Hannes

The grandson Gianni traded the Fiat Mefistofele in for some cheap Fiat 125 from British hands in the 60´s. He was an executive member of the Bilderberger group, a good friend of Henry Kissinger and the Rockefeller brothers at that time and supported the foundation of the American think tank "Club of Rome". This NGO was initiating the foundation of green parties in Europe. This is just an information and no criticism because we are in a modeller forum without political statements.

Dear Sid, this asymmetry makes the car so special and we seem to look at different cars if we look fom different perspectives. What a crime it was to destroy this Art Deko piece of art! Mr Agnelli did not only devastate all racing cars, he also divided all participants of racing projects by shifting them to branches abroad like Sweden or Australia. Some of them gave a notice of termination like Cavalli or left Fiat like Massimino. As soon as the managing director Fornaca -an racing enthusiast-lyed in his grave in January 1928 all racing cars were destroyed and the detail plans were burnt. What an barbarian act! Instead of getting admired in a museum this car lives on only as a legend and we as modellers have the opportunity to revive it in a small scale. Luca di Montezemolo as director of Ferrari tried to reconstruct this car in 1:1 scale at the beginning of this millennium and he failed. Therefore I see it as a challenge to create an credible interpretation of this important milestone of technical development.

Thank you, dear Ross and the seat´s fairing shows the final colour of the car, a dark red. I will replace the the black and folded rain protection seat cover by real leather. One of the improvement measures in the future .

The exhaust system of the right side was the last of the bigger projects regarding the outside of the car. Before starting with the last great construction works (engine and surrounding, radiator and grille and finally the wheels ) there are a lot of minor works which have to be done first. I need to complete the inside of thr rear bodywork, add the louvers, , have to construct the dasboard and the fire wall. Some other details need to get added as well and of course some other parts need to get improved like the steering wheel and other components. .After the building of the engine I will have to disassemble the model and start with painting measures but this will take a longer time. I´ll keep you informed even if there won´t be significant steps anymore in the next time. Many greetings! Hannes

Yes, dear Sid, the model gets cleaner and the modeller and his dogs and cat have plastic chips in their hair and fur

The car´s engine was shiftet to the left side and the branches of the manifold needed a defined lenght, therefore the odd shape. On the right side the manifold will be much closer to the bonnets. The exhaust system of the left side now is prepared for painting and wrapping, which will get realized in the future. The pipe was supported on the rear bodywork at the beginning and in the region of the rear axle.At the front a tiny metal piece was sufficient for me to keep a small distance to the bodywork and the rear support will get a metal strap and two bolts which I will represent when the pipe will be wrapped. For now an invisible tiny bolt holds the pipe and I had to drill a hole in the bodywork. Now the exhaust system of the right side will be my next project. I will have to build the manifold from scratch and the four times bent pipe as well. Many plastic chips will get produced by filing, carving and sanding. Many greetings! Hannes

Last week I tried to alter the kit´s manifold of the car´s left side. It was a waste of time with a frustrating result. Therefore I decided to build this part from scratch. First two tiny brass tubes were glued into the left and right outlets. Copper wires, cable coats and plastic sheets were used to build the manifold. As I could see in our documentary (min 1), contrary to the right side this part was not fixed to the left engine suspension plate. I shortened the plate by removing the useless region. Instead the long pipe is fixed twice on the rear bodywork. This construction will be my next project. Many greetings! Hannes

The exhaust system now is the next bigger project and I was hesitating to alter the cylinder region because of all the consequences. In the meantime I improved the driver´s fairing a bit. As you can see in comparison with the standard kit engine, many other parts need to get elongated as well. But I have no other choice if I want to represent an realistic exhaust system. The manifolds will get a support on the engine suspension plates and the pipes will get fixed on a support system on the rear bodywork. The kit´s engine originates from a Protar "806" model which is disassembled now and some parts are now components of my current model. In the 80´s when I built the Protar model, no internet existed and I believed that I was building the real thing. The model got damaged in the following decades and one day I saw the new edited Italeri kit in a toystore and thought that it would be a good opportunity to restore my old Protar metal model. I was looking in the internet for informations regarding improvements of my model and was very astonished when I saw a quite different car on the few photos which were available at that time. Different dimensions and shapes. Now I became curious and decided to look in the net if some others build this car and what they think about this matter. That´s how I found Britmodeller and entered Little Andi´s thread. I´ve never been to a forum before and didn´t even know what a "like" is and had to improve my poor English. Of course i did not intend to insult someone or to destroy someone´s thread but the reactions were not very friendly. Only a few members saw that my observations could be correct and Roy created this giant thread. I never believed that it would become so big and in the end we had enough informations to build a realistic model. That´s a short description of what happened years ago. In the following years we emigrated and there was no time for modeling. Regarding the Protar engine: As we do know now, the original crankcase was made out of aluminium and therefore it was painted with the wrong colour. Many greetings! Hannes

Unfortunately this interesting series was made for the Italian speaking audience only. But the most pictures speak for themselfes and can give an impression of the heroic time in the motorsport history which ended for Fiat with the destruction of all racing cars by order of Senatore Agnelli at the beginning of 1928. I hope, that this series will get continued and there is already much to see in the following episodes.