PK-4153 Matchbox AMT VW Scirocco +++Finished+++

[johnlambert]

I'm a bit late to the party because my mental health has (for some reason) put me off posting, although it hasn't put me off actual modelling.

 

I've seen that @Six97s is also doing a build of this kit.

 

Although I'm not a massive Volkswagen fan I've got a soft spot for the Scirocco, particularly in later Mk1 form.  This kit looks like it is an early Mk1 example, which is something I didn't even know existed until I started looking into the history of the real car (at some point Volkswagen facelifted the Scirocco with wraparound front indicators and more of a front air dam).

 

This is the kit as it arrived last year.

 

A closer look at the parts, the kit was part started, but all of that work needed undoing.

 

Laying the parts out for inspection.

 

The engine was glued together very badly but I managed to get most of it apart.

 

Tyres, decals and axles.

 

Parts still on the sprue.

 

This is the majority of the racing parts, which won't be used in this build.

 

Shiny bits.

 

It's great that AMT provided two-part seats, less so that someone glued them together like this!

 

First stage was to assemble all the body panels as it seemed better to get all these together and fitted neatly before painting.  There were a few sink marks that needed filling and some faint seam lines to remove.

 

I also decided to remove the US-specification side marker lights from the body moulding.

 

Some Halfords filler primer was used to help tidy up the corners although the crease in the wings is now not quite as sharp as it probably should be.

 

I debated going with a metallic blue of green but that wouldn't be right for this age of Scirocco, so I decided to stick with red, hence the red primer.  The colour call outs also recommend "brick red" for the interior carpet and parcel shelf, so I'll leave those in the primer finish.  Primer, incidentally, is Halfords red plastic primer.

 

The part of any car build that I find most difficult is getting a decent paint finish, so that needs to be my focus before I get distracted by too much of the engine or interior build.

Edited March 6, 2022 by johnlambert
Update title

[TonyW]

A bit of a memory jerker for me. I had one back in the nineties, a bronze 1800, with a tan interior. A very nice car to drive. 

 

[Six97s]

Nice to see another one being built!   If you haven't yet test fitted the engine, you might need to reposition the inner wings and bulkhead... I'll explain in my thread.

[JOCKNEY]

Delighted to see another car joining the GB, best of luck with this one.

 

Cheers Pat

[bigbadbadge]

Oooo another Scirocco,  great choice, a cracking car .  Never paid it too much attention back in the day, always concentrating on the Golf's.  Wish I had one of these now though!!!

Great start John

Chris

[Six97s]

7 minutes ago, bigbadbadge said:

Oooo another Scirocco,  great choice, a cracking car .  Never paid it too much attention back in the day, always concentrating on the Golf's.  Wish I had one of these now though!!!

Great start John

Chris

 

I still have mine, but it's been off the road since 2004.  😳

[bigbadbadge]

15 minutes ago, Six97s said:

 

I still have mine, but it's been off the road since 2004.  😳

Still a good investment though,  be good back on the road for smiles per gallon 😉

Chris

[Rabbit Leader]

Great start to the fresh (but never late) build John. I honestly do not recall these VW's ever being imported to Australia, however someone will no doubt correct me about that. Great to see another car being built and you're doing a mighty fine job so far. 

Cheers, welcome aboard and best of luck.. Dave  

[johnlambert]

Thanks for the warm welcome.

 

22 hours ago, Six97s said:

Nice to see another one being built!   If you haven't yet test fitted the engine, you might need to reposition the inner wings and bulkhead... I'll explain in my thread.

A quick mock-up suggests that I've got lucky and the engine just fits the bay.  Also, this is the first look at the painted shell, which I'll leave a couple of days before polishing and detail painting.

 

To fix the sink marks in the cam cover and exhaust silencer, and to fill the gaps in the seat backs I added some filler.

 

I've thrown around some black paint on the underside, steering wheel and centre console, this is Halfords matt black from a spray can which to me looks more satin.  The floor mat is in Halfords ultra matt cammo paint.  I masked off the pan where the rear seat will go, so that it's a clean surface on which to glue the seat.

 

Other interior and engine parts have been given a coat of Tamiya surface primer.

 

Finally, for now, I drilled out the tip of the exhaust pipe.

 

At the moment most of this build feels like it is waiting for paint to dry, but it should come together quite quickly (hope that's not tempting fate) once all the painting is done.

[Six97s]

1 hour ago, johnlambert said:

 

A quick mock-up suggests that I've got lucky and the engine just fits the bay.  Also, this is the first look at the painted shell, which I'll leave a couple of days before polishing and detail painting.

 

 

 

Have you tried it with the radiator in place?   There's a hole under the rad for the front mount to slot into - that's what caused my problem.  With the front mount inserted, the side mount was missing its slot in the inner wing. I could have trimmed the front mount, but the positioning of the front wings and the transaxle also dictates where the wheels end up, and they'd have been too far forward.

 

Paint looks good.  I'm thinking of silver or something like the light gold they called "pearl".

[JWM]

Nice to see this Scirocco, with body designed by G.Giugiaro. I had one in scale 1:1  in years 1989-93... Some good feelings remained... So I will watch your build.

Regards

J-W

 

[johnlambert]

Thanks for all the comments.  A little more progress has been made.

 

Test fitting the engine with the radiator in place, I think it's OK, the testing probably needs the axle in place too.  But I might be helped by the fact that the gearbox mount snapped off.

 

Bonnet in place, I'm trying to decide if there's a mismatch in the colour between the bonnet and the wing.

