Shite in Miniature II

[Spottedlaurel]

Another nice piece of work you're doing there. Condition-wise, not so much like this?

 

Renault 4CV by Spottedlaurel, on Flickr

 

But more like this?

 

Renault 4CV by Spottedlaurel, on Flickr

[mercrocker]

Looks like the fella with the weathered 4CV is doing a Mehari kit as well.....

[sierraman]

Hot wheels are back in again at Poundland. I think it’s safe to say as well that Matchbox is discontinued in the U.K. as I can’t find any new stuff for sale anywhere. Which is an absolute crying shame.

[vulgalour]

Exactly so, SL.  I reckon the difficult part is getting the chrome bits right, I'm thinking of using some satin varnish on them to take the gloss off and give a surface for the weathering stuff to take to, then rubbing back in a few places with some nail polish remover and a cotton bud to bring the shiny chrome back through.

[vulgalour]

I just broke the 4CV.  Now to figure out how to repair a flimsy plastic rod that is too small to drill out and the only thing that connects the wheels to the chassis.

 

EDIT:  I seem to have fixed it with glue and tweezers.

[junkyarddog]

Matchbox Ford Capri makeover now.

 

 

Been badly painted in the past.

 

Had some Ford thunder grey mettalic paint left over from painting a wing mirror for my Mondeo,be rude to let the dregs sit in the can.

Never was a fan of the original wheels,so these later matchbox ones were fitted,I think they suit it?

 

 

 

"Fill her up Eddy!

Oh and check under the bonnet please"

 

 

 

"Mind if I take 'er fer a quick spin M8?"

 

"Not at all,have fun smoll Eddy"

 

[vulgalour]

Did you restore the windscreen or replace it?  Top marks if restored.  Nice colour too.

[junkyarddog]

Did you restore the windscreen or replace it?  Top marks if restored.  Nice colour too.

It's a replacement, I had another in the spares box that had it's bonnet ripped off,so used that.

[Split_Pin]

One from our egg's die-cast purge.

 

Been after this 1/36 for a while, Corgi did some decent stuff back then.

 

Fixed the lights which were inexplicably punched-in on this otherwise VGC model.

 

Looks GR8 now, cheers egg!

[sierraman]

I’ve got the beige Taxi one, the Tour de France and the cooking red version of the 505. I agree it’s a nice weighty model but a completely bizarre choice as a toy.

[Split_Pin]

I also have the Solido example which is characterful if a bit flimsy. Not sure what happened to European 1/43 scale models at the turn of that decade. Only Bburago seemed to have any sort of success.

[eddyramrod]

"Fill her up Eddy!

 

I'm going to need a longer hose then!  The filler is high up on the right shoulder of this model!

 

I'm not usually a fan of grey but it seems to work well this time.  Those wheels certainly do!

[sierraman]

I also have the Solido example which is characterful if a bit flimsy. Not sure what happened to European 1/43 scale models at the turn of that decade. Only Bburago seemed to have any sort of success.

Thinking on I have that one as well as a French police car, it’s knocking about in the loft somewhere.

[Jon]

I had a Corgi 505 french fire brigade one, like this:

 

 

 

 

 

It came in the Corgi C63 set, which I bought as new old stock from my favourite model shop, back in the mid-90's.

 

 

Therefore, it was a mint set. By far my favourite of the 3 cars was the R5, as I'd only previously seen wide body Turbo versions by Corgi (in large and small - the small one was particularly ungainly to my childhood eyes). The ambulance was a bit 'meh' to me and the Peugeot was cool but altogether, I was that over enamoured with the set as a whole. 

 

Sadly though, I was Ford Transit obsessed at the time and would collect any Transits of any scale, maker, era etc. and a local antiques seller had two boxed Dinky Mk2 Transits; one a roadworks version and the other an ambulance. Despite checking to see that this was quite a rare set, I traded the set AND cash for the 2 Transits in not quite so mint boxes; I recall buyers remorse even at the time and financially, it was one of my less astute buys. Ah well! I'm currently bidding (and winning) on something 505 shaped at the moment, so let's see if that can make up for a bad decision I made circa 23 years ago!

