Paul H

'Tora Tora Tora' is very good - I recently rewatched it on DVD, and even with today's glut of high budget CGI, I thought that the special effects still passed muster. There is an excellent website about ship models in films here which may be of interest. Ditto O'Brian's 'Master & Commander' series, which I really enjoyed reading about twenty years ago. I always thought that the fhe film captured the flavour of the books well, and I keep meaning to re-read them. If considering that series, it is important to read them in the correct order though! The books of both 'Das Boot' & 'The Hunt for Red October' are well worth reading too. My late grandfather (retired RN captain) always said that he was surprised how much Clancy got away with publishing in Red October about USN / NATO procedures & technology. Other good naval reads include 'Death of the Scharnhorst', and 'The Flat pack Bombers' - the latter about the RNAS during the Great War.

That looks really smart & fantastic foil work on all the trim! The '90s seems to have been a second golden era for AMT, with a lot of really detailed, well tooled kits of classic American cars - for example the '57 Chevy, '57 Chrysler, & '62 Thunderbird amongst their other releases at that time.

Is that the ICM Edwardian era Renault one, or the ancient Revell black cab?

That looks stunning! Can the headlights also be switched between raised and lowered, or do they need to be glued in place to have them raised?

That looks fantastic, and great attention to detail! Whilst I won't be building mine into a replica of Morse's car, I am really tempted to buy a set of those steels as I much prefer them (I have an intense dislike of wire wheels from having to clean some regularly as a child...), and from what I can make out, most Mk2s left the factory with steel wheels anyway.

The front subframe, front bulkhead & underside of bonnet should all be body colour. The rear subframe should be 'chassis' black (i.e. semi gloss / satin). The dashboard is trimmed in black - as the Heller is a 3.8, the panel around the auxillary instruments and the centre console top should be polished aluminium. The rest of the interior depends on the chosen trim colour.

I've been following your build thread with great interest, and the end result looks amazing! All the different finishes for the various parts look very convincing; in fact, it is difficult to believe that this is only 1:24 - it could easily pass for 1:16, which at one time was the usual scale for early / veteran vehicles. It is with great restraint that I haven't ordered one yet!

Whilst I fully agree that white isn't the best colour, it ties in with a general theme that I've been (slowly...) building of iconic TV and film cars. I have already built an orange Haegawa Muira, green with yellow nosecone Tamiya Lotus 7, and waiting in the pile are a red big wing Aoshima Countach & 'customised' DeLorean. If the red plastic colour bleeds through (as I gather can apparently happen, especially with light colour top coats) then it would probably be painted red, but hoping that the white will work. Tbh, I'm not a massive fan of red Ferraris (my favourites are the 365 / 400 / 412 range and the 456GT, which I think all look utterly foul in that colour but fantastic in dark blue or grey metallics) but as a child in the '80s, red is the iconic colour for a Testarossa.. Whilst that mid blue does look smart, it looks more modern to my eyes than the actual age of the car (please note that I am far from being a Ferrari expert should it in fact be period correct!) and yellow is a bit too garish so if going off piste, something more like this appeals more than blue: https://www.hexagonclassics.com/car/ferrari-testarossa--lhd However quite a while back, I built the old Monogram curbside 308 in a similar shade, and it looked stunning - until the paint crazed for some reason, but I will be redoing it at some point so am saving that shade for the 308. However, what other factory colours were there for these early Testarossas?

I looked into this quite a bit when choosing my first tank model which was a Tiger 1, and after much consideration settled for the Tamiya kit. I built it straight out of the box except for adding some PE grilles over the vents, and whilst it is apparently not the most crisply detailed compared to some more recent tooling Tigers, it turned out very nicely with everything fitting easily. The Tamiya one should be easily available and if I remember correctly, it was also the cheapest option at the time.

Tamiya's 1:24 Ferrari Testarossa. I had been waiting for one to pop up at sensible money for a while now. However I am still undecided though whether to paint it the classic Ferrari red, or white with Miami numberplates...

Thank you - I was just about to ask about that sort of info, and that link has answered all my questions!

Perhaps one of these? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiesmann

Bought one of these a while back to convert to the Chipmunk 200 prototype

I'm a big fan of that series of classic cars by Heller for the reasons you mention! The IRS on the Heller E Type is particulary nice, including rotating drive shafts - I'm using one from an old FHC kit in my parts bin (didn't survive my childhood...) for an Airtrax Mk10. The front suspension on the Heller E Type certainly looks much more 'in scale' than what is visible in pics of the new Revell one. I heard that rumour about the DB5 too - when suggested recently, I think the reason it didn't go ahead may have been licensing issues. However I may be mis-remembering... I was diappointed though as I wanted to turn one into a DB4 drophead (to go with a blue E Type FHC and red OTS as a set of three fast cars ) and perhaps also convert one to a Lagonda Rapide.

Apologies if I've misunderstood (thought you were meaning that the location was between the chassis rails behind the axle), however I'm confused by the use of that photo, as isn't the tank essentially invisible, even from underneath?

That looks lovely! I am really tempted by this kit now, even though I have nothing else in 1:12 scale... Given the filler location, the tank is almost certainly located in the pointed tail above the chassis, which wasn't uncommon on racing cars of this era.

