When I was a lad, I would drag my father to our local racing circuit where he would retire to the beer tent and I would be left to drool over the racing machinery. One car stood out from all the others; the purposefully beautiful, outrageously fast and gorgeously loud Ford GT40.
Photo from ridelust.com
Ford tried to buy Ferrari in the 1960s. When Ferrari declined the offer, Ford decided to take them on at Le Mans. A deal was done with Lola Cars in England, and the end result was the GT40 and four Le Mans wins in a row.
Very few GT40s were made, and an original will cost you big money. This example is probably in excess of five million dollars, a price I would happily pay if I happened to have that amount of spare cash.
There are a some tasty replicas around at more affordable prices, and my son has promised to buy me one when he is rich and famous. Meantime, I have to make do with something smaller.
This is my 1/12th scale model of the car that won Le Mans in 1966:
I also have a 1/43 scale model:
Both of these models are finely detailed, metal masterpieces; but all they can do is sit on a shelf and look pretty, and I already have cats that can do that. I want a GT40 that I can drive.
I am now a regular visitor to Nanotrax. I remain useless at the driving bit; but Q’on and his wife Joom run a great facility and it is always fun to go along and experience being lapped by everyone else. The cars are 1/43 scale; but sadly the available range does not include the GT40. I needed something lighter than my metal model as a basis, so it was off to eBay and a $5 plastic kit was ordered.
Much of my limited pocket money in my younger days was spent on Airfix kits. These were plastic models of aircraft, ships and vehicles which were cheap, reasonably easy to assemble and, under the right conditions, highly flammable. Most weeks I would come home with a plastic something. First step was to throw away the detailed instructions; a boy in a hurry had no need of such things. Then I would open the provided tube of plastic glue which was always nearly, but not completely, adequate to complete the model; probably because most of it ended up up my nose on my fingers.
The glue was really good at sticking to almost anything except the plastic it was meant to be bonding; and the end result of every project was always “vaguely recognisable model with glue trimmings”.
The dubious glue enhancements were irrelevant anyway, because next was the stage I would have called the “total transfer fuck-up embellishment”, had I known the word ’embellishment’ at such a tender age. Every kit came with a sheet of transfers which were meant to be carefully applied to your masterpiece. You soaked each transfer in water and then gently slid it into position. A gentle dab with tissue paper completed the precision exercise.
At least, that was the theory. My first mistake was not to realise that you were meant to cut up the sheet into individual transfers. I just chucked the whole sheet into a bowl of water; resulting in twenty plus transfers, all simultaneously desperate to leave their backing sheet and stick themselves onto something new. Some did end up on the model; but not where I wanted them. The rest joined the glue on my fingers, the table, and in one memorable incident, my pet hamster’s arse (for some reason I thought that a hamster with a swastika from a Stuka on its bum would look cool).
The end result of a couple of hours of poor model-making was a glue encrusted lump with assorted wrinkly transfers in random places, and several plastic pieces that had missed inclusion in the building process because I didn’t know where to stick them. But this didn’t matter; because I had a friend who built similar quality offerings; and he had access to lighter fuel….
We would convene in his room on a Sunday morning to briefly re-enact mock battles with our new constructions, before converting them to foul-smelling, smoking, melting victims of war. It was pure luck that we didn’t burn down his house. The battles lacked any historical precedent. I recall my squadron of spitfires being condemned to the lighter fuel because The Golden Hind had suddenly been blessed with invisible anti-aircraft guns. Who was I to argue, it wasn’t my lighter fuel.
Fast forward a million years, and my plastic model GT40 arrives, and I set to work. The first whiff of the plastic glue sends me back to my glue-sniffing model building days; and it is still a bastard to work with. Never mind, with a little care I have something almost GT40 like. A couple more hours of fiddling and I have rigged it such that the plastic body will sit on the radio controlled racing chassis. So far, so average.
Things start to go downhill when I try to fix some of the more fiddly bits. I lose a rear light cluster which, in a strange twist of fate, I think became attached to the rear area of one of the cats. I am not sufficiently motivated to rummage around looking for it. I discover a bit that should have been fitted before the front section; after I have fitted the front section (I still don’t read instructions). I am starting to create another mess. The enterprise collapses, as expected, when I get to the total transfer fuck-up embellishment. The meant to be straight stripe down the body becomes a wavy line with holes in it; and my $5 GT40 looks like $1 scrap.
And here it is, with the stripe horrors carefully kept out of shot:
I drove it round the track a few times. It looked like shit and handled like shit.
On my way home I stopped off at a 7/11 for some lighter fuel.
Comments 🔗
2010-06-04| Walter saysSo you spent the day building a toy car? I spent the day shagging two bar girls. What a loser!
2010-06-04| Qon saysbetter to have tried and failed… how does that saying go again? lol. if u love cars, models and other things treasured that are NOT toys (so to speak), you’ll appreciate this post. others (aka Walter) think with their pinky finger.
2010-06-06| genuinej saysI hate to even think (please forgive the split infinitive) this, but Walter may have made a good point here, admitedly a first in its own right. Given the choice, I know which way I’d have jumped!! At least once.
2010-06-06| Qon saysnote to self: nix genuinej & walter from the ‘potential future nanotrax members’ list ;)
2010-06-06| Billy saysWalter, try pushing down strongly on your dick whilst in a semi-erect state and then impart an strong upward motion and shove it up your arse; I have the deep suspicion that both you and the bar girls will be much happier with the arrangement.
2010-06-06| Spike saysWalter, I’d rather one she who must be obeyed than any number of bar girls. And when she is not around, I’ll settle for a GT40. Or a Lola T70. Thank you for your interest; now please do what Billy suggested and send us a video.
2010-06-06| Spike saysQon, Walter thinks with something pink, but it ain’t his finger.
2010-06-06| Spike saysgenuinej, you surprise me. You spent two weeks in Pattaya and all you did was play golf, or so you told me.