1/48 and 1/25 Indy Car kit bash by Steve Bamford

It all began a few years back when Dan's Mon-Key was watching Australian Rules Football on Satellite TV. The whole lack of any apparent rules got his interest up. Then there were the Mad Max movies he rented on video. The complete lack of concern for human life and limb truly impressed him and Dan's Mon-key was convinced all Australians were living a lifestyle identical to the characters in Mad Max. Then when it was announced that Indy car racing would be going to Australia, there was no stopping Dan's Mon-key from building a car...entering the race and trying to go home with the winning purse.

The first obstacle was designing a car. Due to cost considerations.....Stupid Cousin Larry was in charge of designing and building the car. To guard against any fatal design flaws, the car was equipped with an ejection seat. The design was sound....take a basic Indy Car....bolt a couple of A-10 Warthog engines to it and fully arm it with a mulit-barrel cannon and Maverick missiles. It seems the part about cars conforming to some basic INDY standards was lost on these two greedy Mon-Keys from hell. Stupid Cousin Larry is not the brightest Monkey in the family tree and this was realized shortly after the first test drive of the new race car...this was car # 01. It seems he bolted the Warthog jet engines onto the car backwards, so instead of providing forward motion....they provided reverse motion. No one noticed this slight flaw in design until after the initial test drive. Dan's Mon-key suited up and strapped himself into the race car and fired up the engines. When he hit the gas pedal the car flew into reverse and shortly hit 600 miles per hour with Dan's Mon-key shrieking all the way. Just before the car hit a concrete wall leading into the turn....Dan's Mon-key ejected and safely landed. The car was utterly destroyed and the engines flew for 1/2 a mile before finally landing in a packed parking lot for a local biker gang...they were not amused either.

So Stupid Cousin Larry set about fixing the design flaws in the original car...this was of course after he was healed from a severe beating from Dan's Mon-key that was inflicted with a Williams Bros B-10B model kit. Car # 02 was perfect except for the fact it didn't meet even the basic of Indy Car car construction qualification rules. Our two 'heros' were not daunted by this and decided to open their own Indy Race Car Driver training school. the concept was simple. Insert student driver in unarmed car. Dan's Mon-key would chase the student driver around the track trying to kill him with either the mulit-barrelled cannon or the sidewinders of Maverick missiles. Sadly they were unable to sign up and drivers interested in improving their driving skills and the driver training school went bankrupt.

The model was simple....buy two kits and make the various parts fit one way or another. The car kit was the 1/25 Indy car kit from Revell. The A-10 Warthog kit was the 1/48 Monogram A-10 kit. The sidewinders were from the spares box from some other Monogram jet. The ejection seat was an Aces II seat from True Details and the gun was donated by Russ Sharp (an Armour Modeller in my local club). The A-10 cockpit had to be cut and trimmed to fit into the car. the nose compartment in the car had to be cut open with my X-Acto knife. the A-10 engines had to be raised so they werehigher and closer together so they would clear the rear tires. On the A-10 model the engines are much further apart. The nose cone also had to be modified to permit the cannon to stick through. The bulk of the modification were done with my Dremel Mini-Mite.....a tool that makes any modifications quick and easy.

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The beauty of car kits is they require no filler due to the lack of seams and due to the complicated nature of the paint scheme I wanted to do......the lack of seams and filler meant I could paint the model and then assemble it.

First all the black painting was done. the cockpit was black so this was airbrushed prior to installation and all details were dry brushed with white to bring highlight them. I love Monogram kit for their excellent raised detail in their cockpits. The instrument panel on left was airbrushed flat black......lightly dry brushed with white and the dials were given a few coats of future till they had the correct enough look. Without a flashlight the detail on this instrument panel is impossible to see.

The cockpit received the same painting treatment as the instrument panel. The seat received a combination of airbrushing and brush painting. The seat belt buckles were done with a silver paint pen......you can find these at a stationary store. The seat belts were hand paint with a fine brush with flat brown Humbrol enamel.

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The gun wasn't modified to fit the kit and it seems to be designed for the nose compartment of this car......I like to call this a lucky break and I've found that kit bashing is full of lucky breaks if you remain flexible. The gun was given the exact same drybrushing paint treatment as the cockpit and instrument panel

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Dan's Mon-Key's Race car wouldn't be complete without some nudie nose art...........unfortunately it's pretty well hidden by the front suspension when the model is fully assembled.

Painting the body of the car was simple as there was no concerns for filling seam lines etc...this is a car afterall and I'm sure there are lines between the various body panels. First I painted the body panels and engines the lightest shade of blue to the whole surfaces of the body panel parts. Special thanks to The Two Bobs and the inspiration I got from their F-14 Aggressor Decal Sheet.

For the main body panels and nose section I used many tiny over lapping pieces of Tamiya tape. These gave the look I wanted from the masking. For the engines I used large sections of scotch tape cut in very angular ways.

Once everything was masked....I painted the medium shade of blue. then I did more masking over the medium blue as well as the first layer of tape.

Finally the third layer of paint was applied....after a bit of drying time all the tape was removed and the paint job was complete.....except for the false canopy on the bottom and the engine intake and exhaust areas.