the car and it really grew on me. I knew that the roof had to go, but what to replace it with? Then over in a back corner of the bench I saw roof that I had cut off a Concept AMT Camaro about 4 years ago and the light bulb in my head went off. I cut off the roof and laid back the windshield and then glued the roof on. The problem with the roof was that it was too flat, the hood and trunk and fenders were all rounded and so the roof needed to be rounded too. I added bondo to the roof and sanded it to a nice round curve . I opened the doors, opened the trunk since the longer trailing roof changed the opening of the trunk and if I was going to re-scribe the edges I might as well open it. I did not care for the taillights on the rear of the fenders so they were filled in and new tail lights were cut into the rear fascia below the trunk opening. They were filled with clear 5 minute epoxy mixed with Tamiya clear red and allowed to set up. I recessed the rear license plate area to finish off the rear. I removed the front fender trim piece and added a frenched hood over the headlights and recessed the headlight bezel. I added Corvette rearview mirrors and lowered the car down as much as possible. Gold and the term golden were always associated with Oldsmobile so picking a color was a no brainer……it had to have gold in it, but I wanted a two tone scheme and I wanted the gold to be different. I mixed up a custom bright gold color using an Aztec Gold and Sunburst yellow pearl pigment powder mixed with clear lacquer and air brushed it over a GM pale tan and separated the two with a thin burnt orange vinyl pin-stripe. This is just a rough test fit of a clear hood. Considering I had no interest in this kit, I am very happy with the result.