[Split_Pin]

That set is ace because it has the post 1985 packaging, but the R5 is one of the early 1/36 castings. I have it in orange and it's one of the better representations of the car at the time.

 

Speaking of normally only seeing wide-body R5s, I'd love to get the Bburago 1/24 version. Quite scarce I believe and I think an early issue too. I only ever recall seeing the wide-body type into the 1980s.

 

My favourite R5 model has to be the Majorette example and the 4 door by I think Guisval, the latter of which has eluded me so far!

[DoctorRetro]

Has Ford scene tax hit the second-hand diecast world too?

 

[eddyramrod]

It absolutely has, ages ago.

[sierraman]

£10 fucking hell, I’d expect it in the box for that.

[sierraman]

Jon I echo what you say about bad memories of your toys when you were a kid. I remember being at school and this really shitty kid in my year borrowed my Matchbox Rover Sterling and scratched it repeatedly against the coarse brick walls and brought it back trashed. Fortunately I saw him a few years ago and he was driving about in a Mk1 Kia Rio and he looked generally like life had dealt him a bad hand so what goes around comes around. I didn’t raise the matter with him as he was having his card declined in a petrol station. But that was his comeuppance for his wanton vandalism of my Rover Sterling.

[Jon]

That set is ace because it has the post 1985 packaging, but the R5 is one of the early 1/36 castings. I have it in orange and it's one of the better representations of the car at the time.

 

Speaking of normally only seeing wide-body R5s, I'd love to get the Bburago 1/24 version. Quite scarce I believe and I think an early issue too. I only ever recall seeing the wide-body type into the 1980s.

 

My favourite R5 model has to be the Majorette example and the 4 door by I think Guisval, the latter of which has eluded me so far!

 

Yeah, there was something really incongruous seeing a skinny 5 on earlier wheels mixing it with the later box - again, I wish I hadn't got rid of it! I know I kept the Corgi C3 AA set I picked up new old stock at the time too, which is tucked away in a plastic storage tub in my parent's loft, so hopefully it's been saved from the mice...

 

I know Majorette did a 3 and a 5 door R5. If you're desperate for a 5 door version, there's a boxed white one at the shop I go to in Auckland, for £5. Can't remember if it's the one with stripes like I had as a kid, or the slightly lame 'tennis' one:

 

 

 

Since I prefer 3 door 5s to 5 door ones in real life, I think it's the other way round with the Majorette versions, for some reason.

 

I think Siku made a nice effort with their offering and I happen to have one of these in my childhood stash, too:

 

 

Very much helped by the skinny wheels!

 

 

 

 

Jon I echo what you say about bad memories of your toys when you were a kid. I remember being at school and this really shitty kid in my year borrowed my Matchbox Rover Sterling and scratched it repeatedly against the coarse brick walls and brought it back trashed. Fortunately I saw him a few years ago and he was driving about in a Mk1 Kia Rio and he looked generally like life had dealt him a bad hand so what goes around comes around. I didn’t raise the matter with him as he was having his card declined in a petrol station. But that was his comeuppance for his wanton vandalism of my Rover Sterling.

 

And on the subject of Sikus; I've no idea where he is now or even what his name was but a neighbour's 3 or 4 year old boy decided to play with my very new at the time Siku Volvo 760 in lurid gold colour and do exactly as your perpetrator did, namely scratching the bejesus out of it on the knobbly concrete foot path to our front door. Worse still, I looked after my toys and so was really upset but my Mum played it down, most probably because the parents of the other kid were within earshot. It was the first Siku I bought and I remember choosing it simply because of how massive a casting it was, especially compared to the Matchbox and Corgi Junior 740s which I already had.

 

 

Top marks on seeing old scratchy Sterling bloke knocking about in a dreary motor, years later. Put's me in mind of Alan Partridge stalking his arch nemesis school bully, Stephen McCoombs, who turned out to be a forklift driver for British Leyland!

