Recently
I decided to do a little catching up on detailing the cars in
my own collection. Being a Chevelle enthusiast, I decided to do
all the Chevelles in my collection that haven't yet been detailed.
I found 5 cars that needed "the treatment" and I took
all of them apart and filed them into boxes and my "on the
bench" list. Before I could get to them I had to finish up
a client project or two so they sat for a while.
When
I finally had the time again to work on my own cars, I realized
I had done tons of Chevelle and that I'd like to do something
different. I also didn't feel like tackling Chevelles since they
take quite a bit of work. Then my eyes landed on my 61 and 62
Corvettes by Ertl. They are from one of Ertl's best molds, had
very good detail to start with and would only need a bit of fine
tuning to be detailed up to my requirements.
These
cars only need a small amount of detailing to really package them
up nicely. The trim on them is already painted but it looks so
dull. I of course gave them the chrome foil treatment. This 61
got chrome trim on the cove outline, the gill spears, fender ridge
and tail light bezels. The chrome foil just looks so much better
than painted on trim. Painted trim is too dull and has too sharp
of contrast from the chrome plated plastic parts on the car.
The
grill and the wheels are nicely made but just scream out for some
background painting. The grill got a good dose of blackwash to
darken up the openings in the grillwork and the wheels got a touch
of black to the cooling slots in the hub caps. The body color
trim around the outer edge of the cap was put there by Ertl. The
tail light bezels weren't even painted so they really pop off
the car when chromed.
Subtle
improvements to the details is the name of the game. Under the
hood a dab of paint has been applied to the oil fill spout cap,
the hose clamps and water inlet and the underside of the hood.
Everything else is pretty much well detailed as it comes. You
can see in this photo the effect of chroming the front fender
ridges. They show up so much better with chrome foil than the
paint they came with. If I could have gotten the top off without
really mangling the model I would have painted the defroster openings
with a little black but the top and windshield are really put
on well so I left them in place.
The
interior is so well done and so well detailed I was unable to
find anything to detail further! I'm sure I must have missed something,
but I poured over my Corvette books and couldn't find anything
that was left undone. I suppose the steering wheels spokes should
have been treated so they wouldn't look so chromey, but the only
choice I could come up with would be to paint them silver and
that would look too dull. Maybe I could add door sill plates.
The
under carriage shows off the majority of the major updates. The
exhaust and transmission were already done so I painted the starter,
oil filter canister, rear springs, shocks, rear anti-sway bar,
the exhaust pipe tip hollows and the front steering links. This
is a superb mold that takes very well to a little detailing. That
the other nice thing: this car requires just a small amount of
detailing to bring it up to an outstanding level of detail. I
can't understand why Ertl hasn't exploited this mold further.