 

Another view of the painted body.

 

The engine with the broken mount, I've cut off the starter motor from the gearbox and drilled out the spark plugs for wires (if I go down that route).

 

The starter was re-attached to the block, not sure if this is right but I hope it's better than the original kit part.

 

What feels like actual progress, the interior is starting to come together.

 

And a bit more paint.  Some black on the dashboard and the air intake/battery. The instructions would have you paint these parts red, which doesn't feel right to me.  The interior panels are described in the paint callout as "leather" the closest I'd got was this matt brown, which I quite like although I'm not sure how it will go with the red parts of the interior.  But this is a 1970s design, so I guess some odd colours are to be expected.  It has to be said that it's nice to do an interior that isn't just shades of black.

[TonyW]

I found a solitary picture of my old car. A real photo as well!

It's dated Feb '92 on the back and must have been taken when I sold the car. Memory is hazy going back that far but I think I sold it and bought a Mk2 Golf Driver, that one had GTi suspension but a non injection motor.

Happy days.

 

[CliffB]

It's great to see this one coming together so quickly John 

I think your brown interior should work just fine with the red.  I bought one of the first 'current style' Sciroccos back in 2009, and even then the tan leather option didn't really tone with anything!

 

Cheers

[Rabbit Leader]

Nice update and great progress. Not being a car modeller myself it’s really interesting seeing these WIPs come together. This VW is looking great. 
Cheers. Dave 

[TimJ]

Great job so far. 

[johnlambert]

Painting continues, most of which isn't very interesting at the moment.

 

I'm quite pleased with the way the dashboard is going.  The instructions would have you paint the dials silver in a black panel, but I'm sure VW used a metallic surround for black gauges.  The instrument panel is Valejo matt aluminium, the dials and radio are picked out with a black enamel wash.  It looks better in real life than in the photo.  It looks like there are some switches and warning lights to try and pick out.

[Six97s]

Nice work. I'm not sure my eyes are up to that level of detail.  🙄   I found this reference photo:

 

https://www.klassiekerweb.nl/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/VW_Scirocco_v1_interieur.jpg

[johnlambert]

26 minutes ago, Six97s said:

Nice work. I'm not sure my eyes are up to that level of detail.  🙄   I found this reference photo:

 

https://www.klassiekerweb.nl/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/VW_Scirocco_v1_interieur.jpg

Thanks, that's a really handy photo.

[johnlambert]

It's great seeing all the builds going on, but it's hard to keep up with every one.

 

I wasn't happy with the paint match between the bonnet and the tops of the front wings, so the paint has been sanded back ready for another coat.  This means that I need to buy more paint.  It's a bit of a setback, but at least there is plenty of time and I'd like to do as good a job as possible.

 

The interior as it was yesterday, the red seat centres looked too bright.

 

The engine as it was yesterday.

 

Collection of painted parts today.  The seats have been dry-brushed with a little matt black to bring out some of the texture, then sprayed with matt varnish.  For the door cards I've painted some detail and added a little brown wash to the panel line and a couple of other areas.

 

Wheel centres are painted, I'll give them a clear top coat and then a light wash to bring out the detail.

 

Close-up of the engine.

 

So far I'm quite pleased with how this build is going, it doesn't seem like a bad kit.  While I don't want to rush, I'd quite like to finish and pick up a 1:32 Matchbox car kit.

[Rabbit Leader]

Another nice update John and it’s all coming together nicely. I also like the idea of adding another 1/32 car kit too.

Cheers.. Dave 

[bigbadbadge]

Great work on this beauty John, the difference in panel colours would not look out of place on a car which has had panels replaced and not a new car, you could model it in a few years old condition then will save you getting the new paint .

I'll get my coat!!!

Chris

[johnlambert]

On 22/01/2022 at 08:51, bigbadbadge said:

Great work on this beauty John, the difference in panel colours would not look out of place on a car which has had panels replaced and not a new car, you could model it in a few years old condition then will save you getting the new paint .

I'll get my coat!!!

Chris

I thought about that as an excuse to not mess with the paint, but I've gone too far to get away with that now.

[Natter]

Looking really nice. The original shape Scirocco was one of VWs best looking cars IMHO.

[johnlambert]

Time for another Scirocco update.  The bodywork has received another coat of paint.  I'm leaving it well alone under cover for a few days so I'm not even going to take a photo yet.  But in the meantime...

 

Wheels received a couple of coats of Halfords clear lacquer, which has toned down the aluminium paint a bit.

 

The centre caps and wheel nut covers were painted with a little X18 Semi Gloss Black and a little black wash was applied to the recesses .

 

Getting the interior together, first adding the back seat.

 

The side panels, you can see one hole for the dashboard location didn't get moulded, so this was drilled out.

 

There are no pedals provided in this kit, and only the throttle pedal is represented on the toeboard moulding; AMT would have us believe that VW developed one pedal control years before the Nissan Leaf.  A set of pedals was raided from the spares box, what's the betting that they won't be visible once everything's together?

 

Interior together (I've since touched up some of the seat cushions) and you can just see the pedals.  It's a bit of a tricky job to get everything together as this isn't an area with fool proof locating pegs and it doesn't hold itself together without glue.  It fell apart a couple of times while trying to glue it all together.

 

I've also assembled as much of the underside as possible.  The metal axle is pretty nasty but I'm not altering this part of the kit.  This was done before I'd painted the wheels, hence their absence.

 

Thanks for your interest, more to come soon.