[vulgalour]

I've been making things for the Torino, very small things.  At the back, I've got a pair of bumper stickers, didn't look quite right with just one so I stuck on one of each.  The Bicentennial one is about 2mm by 8mm, the Carter one is about 8mm square, they are very tiny!  I took the original images, corrected any perspective issues, increased the contrast and brightness to a little bit beyond usual, then re-scaled on a 600dpi file.  This then keeps them moderately crisp and accurate at tiny scale.  They're glued to the chrome with PVA and then I used a bit of Citadel 'ard coat - a thick brush-on gloss varnish - to prevent water and sun damage.  Since the stickers are both '76 and the car is '76, it didn't make much sense to put any wear and tear on them so I wanted them looking fairly new.

 

Inside, I made a pair of walking sticks.  One is made from a piece of used jewellery wire so it looks a little bit knobbly, just like a bent wood cane should.  The other is made from a tow hitch for the handle and part of the suspension spring from a very broken Majorette Capri. For the foot on the end of each I just used some dark brown paint since it was too small a scale to really model a rubber foot on, and the brown looks more like black than the black did, weirdly.

 

The newspaper is made the same way as the bumper stickers, scaled down from a copy of the Denton Record.  It's almost legible. I did put some thought into placement of the paper and canes.  The canes both have their handles pointing to the driver, since that's how they'd be when put into the car and it's easiest to grab them for getting out.  They're on top of the paper because the windows are open and you don't want your paper blowing away.

 

 

These little additions give the car some character beyond being a bland kit and I'm really happy to have added them.  Thank you to those that made suggestions, your ideas have made this better. If anyone else has suggestions for this Gran(dma) Torino, please do let me know!  Especially if it's something that fits in with a pensioner living in mid-70s Denton, Texas.    I'm aware that it's more likely that Granny would be Republican in Texas, but this fictional Granny votes Democrat.  That's as political as we'll get here, it's just serving part of the larger picture of this fictional character and helping me decide what I'm doing with the kit.

[junkyarddog]

How about a dealer sticker on the rear screen?

[vulgalour]

I was considering it.  I don't know what the American trends were for '76.  I like the old diecast dealer badges you'd see on trunk lids but I think that stopped in the 60s.  Someone will know what would be more correct.

[RayMK]

Nice work Mr Vulgalour.  The little touches, when executed so well, enhance the realism.  Someone posted some Rover publicity shots the other day in which a large model of a P5 was standing in for a real one (or was it a video? Can't remember).  I particularly liked the way they had modelled the tyres, showing the natural distortion due to the vehicle's weight.  This of course makes it very much a model and precludes  playing with it because of the tyre flats  .

[Spottedlaurel]

I love how it's coming along. Lots of chrome trim to do, are you going to use bare metal foil for that?

 

I was considering it.  I don't know what the American trends were for '76.  I like the old diecast dealer badges you'd see on trunk lids but I think that stopped in the 60s.  Someone will know what would be more correct.

 

I'm not an expert, but I have seen those badges on later cars:

 

1991 Mercury Tracer by Spottedlaurel, on Flickr

 

Harding, Temple, Texas dealer plaque Lincoln Mercury Jeep Eagle by Spottedlaurel, on Flickr

[vulgalour]

I was going to order a Molotow chrome pen to match the rest of the trim, the foil or tape options looked like they might be a bit dull next to the rest.  Having seen that Mercury emblem, the idea of a 70s version for this car doesn't seem so far fetched.

[sierraman]

My youngest with this weekends purchases. I don’t know where they get it from...

[Jim Bergerac]

Superb work on the Torino, Vulg. Love the little detail touches you've added.

[mercrocker]

 

 

I'm not an expert, but I have seen those badges on later cars:

 

1991 Mercury Tracer by Spottedlaurel, on Flickr

 

Harding, Temple, Texas dealer plaque Lincoln Mercury Jeep Eagle by Spottedlaurel, on Flickr

 

Spottedlaurel is, as usual, absolutely right...

 

I was pulling those tags (plastic by then) off the back of 1980s Citations, K Cars, Buick Regals etc. in Canadian scrapyards on what was supposed to have been my honeymoon (er...yes a previous Mrs Rocker as it happens).   Still got a biscuit tin full if you want some inspiration, Vulgalour!   

[vulgalour]

If you've got anything Ford and 70s era that would help.  I'm having some difficulty pinning down what was the right look at the time since it seems some dealerships used older style emblems for quite a while after said style fell out of fashion.