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Kitbashed the Tamiya Porsche 959 with the Tamiya Speedster 'Club Sport', because the kit was the donor for the resin transkit of the 959 Paris-Dakar project. This was intended for fun, and to experiment with a different hinge, and doing Rhino Liner. It's a curbside because the engine and some of the suspension parts were used for the other project. The intended use is camera car, to be used on the race track or historic rally (but not WRC rally LOL). I managed to bugger it up in places. Salvaged parts are transistor radio speaker grill, guitar string (wire), aluminum newspaper printing plate, Fujimi steel screen, various parts box pieces, resin copy of Vehicross gas cap, baking soda can seal lid (not seen, should take bottom picture). I had also raised the wing with 0.1" plastic, and added scoops. I also tried out the new 18-300MM lens on the Nikon, not happy with the lack of depth of field. Gives new meaning to "let's roll!"

Starting a new build for a friend of mine. A few years back he asked me if I would build him a model, and he asked about an Edsel Ford Model 40 Speedster. I had no idea what this even was, so I did a little internet research on the car, then went looking for a model of it. It turns out that this was a one-off car Edsel Ford had built in the early thirties. Long story short, it resurfaced a few years ago and was recently restored. Here are some pics of the car: You can read about the history of it here: http://www.fordhouse.org/experience/edsel-fords-1934-special-speedster/the-story Once I know what I was looking for, I set about seeing if one was produced in scale. I immediately found that there were die casts out there, but he was more interested in having a model built by me. However, all the searching I was doing came up with nothing for a while. Then somehow, I found out that one was produced in resin in 1/25th scale by R&D Unique several years ago. The release of this kit actually predated the restoration, so it was based on the unrestored version, which was painted red when it was located. So now I knew it existed, but R&D Unique has been out of business for a few years now, so finding one was going to be a challenge. In fact, I searched for a year and came up empty. Then at one of the local shows here in So Cal, I was vending next to a guy that had several unique resin kits that I was particularly noticing. As we were chatting about different kits, he pulled a bin out from under the table and said, “I bet you haven’t seen one of these before!.” I just about freaked out and told him I had been looking for one for over a year. So I asked him “How much?”, and he replied, “Oh, this one wasn’t for sale.” At the end of the day, though, he gave me his number and told me to give him a call. So I did and he was willing to let it go after all. As mentioned, it’s a resin kit, and also requires a donor kit. Here's the R&D kit: Here’s the ’37 Ford Pickup donor kit: And the pieces used from the kit: I started some work on the body and the front end fell off! It loks like it was poured just a little, then the rest filled up. I decided to replace the molded in bezels with the kit pieces. I’m also going to replace the louvres and grills.

Thought I'd make a Workbench post of one of my more (for me) extreme builds. This started life as an Italeri Porsche 993 Convertible, bought with the intention of making the Japanese Porsche tuner Rauh Welt Begriff haven't done, a RWB Speedster! Now, there are transkits out there to make a RWB 993, but they are pricey and won't fit this kit, so what to do? You build it yourself of course! This is the kit I bought as the base. And to make the convertible body a Speedster body, I had to make a cover plate, so out came some modeling foam, which I sculpted to fit the body, using reference photos of the older and newer Speedster 911's. The 993 was never built from factory as a Speedster except for very few examples.

When my Parents were out visiting this past summer, my Dad and I left the girls at the quilting exhibit and took a trip to the Fourney Museum. They have a rather eclectic collection; mostly cars, but also motor cycles, models and three full size steam locomotives. One display that really caught my attention was this 1923 Kissel "Gold Bug" Speedster owned by Emelia Earhart. I have a few more pictures of this car if anyone is interested. This post will be the first of many as I get the pic's uploaded to my photo bucket. The plaque gives the background story of this car. Next installment will be a Very unique Caddy.