Ferrari 275 NART Spider - Revell 1/24

[Matt Bacon]

This is the Revell Ferrari 275 NART Spider, which I picked up for £15 on a good day on eBay last year. I want to do it as Steve McQueen's car, which he bought after being smitten with the one Faye Dunaway drove in The Thomas Crown Affair. The car she drove is the most famous NART Spider of them all, with a solid racing history as well as a starring movie role, and would be a great choice for a subject. But it needs Campagnolo alloy wheels, not wires... you can get them from Renaissance, but they'd double the price of the kit, and anyway, I have a "McQueen's Machines" theme, don't I? ;-P

Steve McQueen's Spider was modified, like many of his cars. In this case, what it needs is the ducktail spoiler made a tad more aggressive, a flip up fuel filler cap, no bumpers, reupholstered "Von Dutch" seats, and a console for a radio. It's the spoiler that I've been most nervous about, not wanting to cut into a kit that would be quite hard to replace (for a reasonable price, anyway) but last night I decided to take the plunge:

I cut diagonally from the angle where the rear panel and spoiler meet toward the blend on the top of the boot lid (ie from the back end of the car toward the front), and then before I'd gone all the way through, simply bent the whole thing upward, aided by some liquid cement along the "scored" bend line. I pushed a sausage of Milliput into the gap from the back and I had a slightly taller, more vertical spoiler.

I'm sure it'll take a couple of rounds of filling and sanding to get it smoothly blended in, but from here:

To here:

has only taken an hour or so, so far...

The bumper mountings are gone as well. Now I have to figure out how to find or make McQueen's unique blue, which was specially mixed for the car...

bestest,

M.

[Gregg]

Can you post pics of the reference cars as well?

[Alyn]

Here's a pic of McQueen's Ferrari from McQueens Machines. This is one of only ten 275 GTS/4 NART Spyders built. Of those ten, this and one other have aluminum bodywork. Good luck on reproducing a great looking car.

FYI, seat upholstery in this car and many others owned by McQueen was done by Tony Nancy.

[kelson]

Looks good so far,i'll be following your work on this one.

[W-409]

When looking your before projects, like the Jaguar, I can say that this is going to look good. This one is nice Ferrari, like these older ones, new Ferraris aren't that nice anymore... I wish, I could build Ferrari 250 GT Pininfarina Coupe, like this. Nice job on the bodywork so far, this is an interesting project, I'll be wathing it very surely. Great work.

[Matt Bacon]

Thanks, guys... I'm back at the bench now. Here's a couple of slightly larger pictures of the real thing:

If you want to build any of the cars McQueen owned, there's no better reference than "McQueen's Machines: the cars and bikes of a Hollywood icon", by Matt Stone. It covers the man's own cars and collection - if you want to focus on the making of "Le Mans" and the race cars in that, you need "A French Kiss with Death" by Michael Keyser.

McQueen's Machines is available from Amazon here:

McQueen's Machines

bestest,

M.

[Matt Bacon]

This is where we are now...

Looks a bit rough, but after some 8000 micromesh that'll all go away. The smooth curves of the real thing are now coming together.

Unforgiving picture, but if you compare this to the kit, you can see that the ducktail is much more vertical.

The plastic in this kit is REALLY good; I believe that it originated with Protar. The detail is fine and crisp, and they've done a great job of figuring out how many parts they need - a great compromise between the soft details of the XKSS I did, and the ludicrous over-engineering of the Fujimi Enthusiast GTO.

And this is the colour I've chosen: a Halfords Ford blue. It's impossible to photograph accurately in the sun!

The seats with their unique "Tony Nancy" upholstery are under way...

bestest,

M.

[Matt Bacon]

Slow progress... and a bit "two steps forward and one step back today"...

Got the first coat of blue on:

But it'll need a second, and I've got a couple of areas where the blue carrier has "pooled" along a panel line, so I'll have to wait for it to set hard and polish it back before applying the second coat.

I've made a socket for the flip up filler cap on the body, and built the actual filler cap, painted in Humbrol's "Chrome Silver" acrylic, which is amazing...

