johnlambert

I'm fairly certain that the Lancia Lambda never had a de Dion back axle, although that remarkable car was one of the first to use independent front suspension. The Lancia Aurellia was the first Lancia to use de Dion rear suspension, and that was only from the fourth series in 1954. Possibly, given the improvised nature of the car, the differential was from a Lambda but the rest of the rear suspension was some sort of home-brew?

@TommyOneTwoFour that looks great. I love the look of muscle cars on steel wheels with hub caps.

Nice model. There's also a company called Fox Transfers, which does model railway transfers and etched name/number plates. They may have suitable emblems for your model.

I built one of these back when the kit was new. As I was a teenager, it's not the best build ever. At least I now know that someone else found the fitting of the bonnet to be unsatisfactory.

That's a beautifully finished model, I can't say anything against your build. I've never seen one of these built before, so it is interesting to see what it looks like. I have to say that it doesn't quite look right. Some of that may be because K&R have produced the model as the XJ13 was originally, where I'm more familiar with the rebuilt example. Jaguar (or Abbey Panels) made a change to the front wheel arches when the car was rebuilt. I prefer the look as it is now, even if it isn't original. Maybe it's as simple as the wheels needing more depth, I'm sure the centres should be more inset relative to the rims.

Although I've already built an Airfix Mustang but I'd love to build another, so I'll keep my eye out for this kit. It's a pity you only get one decal option, but I guess there are aftermarket options?

You described the engine, twice, as a "V8". I can assure you that it is nothing of the sort, being a straight, or inline eight as shown in the images of the sprues. Apart from one racing car, hastily concocted to meet rules designed to keep them away, the first Mercedes-Benz car to use a V8 engine was (unless I am very much mistaken) the 600 of 1963. This 6,330cc M100 engine also found its way into the 300SEL 6.3 and made the "6.3" designation (or variants thereof) something of a distinguishing mark for high performance Mercedes models for years. Even when it no longer had any link to the actual engine size.

I picked up a 1980s boxing of the Bristol Fighter last year, it builds up into a nice model but the way the wings go together is the work of the devil.

In England, when I was growing up, there were these chewy sweets called fruit salads. They were pink and yellow as I recall and this build reminds me of them. Maybe that's why I find the colour scheme to be strangely appealing? Congrats on at least trying to get something out of the spares box even if it didn't quite work out.

That's flippin' gorgeous, definitely one for the lottery-win garage.

I'm starting to get the impression that the Tamiya Alpine A110 is a kit that likes to put up a lot of resistance.

There were two-door Ford Cortina 1600Es but these were built for export only.

I built the Gunze Jaguar XK-E last year. I'm currently having problems with photo hosting so I can't share pictures. The shape looked pretty good to me, I'm not 100% certain about the angle of the windscreen but it's not offensively wrong. The soft, black plastic interior is a bit weird, I used a sharp blade to clean it up but didn't try and add any paint to it. I think I used superglue gel to stick it and even added some wire to represent the trim on the door cards. The greatest challenge with the kit was cleaning up some mould lines and fitting the body halves together then hiding the join. Although it's a very simple kit and doesn't have the best locating tabs (although the parts actually fit together pretty well), it builds up nicely and you can add some of the missing body and interior trim if you are inclined (I added the chrome strips along the bonnet and around the rear number plate, as well as the aforementioned door trim and a rear-view mirror).

The chassis is a fine model in its own right, it almost seems a shame to cover it with bodywork. @Toftdale yes, drivers sat next to (or, in some cases, between) massive fuel tanks, unleashing 400hp through narrow tyres and (in some cases) poor suspension geometry. Cars were designed with no real thought for crash safety and overalls were simple cotton fabric.

@Sabrejet excellent choices, the Cunningham C4RK is right up my street. There are a few very tempting kits in the Profil24 range.

I've built the Cabriolet version of this kit, with the van and cabrio saloon in my stash. They are almost insanely detailed kits that are wonderful and infuriating in roughly equal measure. I'm not sure I'll add the cheese truck to my collection, but it's nice to see another variant of this kit.

Any, or all of the above for me, please.

I found that this kit isn't quite as fool-proof (or me-proof, which is about the same thing) as Tamiya's best efforts. My discovery was that if a part didn't go together, it was because I'd messed up a previous step. As for the design of the chassis, I think it precedes from the design of the Renault 4CV, on which the first Alpines were based. This used a backbone chassis, forked at one end to carry the engine and transmission. This, in turn, followed the pattern of various other rear-engined cars (see Tatra, Mercedes-Benz and the KdF Volkswagen) introduced before the war. I believe Renault even got Dr Porsche to check their designs for the 4CV while he was being held as a prisoner of war (but that might be a myth that's been debunked).

That is gorgeous. Thanks for sharing the build process and end result.

This just gets better and better.

Happy to help, that colour looks good. I'm still trying to decide which colour I'll paint my Beetle.

It looks like you could almost scribe carefully around the speedo panel and glovebox lid until the parts can be removed. Then they look like they could be swapped over and fit into each other's holes. I hope that makes sense?

This popped up in my social media. It seemed relevant and, let's face it, what's not to like about the cars (if not the political circumstances surrounding them)? Although it is a myth, it's worth repeating the tale of the Silver Arrows, the racing regulations specified a maximum dry weight for the car (minus driver and tyres) of 750kg. The logic being that the more powerful an engine was, the heavier it would be. As history would prove, this was a flawed assumption; but the legend is that the Mercedes W25, when first submitted for scrutineering was wearing a beautifully polished coat of white paint (as Germany's national racing colour) but was just a couple of kg over the weight limit. To get the car race legal the team worked all night to strip every last bit of paint and when presented to the scrutineers, it was deemed fit to race. I can't remember where I read the refutation of this myth, but (as others have said) it has been debunked.

Agreed, two of my most recent kit purchases were an E30 BMW 3-series (not an M3) and an Audi 90, slightly premium but pretty much ordinary saloon cars that I remember from my youth.

For a moment I thought you were doing "Barbie's dream Testarossa" when I saw the pink primer Agreed, it looks really odd without the black bits. But this is shaping up to be a cracking model, I'm enjoying the build.