The box art is the old 1:8 Monogram one - the shape is good aside from around the headlights, and yes, that is pretty much how the roof & screen should look. Thank you for the pic - it answers a lot of questions! Seeing it much closer up, the roof & screen do look much more promising, and it is far clearer now how the parts are supposed to look once everything is painted and foiled. As I already mentioned above, I had hoped it was a trick of the photo, and seeing your one makes it appear that may indeed be the case. It struck me as strange it should be off, given how good the nose looks & also that I'm sure I read something a while back relating to the L-R Series 3 which suggested that Revell AG now scans vehicles to get the shape right. Interestingly, it looks like Revell may have moulded the windscreen and its chrome trim as one part, which means that the screen won't be incorrectly recessed as it often is on models. The wire wheels are a definate disappointment though - whilst once painted / chromed and given a wash, they may appear a bit better, but they just look like cross spoke alloys as there should be spokes running out on the wheel centre, level with right behind the spinner, rather than ending where the diameter of the wheel centre is greatest. The injection moulded wires on Tamiya's Jag Mk2 and Morgan 4/4 do this so much more convincingly. Also, in an engine bay pic I saw elsewhere, the highly visible ball joints and steering arms are unnecessarily chunky & overscale. This seems to be Revell's habit these days - compare the underpinnings of Tamiya Mini Cooper & 2CV along with and Italeri's Land Rover Series 3 to Revell's offerings. However, one very interesting thing shown by this pic is that the sills appear to be moulded integrally with the rest of the body, as the seam which has plagued all previous E Type models is not visible! I guess that the rear valance is still moulded separately though with the seam hidden by the bumper (in the same way that the spotwelded flange joining the valance to the rear quarter is hidden on the real car), to aid installation of the interior. After initial disappointment based on the first pics I saw (now mostly countered by the close-up pic above), shape wise this looks like it has the potential to be the definitive injection moulded E Type kit in any scale, especially if Revell have indeed managed to engineer a solution to the sill seam... I cannot wait for pics of the final model!

Found another pic of the E Type: From here: https://www.spotmodel.com/product_info.php?products_id=53549&language=en

The end result looks like it turned out great to me! Proportions and shape look just right too. What went well, and what wasn't so good about the build? I have one of these which I was originally planning to paint in one of the solid colours that they were available in, but the colour on your model looks absolutely spot on for a pre-facelift SD1

A pic of Revell's new E Type Series 1 FHC: From here: http://www.ipmsdeutschland.de/Ausstellungen/Nuernberg2020/Bilder_VH/101.html My initial impressions are rather mixed. The bonnet, in particular the headlights (which virtually every other E Type kit has got wrong to varying degrees, ranging from passable to appalling) looks like it could be the best yet. However, the windscreen area looks very poor, with the top of the glass appearing far too low - it should be pretty much in line with the upper edge of the side windows. I hope that this is simply a trick of the photo due to it being unpainted, as if not, and if that is what they are tooling up, then the kit will be little more than a parts donor to use the front end to improve either Revell's own very old tool OTS or Heller's OTS & FHC, all of which haven't quite got the headlights right (Heller's effort is much better in my opinion, and at the passable end of the scale), but are otherwise pretty decent.

I'm hoping that Beemax will do a Vitesse touring car (one is visible in the background of the artwork of their Volvo 242 Turbo). I suspect that is the only way a 1:24 one will appear. Simply a case of cost saving - this was the dark days of BL... Rover were fully capable of desigining and building a more advanced rear suspension, as demonstrated by the de Dion rear on the P6 from a decade earlier. However, I recall back in the early / mid '90s that Performance Car mag (when still a proper car mag) featuring the Vitesse version in a regular series of articles on older performance cars, and describing them as being not far off a 5 door TVR, so the live axle can't have been that bad.

Following this with great interest, and thank you for documenting how you are improving the interior. I shall definatly be using this as a reference! If you did want to do something about the axles & gearbox, have a look at the Italeri 109 kit. Whilst it is a curbside, those parts are much more accurate. I will probably be using the entire Italeri chassis if it fits, or if not, then the suspension, axles, gearbox & transfer box when I build mine. Ironically, the body seems to have no sink marks, and fully smooth panels, whereas the panels on the real thing have plenty of witness marks from the way they are built especially on the rear quarters where the inner arch structure is attached...

After much deliberation, an Amodel 4C should now be on its way... Whilst still in need of work to get it to go together based on the reviews I have read, the better engraving and shaping to the engines and exhausts sold it to me compared to the Airfix one. If all goes well, it may be jned later by a Comet 1 (source still undecided), so as to have first and last versions. This was also part of my reasoning for choosing the Amodel 4C, rather than their 4B or the Airfix one. I may revisit this for a 1:72 one in the future (as the Welsh Models ones do look good!), but at the moment the length & width of a Comet at that scale is just too big for my current display space. Thank you all again for your advice and feedback! Thank you - been having a look at the 26 decal options but still trying to decide whether to stick with the Amodel Dan Air decals or choose something else. Btw, if of interest to anyone, Hannants have both the BEA 4B & the Dan Air 4C versions in stock - the 4C being restocked earlier today & when I was searching, they were the only ones to have the 4C version. That looks very smart! Whilst what Amodel has shown may perhaps not be 100% scale accurate, I probably wouldn't be applying any washes to make the engraving stand out too much due to the scale, so hopefully the panel line details will look appropriate. However this will be my first airliner model so this is all conjecture (& perhaps wishful thinking) on my part. I've seen a few threads about converting from a Nimrod - somewhat more work than I am aiming for, but very impressive! I am currently trying to resist the temptation....!!!!

Whilst there isn't info on its source here http://ipmsdeutschland.de/FirstLook/Hersteller_News/Revell_News_2020.html according to another forum, the 300SL is probably the old Renwal one.

On the vehicle front, quite a few interesting new items in 1:24 as well as the new E Type FHC However the pic they show looks like it's the ancient 1:8 Monogram one though, due to the scale of the wire wheels and slightly wonky headlight bezels (not only is the shape not right but the bezels are too high compared to the bumper and sidelight / indicator cluster - hopefully Revell will get this area right on the new one! VW T2 late type bay window (snap fit) and also a camper version of their recent T1 Split screen