I've had one go at re-upholstering the seats, but I wasn't satisfied, so I've taken it all off (hooray for Milliput) and will try again tomorrow...

bestest,

M.

[250 Testa Rossa]

This is going to look great. Are you going to put photoetched wire wheels on it?

[Dave B]

That's looking great, Looking forward to seeing it finished. I have this kit but intend to build it as one of the racing NART 275's.

Regards

Dave B

[Matt Bacon]

Thanks, guys! I'm afraid my budget doesn't run to wire Borranis - they'd cost three time what the kit did! But, Dave, if you are going to build one of the racing ones (and really, you should do the pale yellow one that had a successful racing career AND was the red one Faye Dunaway drove in The Thomas Crown Affair, which gave McQueen the hots for one...) you'll need to find some Campagnolo alloy wheels - Renaissance from France do them for a great deal less than a set of wires!

Anyway, I have actually made some progress in the last few days:

There are three things that make McQueen's 275 unique: the seats, the perky ducktail, and the flippy fuel filler. Here you can see the final effect of the latter two. The seats are still WIP.

I have a good reference picture of the 275GTB/4 engine, which is what's inside the Spider, which shows the ignition wiring running through a conduit on the cam cover. I cannot for the life of me see how the six wires from the distributor can fit inside the conduit but they do, and they come out in a 1-2-2-1 layout, with the last one straight out of the end. It took a while to figure out how to even attempt this layout, but in the end I decided to use some very fine insulated wire from an old computer cable. I untwisted one end and attached six of the strands to the distributor, and at the other twisted three strands to form a spark plug lead. The other leads are fine lead wire fed into holes drilled at the base of the cam cover. I then stuck the wire over the top to give the impression that the leads were coming out of it. The leads from the distributor are too thin; the "conduit" is too fat, but it's as close to the real layout as I can get.

This is what it looks like with both sides done. The water? pipe is painted with Humbrol "Chrome Silver" acrylic (as is the flippy fuel filler), which gives a great chrome effect, IMHO..

And here's the completed engine. There are't that many parts (certainly less than 20), but as I said, the plastic in this kit is very well designed and crisply moulded, and I think it makes up into a very convincing unit. The exhausts are sprayed in Halfords grey primer followed by a deliberately "light" overspray of Tamiya Aluminium, in an attempt to get a slightly rough texture and matt/greyish silver colour, which matches my photo...

Next, the cockpit!

bestest,

M.

[sjordan2]

Well executed on the tubular wiring harness. I'm scratching my head on how I'm going to pull that off on my 1/25 Maserati GTi – a 6-cylinder engine with 2 plugs per cylinder – which has 14 wires running through a single tube. The distributor and wires in the kit are just a one-piece glob.

[Jim Gibbons]

You might consider the Herb Deeks photoetched Borrani wheels. A lot cheaper than the laced type.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=400147732745&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT

Edited June 14, 2011 by Jim Gibbons

[Matt Bacon]

Thanks, chaps. 14 wires, Skip! Eeeeek... and tapered, too. I think I'd try stretching a length of styrene tube, with the smaller number of wires at the narrow end inside it, and then stuff the 14 into the big end... Whatever you choose, good luck with it!

This is an attempt to capture the colour and effect more realistically - shot outside, against a neutral grey background, in diffuse dull light, and not using the macro mode on the camera...

If anything it's a bit too dull, but I didn't remember to put any pure white in shot to get the top-end accurate for my "levels". The colour is dark, but a little more "zingy" and not quite so grey as it looks here...

bestest,

M.

Edited June 14, 2011 by Matt Bacon

[Matt Bacon]

This is where I am as of last night:

The chassis is just clipped together - there's the suspension to do. The seats have been "re-upholstered" in rather more padded Tony Nancy style. The cabin is a symphony in black on black with silver highlights, so I've tried to mix things up a bit with textures and surface finishes to give it a bit more interest. The 20 year old decals worried me, especially since the waxy cover paper was firmly attached, but the dials worked well after I used hot water to get them free, and Klear as a setting solution. The little Ferrari badge is an aftermarket one, mind you...

