A lot of you have seen this car on instagram already, but I took some better photos last night and this way I can show a little bit of the build, as well!
It was a looooong term build, started on January 20th of this year, and like all my customs this year, have taken a ton of time. Life got in the way, I guess! But I’m getting back on track and here is one result of that.
Let’s Start With the Technical Drawing
Using a Welly 1:24 356 convertible and photos of speedsters for reference, I drew a coupe and a speedster on the same drawing to see the differences. At the time I thought I was going to go with a small driver-only windshield, but I opted for a more traditional cut window instead. Lots of cutting and filing later, the body was ready. Side note: the body on the right turned into the copper cafe racer 356 you see on the left in the lead pic.
The Rear Deck
The rear deck is made from an empty Redbull can. It’s not a material I would’ve thought of initially, but @scaletunedcustomz on Instagram has had some amazing results with soda cans, so I had to try. This is just the rough shaping, below you see it after sanding and more superglue.
The driver’s cowling was done in the same way, shaped over a mechanical pencil as a mandrel (you can see it on the left in the photos below).
Seven Months Later...
I didn’t really take any progress shots in between the step above and paint/detailing, but I’ll run you through the steps real quick.
I filled the space under the cowling and rear deck with Mr. White Putty so I had some thing to glue the rear padding onto, primed the body, painted it a lovely minty green Rustoleum Gloss Enamel I had bought for this very purpose several months ago, and detailed her front and rear. I have done quite a few of these now and I still don’t know if I like it better with or without the belt buckle hood straps...
I added decals I made for the classic Mobil pegasus on each flank as well, but they came out a tad fuzzy because of scale and because my printer is crap.
Exhaust!
The exhaust is a two-into-one that I made from a few small pieces of aluminum tubing. In the photo below you can see stage one. I sanded two pieces at about a 45-degree angle, glued them together, then sanded the point flat and glued another piece on there. Then the ends were sanded to the right angle to glue to the base. Voila!
Wheels!
I used the lovely gold steelies from the Star Trek series Deco Delivery, painted them white, and later added black centers to mimic the classic two-piece wide five wheels. It looks pretty good from normal viewing distance! Closeups are not as nice, but my eyes don’t magnify this large anyway...
Interior!
I decided to go with a nice spartan interior that I feel like a Speedster would want. For lightness and stuff. So no carpeting, just aluminum and nice brown leather.
The panel behind the seats is a small piece of 1mm styrene with lines scratched into it and painted brown to mimic padded leather.
Okay Enough Talk, Photo Time!
Das war es wieder! Enjoy your Tuesdays!