quicksilvercoaches

I've been tinkering with a few things recently. Chucked some paint over the Kentoys Merc and I think it looks quite decent now - better than Cararama's crude oversized effort anyway. The wheels are the right style but stick out too far so I've shortened the axles but otherwise it's just a paint job. Then I went to the market just before lockdown and the chap with the collectables stall had an abundance of Kentoys he'd acquired from somewhere. Loads of Delicas, pickups and Landcruisers but also the lesser-spotted BMW. This must be quite rare as there isn't much reference to it online. A pretty good representation of an E36 3-series but the grille is missing its centre bar and there are a couple of weird lumps on the bootlid that shouldn't be there, probably just enough change to avoid a licensing fee. Given the same treatment as the Merc it should scrub up well.

A nice easy one for a change. A friend owns this lovely black Jaguar XJS (V12 no less, not a car for the faint-hearted or light of wallet!), which is almost identical to Oxford Diecast's 76XJS005 so all it needed was a change of numberplates.

Mention was made of the Kentoys Mercedes E-class, which I had never seen before but I found one on eBay. It's considerably smaller than the Cararama version, which must be 1/60-something and closer to Matchbox size. It should come up well with some paint and attention to the wheels.

Never seen one of those before. It looks like a cross between several different Ferraris. The basic shape is similar to the Testarossa but the front is more like a 348 and the round rearlights are from the 355. I see hints of Lotus Esprit too! Probably deliberately not modelled on any specific car to avoid paying a licence fee.

I've never seen the Merc or BMW but I do have a Beetle acquired second-hand. Delicas and the Toyota Estima/Lucida were very popular in the big grey import boom of the early 2000s; a lot have been scrapped but there are still a fair few around. I forgot about the Ford even though I have a few of them; that was the fourth vehicle in the emergency sets, each of which had three of the four. You might think the ground clearance of the Kentoys Delica is excessive but if anything it's actually too low and should be jacked up a bit as they're big chunky things.

Mr HubNut has just bought a Mitsubishi Delica. Strangely enough, despite being an obscure Japanese Domestic Market vehicle there is a model Delica in OO, an outwardly crude plastic one by Kentoys sold in emergency playsets consisting of three vehicles (Delica, VW van and Toyota Landcruiser) and the usual assortment of oversized figures, cones etc. I bought several of these sets from the local market years ago so I dug one of the Delicas out and threw some paint at it. It's actually a nicely-detailed and quite accurate little thing although they do suffer from distortion and poor moulding around the windscreen and I didn't realise how bad it was until I finished the model. The bullbar is cut down from a 3D printed one for Scania trucks.

In between other things I had a go at another Humber kit, John Day's 1948 Super Snipe Series II. The colour scheme is inspired by the cars at the now-closed Humber museum in Hull and both colours are sprayed so the masking was quite tricky! The whitewall tyres were done as an experiment with a white Posca paint pen.

Technically true, but they look completely different so an X-type is never going to make a convincing Mondeo substitute. The X-type isn't actually as closely related to the Mondeo as its reputation suggests and only about 10% is shared.

Something a bit more modern now. Myself and my dad have just rescued an early Ford Mondeo that had been sitting on a driveway for 7 years so naturally I wanted a model of it. There are no 1/76 Mondeos available but looking at it I realised styling-wise a Mondeo is basically a Sierra with the edges rounded off and it might be possible to modify an Oxford Sierra. Only one way to find out and I think it turned out quite well.

Quicksilver have one converted to a minibus with Cararama wheels and Northcord Sprinter seats. I also have three of Ryan's resin shells to do sometime.

I've been tinkering with various things while in lockdown. This R. Parker Jensen Interceptor built over 15 years ago was really showing its age... ...so it got chucked in the paint stripper and rebuilt. Same colour but a much better finish. Of note is that the Parker model represents an earlier Interceptor than the Oxford Diecast, with the indicators above the front bumper.

I remember Astras with those wheels. I think they may have been part of the police spec as the local cop shop had a load of Astra hatchbacks with wheels like that but I don't think I ever saw them on a private car.

It certainly is possible to fit Oxford FB wheels to the Minix FC, I did exactly that in the very first post of this thread.

That Commer actually isn't the first release with the roller shutter. The Pollock version (76CWT005) also has one, which I didn't initially notice until I put it next to one of the earlier releases with doors. Well done to Oxford for making both versions.

So the Nova is done. I filed off the wheelarch bulges and modified the pillar placement to make it into the 5-door my parents had. Went for Humbrol matt blue-grey on the windows, which I think looks pretty good - maybe it could do with some gloss varnish but I don't have any.

Having acquired a cheap second-hand Oxford Zephyr as a wheel donor for another project, I decided to have some fun and do something completely different with it. Straight out of Custom Car magazine from the 1980s with a V8, big wheels, drainpipe exhausts and fancy paint.

Brilliant! I'm pretty well acquainted with the Model 70 as I know four people who own them and have actually driven two. About 80 are known to exist out of 18,000 built for the government and around 50 private sales - contrary to the common myth, they weren't built exclusively for the DHSS and it WAS possible to buy one privately. Nor were they banned in 2003 - the government simply reclaimed and disposed of them, there has never been a law on the statute books specifically banning invalid carriages and it is legal to drive them on the road. Check out HubNut's Project Invacar on YouTube to see one in action.

These are OO rather than N, but as 3D printed road vehicles I guess this is best place to put them. Vauxhall Novas from an ebay seller (who also does a 'breadvan' VW Polo), but as my first examples of solid models what is the best way to represent the window glass on these opaque bodies? The intention is to replicate the one my parents had, but that was a 5-door so some modification will be needed. Being solid at least makes that easier as I don't have to cut out and reposition the window pillars.

It looks nothing like a Maxi More like a Vauxhall Chevette if anything. Is it really supposed to be a Metro as I would never have guessed?

I bought one of these but it's sat around for a while even though all I did was add numberplates. It's quite big even next to Cararama models so best kept away from Oxford and the like, but still usable. The caravan is a 3D print from Shedring Railway, a one-off as far as I know. It's very much the done thing for showmen to have personalised plates on their 4x4s and there are no prizes for guessing the name of this one's owner!

Some kit builds this time as I recently acquired a few of the metal kits from John Day and R. Parker. I like these kits as they're very simple and easy to put together but well detailed and realistic. The first to be finished are a pair of Parker Humbers: the black one is a four-cylinder Hawk and the grey one a six-cylinder Super Snipe. And with Oxford Diecast's Snipe estate

The white one is clearly not based on any specific vehicle and actually has a combination of grille and bumper finish that never existed. It has a silver grille with a Leyland badge as used on the earliest examples, but black bumpers that should go with the later black Sherpa-badged grille. AROnline has a very good feature on the evolution of the Sherpa with an illustration of the different front end treatments used over the years. Here's what I did with my white one: And this one is a full repaint (note the chrome bumpers identifying it as an early version):

I have a few assorted Tomica models but haven't seen that one before. It would fit the bill nicely so off to eBay I go.

All is not lost. If you don't mind applying modellers' licence to make something that didn't exist but could have done, the Oxford model could pass for a OO scale G van.

I've made a rather surprising discovery that Oxford Diecast's recently-released and supposedly OO Citroen H catering van is in fact HO scale so it's no good to OO modellers! Read more on my findings here: https://rustyoldrubbish.blogspot.com/2019/08/h-for-ho.html