The suspension is yet more evidence for the quality design and crisp moulding of this kit. Again, not too many pieces, but they fit together very well, and the finesse of the detail is clear. OK, so you don't get positionable front wheels (though you probably could make them turn if you wanted, at the cost of some loss of scale fidelity)

I'm pretty sure that this is nearly ready for a big assembly phase... I keep thinking I'm there, and then some other bit that needs painting before I get started rears its head...

bestest,

M.

[mrm]

Absolutely beautiful work. The dash turned out great and so did the body. I would put some carpet in it though.

[GeeBee]

Very nice work, looks very authentic, superb detail on the engine, can't wait to see this one finished.

[Matt Bacon]

Thanks, chaps. One of the things that's hard to see is that there is a "carpet" texture in the appropriate areas, which I've tried to enhance with a matt varnish. I think, looking at the pictures of the real thing that I have, that flocking would be hugely overscale. The carpet is pretty short-pile and smooth, just not the same shiny texture as the leather parts...

I'm still not quite there with the "big assembly phase", but this is where I am now:

The chassis is now complete, and so is the cabin interior, with the exception of the steering wheel, which is still WIP. The block of balsa taped to the body is shaped to support that darn fragile window frame while I apply BMF to it tomorrow!

Completed chassis the right way up. The engine bay will be pretty empty, but I'm going to wait until the parts attached to the cabin and the chassis are brought together before deciding how and what detail to add in this area...

It's very hard to photograph this interior, especially in workbench lighting! I think it looks quite crisp with the silver details, but you can't really see the various textures and tones of black in this photo...

bestest,

M.

[mrm]

This build inspires me to open the Fujimi Daytona that has been sitting on a shelf for a year. I just still can't decide whether to build it very detailed or as a curbside and to stuff the engine in one of the Deuces.

[Matt Bacon]

This is where I'm at tonight:

Finally, some decent pictures, in which the varying textures and finishes are more or less visible!. The wheel has an aftermarket badge, which lifts the whole thing, I think...

This is the chassis completed, with the engine bay more or less OOB. I'm still wondering about how much additional detailing (mostly tubes) to do. I'm hampered by the fact that people only seem to take pictures of the engine bay from the left-hand side! Still, it looks crisp to me as it is...

Finally, a couple of shots of the body as it is now. Some detailing is on, but I'm leaving all the sticky-outy bits until I've got the inside, inside... The tape is holding the bonnet in place while the hinge sets, underneath. The eagle-eyed among you will notice that the blinkin' windscreen frame broke AGAIN while fitting the screen...

bestest,

M.

Edited June 25, 2011 by Matt Bacon

[sjordan2]

Just superb.

[Matt Bacon]

Thanks, Skip! This will probably be the last in-progress update before it's done:

All that's left are the smaller lights, the mirror, the wipers and the folded hood behind the seats. I've reworked the hood with Milliput to look a bit more like the one in the picture, so that's setting now. I don't think I'm going to detail the engine bay any more. The bonnet hinge is a bit rubbish, so although it will open, I daren't/can't lift it fully without risking breaking it away completely. The chassis fitted into the body pretty painlessly but without really positive locations, so it could be better! The "rally" rear view mirror is from a Tamiya Jaguar MkII, and it looks close enough to me...

bestest,

M.

Edited June 26, 2011 by Matt Bacon

[Jim Gibbons]

Beautiful. As an aside, I read in the current issue of AutoWeek that McQueen's 1970 Porsche 911S is coming up for auction. Although I will never get around to it, I thought a model set of that 911 and the 917 side by side from the movie Le Mans would be cool.

[mrm]

Beautiful. As an aside, I read in the current issue of AutoWeek that McQueen's 1970 Porsche 911S is coming up for auction. Although I will never get around to it, I thought a model set of that 911 and the 917 side by side from the movie Le Mans would be cool.

You can get them in pretty high quality and for a reasonable price in 1;18 diecast