A while ago I volunteered to drive my dad over to Telford, where he was going to the International Plastic Model Exhibition 2022. Basically if he was going to go anyway then I had an excuse to take the van over and a weekend free in England to do work stuff.
One thing led to another and I figured if he was going to be going there to put on a display on behalf of Northern Ireland then I might as well contribute as well. I'm not an avid model builder by any means, but I've done a few cars in previous years as I'm sure many of us have, and not all that well!
But I thought I could knock something up pretty quick. Of course I underestimated how much time, money and effort it would take, so sort of like every project car, right?
Late Sept/early Oct I started browsing ebay for something cool and cheap. Of course those two things never go together. But then I recalled I had a box of broken (due to house moves etc) 1/24 models and that I could revive one of those just as quickly. Even more quickly, being already built...
First off I started into this.
This is a Tamiya Toyota Cerumo EXiV JTCC car that I set into with the neon paints and metalflake about 15-20 years ago. Dreadful.
The Cerumo name we don't recognise over here - the road car was the Corona EXiV. Apparently that moniker derived from "EXtra impressIVe"... That car itself was based on / platform&body shared the Carina ED, different again to the normal Carina. So Toyota are complicated.
Anyway I stripped it down.
Very racecar.
And prepped it.
And primed.
Then sanded, and primed, and sanded, and primed, and so on, about 10 times. I was up to 2000 grit wet sanding and it still wasn't smooth enough, but on I pressed.
A particular colour was always destined for this.
In an exhibition that was sure to be full of militaria models in olive drab, a pink car was going to stand out big-time. But there was more plans afoot because, as I said, things spiral!
This scrappy old model was also uncovered. I thought I had binned this! I also wasn't 100% sure what it was. I previously (in another post) related that I had found it in a barn once in a poor state, and semi-revived it then with some new (awful) paint and wheels. This was circa 2004.
This one as it happens, turns out to be a Tamiya Toyota Carina ED Autopista. So wait - this is the same car almost! This 1985-1989 first gen Carina ED was a different body car sold alongside the normal Carina, then there was a 89-93 second edition Carina ED, then the third one was 93-98. Those 2nd and 3rd gen were the same Carinas that with a slightly different body were called the Corona EXiV...
Wow, Toyota are complicated. Anyway these cars are very nearly the same one just a generation or two apart.
Coming back to the plastic model, it was suffering with multiple breaks in the glazing, and I broke some of the lights taking them off. But once I had the body free, I looked for some paint, and the most garish thing I could find was some vinyl-spray blue. This is stuff that becomes a vinyl wrap layer and can be removed. So it got about a quarter of the prep as the pink car, and blue it became.
One thing led to another and I figured if he was going to be going there to put on a display on behalf of Northern Ireland then I might as well contribute as well. I'm not an avid model builder by any means, but I've done a few cars in previous years as I'm sure many of us have, and not all that well!
But I thought I could knock something up pretty quick. Of course I underestimated how much time, money and effort it would take, so sort of like every project car, right?
Late Sept/early Oct I started browsing ebay for something cool and cheap. Of course those two things never go together. But then I recalled I had a box of broken (due to house moves etc) 1/24 models and that I could revive one of those just as quickly. Even more quickly, being already built...
First off I started into this.
This is a Tamiya Toyota Cerumo EXiV JTCC car that I set into with the neon paints and metalflake about 15-20 years ago. Dreadful.
The Cerumo name we don't recognise over here - the road car was the Corona EXiV. Apparently that moniker derived from "EXtra impressIVe"... That car itself was based on / platform&body shared the Carina ED, different again to the normal Carina. So Toyota are complicated.
Anyway I stripped it down.
Very racecar.
And prepped it.
And primed.
Then sanded, and primed, and sanded, and primed, and so on, about 10 times. I was up to 2000 grit wet sanding and it still wasn't smooth enough, but on I pressed.
A particular colour was always destined for this.
In an exhibition that was sure to be full of militaria models in olive drab, a pink car was going to stand out big-time. But there was more plans afoot because, as I said, things spiral!
This scrappy old model was also uncovered. I thought I had binned this! I also wasn't 100% sure what it was. I previously (in another post) related that I had found it in a barn once in a poor state, and semi-revived it then with some new (awful) paint and wheels. This was circa 2004.
This one as it happens, turns out to be a Tamiya Toyota Carina ED Autopista. So wait - this is the same car almost! This 1985-1989 first gen Carina ED was a different body car sold alongside the normal Carina, then there was a 89-93 second edition Carina ED, then the third one was 93-98. Those 2nd and 3rd gen were the same Carinas that with a slightly different body were called the Corona EXiV...
Wow, Toyota are complicated. Anyway these cars are very nearly the same one just a generation or two apart.
Coming back to the plastic model, it was suffering with multiple breaks in the glazing, and I broke some of the lights taking them off. But once I had the body free, I looked for some paint, and the most garish thing I could find was some vinyl-spray blue. This is stuff that becomes a vinyl wrap layer and can be removed. So it got about a quarter of the prep as the pink car, and blue it became.
