1980 Austin Princess mild custom - 1951 Lanchester LD10

That (for me) is the best yet, ties everything together especially with bmcnut 's suggestion of a light tint

Now that really works!

I was going to say the back end looks wrong without something to slim it down, the pink base does just that.
If it were mine I'd pick this design.

haha! You know what I mean though, right? Excellent design, meets all criteria, it's just not the one for me. Although by the sounds of things it's the one for plenty of other people so that's good.

I do wonder if a similar design could help the dumpiness of the Allegro out.

I did try it with pink C pillars, but it does make the back end look more heavy.

There's nothing about the design I dislike, it's really good. It's just too sporty. I want a more sort of wallowy 70s lazy malaise era slug of a thing (with British proportions). Something that looks a bit weighed down by its styling and is unapologetic about it. It's a 'feel', I know it when I see it, so it's hard to describe. A good design isn't always the right design, except when it is.  Oldsmobile 98 Regency, by way of example.  This has the vibe.  It's not a pretty car, it has a face only a mother could love (and even then she's only doing it out of duty), they're often awful colours and just look like the sort of thing that wobbles when you stop and doesn't stop wobbling for a good few minutes after you get out.



I don't actually want it to be cool or stylish on purpose. I want it to be what it is, and what it is, is what it is.

I like the 4th photoshop, and horrido's first one.
The 4th photoshop, I think the white walls really set it off, in a retro-futuristic way.

Whatever you choose, that pink is sublime!

I'm not repositioning arches, I'm ambitious but I know my skill boundaries!

The pink really is amazing, I can't get over the fact it was a factory colour from Nissan.

This cold has almost gone away, got the ID check done for the new job, and it's the quiet week of the month so I've a little breathing space here. If the weather can behave itself that means I could get the driver's side sill done before I start the new job. It's the one job that sees the car potentially be grounded for a few days so I want to try and do it in a safe spot when it comes to work obligations.

The other thing I did was cut the satellite dish in half so I could mock up for the spats/skirts. Definitely going the bubble skirt route with this because the flare of the arch needs to flow into the dome of the satellite dish. After a quick mark and mock up I've got plenty of material and the dome gives me plenty of space behind for things like tyre wall flex and clearing out dirt and whatnot. The nearest example I can think of is the Audis from iRocco for a general feel of the profile.


I think I'm going to make a steel wire skeleton and use the satellite dish halves in a similar way to a door skin. The satellite dish gives me a slightly ovoid compound curve which matches the similarly ovoid flared arch of the Princess, it's a shape that would have been very difficult for me to create from a flat sheet. I'll use the dish like a door skin, rather than as the main structural element.

My plan is to make two outer wires, one following the edge of the arch flare, and one following the return lip of the arch. I can then bridge them together to keep them equally spaced and run a few bracing ribs across the lot to keep the 3D profiles of the rear arches. There's all sorts of complicated curves going on with the wheel arches and just slapping a flat sheet on there is going to look very poor.

When I've got the wire skeleton done, I can dress the satellite dish halves on to them, probably with some tack welds, and then I can figure out the physical attachment which is the bit I'm not as sure on. I know I'll need to run a rubber strip to prevent rattling too, that's easy to sort out.

What makes fitting challenging for me is that I don't want visible fixings when the spat is attached OR when it's removed. I want both options to look like the only way the car normally is. I think that means I have to hide the fixings in the return lip of the arch and I've seen a few different solutions to this, I'm just not sure which one is best. I definitely don't want the spat rattling free, but I also don't want it to be so difficult to remove that it's a nuisance in the event of having to get to a tyre valve or replacing/removing a rear wheel.

Spats have been around since at least the early 1930s, so how hard can it be really?

Skirts eh? Did not see that coming. AFAIK, they're held on by a spike on the top (drill a hole in the return lip) and a couple of dead bolt latches near the bottom, front and back. The old fifties ones have a more fancy mechanism where you can just pull a lever and it latches both sides at once, but there's no need for that.

There's only one car i can think of from that era that really ran with the skirts idea and that was Harry Bentley Bradleys Pontiac 70. Food for thought maybe? I hesitate to photoshop this idea (much as I'd like to), since I don't want to spoil any of your ideas.