1/24 Porsche 962 Le Mans
Model, Text and Photos by Jeremy Banks
The kit was a Hasegawa Kenwood car (this particular kit was chosen because it had the correct five spoke wheels). Having been to Le Mans that year I had plenty of photos of the car, and also had managed to look at one of the short tailed cars with the back exposed at Silverstone, so my reference was all there.
I took a good look at the kit and decided to retain most of the top of the engine cover and cut away from a line just behind the brake cooling ducts. The side panels of the engine cover were completely removed as these were different. The tail was then rebuilt with plastic card and lots of auto body filler.
The front of the car was much longer than the kit and was chopped just in front of the lights and a new lower profile built in plastic card and lots of filler.
The side inlets built into the tops of the doors were reprofiled with new tops built from plastic card.
The rear wing was a spare from a Silk Cut Jag, and the wing supports were plastic card. Most other bits like the gearbox and rear suspension were from the spares box.
When I built this car there were none of the upgrade kits on the market and most photoetch was still rare for car kits - hence my use of plastic card for a lot of the fiddly bits !
Then came the fun bit - the paint job. Most of the colours were acrylics ( hand mixed ) airbrushed over a white primer and white gloss auto paint base. This was then clear coated and polished.
Most of the decals were made by dry transfer ( I am a commercial artist by trade so making up the logos was not too difficult (although this was before computers really came to be what they are today - and these were all hand drawn).
The studio I was working in at the time had all the dry transfer making kit so everything was at hand. The car was then given another clear coat and the final bits added after (aerials etc).
