Sunbeam Corvette 1/25th

[Gumball]

This is a 1964-1967 Sunbeam Tiger, with a 1994 Chevy corvette engine and suspension crammed underneath. I was looking forward to building the Tiger since i bought the kit about 6 months ago. After i built my Datsun, i became exited to build the kit, but I became quickly disappointed when i found out that many major pieces (such as the front bumper, the Wantenabe retro style rally wheels, some exhaust pieces etc) where missing. Crushed by the missing parts, I was tempted to not built the kit to begin with. but then i had an idea!

Originally I had a cool idea to retrofit the suspension and engine of my 1994 Corvette (another kit missing parts, also the 94 corvette in my opinion isn't the best looking corvette) underneath a custom wide body 65 Corvette my dad built when he was younger. With the realization of my beloved Tiger missing parts, my brain came to the conclusion of cramming the much longer and wider 94 Vette under the much smaller and shorter 64-ish Tiger.

Within building it became apparent that the corvette chassis would have to be majorly shortened both length wise and width wise, which left me cutting the front and rear off the Vette, and discarding the center, which I rebuilt out of styrene to fit the shorter width of the car, so in the end the chassis is really more like 2/3rd corvette 1/3rd styrene. The Tiger body was warped in the beginning, a lot of the measurements I did without noticing the warpage so forgive me if everything isn't exactly straight or lines up correctly. The engine is in fact the LT1 from the Corvette, I was missing the intake manifold so I custom made one out of styrene (which looks far cooler then the original one). To add just a bit more pzazz, I custom built some exhaust headers to accommodate dual front mounting Garrett turbochargers I bought off eBay some time ago, as well as an ECU board on the passenger side of the car. The paint could be better, sadly it cracking in some places because of the weird way I had to put the body on around the roll bar (this weird way also make it almost impossible to remove the body after installed) 

By the time I was ready for paint, I thought it would be kinda cool to paint it in a way that it can be displayed with the Datsun pickup I built last. And just for fun I added a tow hitch to the back of the Tiger to tow the trailer I built for the Datsun. I got a kick out of the idea that a race car is towing a truck to the races.

At the end of it all, the car is about 65% Corvette, 25% Sunbeam Tiger, and 10% styrene. Ill let you guys decide what percent of cool it really is.

Build link here: http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/topic/150568-sunbeam-tigerc4-corvette-monstrosity/page/2/

 

 

[DonW]

Great realisation of a great idea!

I think the body might well twist a bit once this device had a few hard miles under its wheels! Not that any warpage is noticeable in the pictures.

The old Cologne Capris used to finish races with a diagonal crease across the roof.The mechanics just popped them back out ready for the next round. 

[spencer1984]

Nicely done!

[Gumball]

36 minutes ago, DonW said:

Great realisation of a great idea!

I think the body might well twist a bit once this device had a few hard miles under its wheels! Not that any warpage is noticeable in the pictures.

The old Cologne Capris used to finish races with a diagonal crease across the roof.The mechanics just popped them back out ready for the next round. 

Lol yeah i guess it gives meaning to the warpage and the fact the wheel on one side would stick out more to the one beside it... it looks alright in the pictures, and all I need to do in real life is close my eyes so I wont be able to see my mistakes, and there we go problems solved!

[DonW]

Its always best to buy a car at night in the rain! 

[Hotrod 97]

Looks awesome. I really like the two-tone paint colors. Very nice build, Johnny.

[PappyD340]

Nice work!

[Gumball]

On 4/10/2020 at 9:16 PM, Hotrod 97 said:

Looks awesome. I really like the two-tone paint colors. Very nice build, Johnny.

Yeah i'm quickly getting hooked on the "more then one tone" paint choices, ill be looking to do more of that in the future.

[Gumball]

On 4/10/2020 at 3:33 PM, spencer1984 said:

Nicely done!

 

On 4/10/2020 at 9:16 PM, Hotrod 97 said:

Looks awesome. I really like the two-tone paint colors. Very nice build, Johnny.

 

On 4/11/2020 at 8:45 AM, PappyD340 said:

Nice work!

Alright you convinced me, its not all that bad looking. perhaps ill keep my eyes open.

 

On 4/10/2020 at 4:12 PM, Gumball said:

Lol yeah i guess it gives meaning to the warpage and the fact the wheel on one side would stick out more to the one beside it... it looks alright in the pictures, and all I need to do in real life is close my eyes so I wont be able to see my mistakes, and there we go problems solved!

 

[Scott8950]

Nice job...

[slusher]

Looks great!

[Dann Tier]

What a GREAT build of a killer little car!!!!

[Nazz]

2 hours ago, Dann Tier said:

What a GREAT build of a killer little car!!!!

I agree. Very nice.

[Gumball]

9 hours ago, Dann Tier said:

What a GREAT build of a killer little car!!!!

Thanks! I'm glad you like the car. 

[olschoolkid]

That's a pretty cool idea there. I think it's nice to think outside the box and come up with ideas that most people would probably never think of. The combination of a Sunbeam Tiger and a Corvette is pretty neat.

[Gumball]

14 hours ago, olschoolkid said:

That's a pretty cool idea there. I think it's nice to think outside the box and come up with ideas that most people would probably never think of. The combination of a Sunbeam Tiger and a Corvette is pretty neat.

Thanks! I seem to have those kind of outside of the box ideas when it comes to some of these kits, and I really do enjoy creating these crazy kit bashing ideas.