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As Monty Python would say, "And now for something completely different". Over the last several years of attending model contests in my neck of the woods, I struck up a friendship with a very accomplished figure builder. During our conversations it came up that he and a college buddy used to cruise around in a Renault Gordini. I'd never heard of such a thing...lol. After several conversations about it he asked me if I would build a model of it. At first I was just going to paint, decal and polish out the body. It evolved into me building the entire model for him. He brought me an original Heller kit from 1968, (maybe 1969?). Now, this is a car and a model that I would never give a second look at. I still don't like it...lol. It is a Heller kit of a French car. Nope. But, he is a friend and I couldn't say no. I thought I would share my WIP with everyone, not because it is going to be anything special, but because it is a unique car and model. Today's post is mostly an introductory post. Here is what I started with. The instructions are one big sheet and are in French. They included the written instructions in English on another large sheet. You have to jump back and forth between the two sheets to build the car. The decals were waaaaay beyond saving. I was going to paint the two white stripes that run down the length of the car. More on that later. I started work on the body. The vents are molded open but there was a lot of flash. I used a PE saw blade from Scale Motorsports to clean out the flash between the ribs. I wanted a squared off appearance between the ribs and the PE blade was just about perfect for this. You can see the difference between the cleaned up area vs. the untouched area. Job complete. Keep in mind that this photo is magnified a good bit. To the naked eye these ribs look pretty darn good. 1968 molding technology. Although these will not be very visible I just could not leave them there. Not perfect, but an improvement. OK, check out this photo. This is the rear of the car. This is where the engine sits. It has a working hinge and my buddy wanted it to work. Notice the large bow on the dutchman's panel?, (at least I am pretty sure that is the proper name for it. I would be more than happy to have someone correct me if I'm wrong). Anyhow, disaster, and I do mean disaster, struck because of this darn thing. That will be covered in the next update.