1935 Auburn Speedster - The Abysmal Lindberg/Pyro Kit Completely (900+ hrs) Reworked

Plastheniker · 02-13-2018, 03:56 PM

Hi,

Though the Auburn Speedster is one of the really iconic cars of automotive history there was never any usable styrene kit. The 1:1 Speedster looked like this (for those who are not sure):

Wire wheels were optional, to my knowledge lateral wind deflectors as seen here were neither standard nor optional.

Whatever you hear about the 1/25 Lindberg (former Pyro) kit don't believe it - everything is much worse. All kit parts are crude and mostly out of scale. Fit is disastrous. Panel lines are still raised. A lot of important parts aren't replicated at all. Worst of all OOB the finished kit is so ludicrously ill-proportioned that it looks rather like a caricature:

After 60 years of modeling and several hundred built kits I think this is the poorest kit I have ever seen. Lindberg's claim on the box "Authentic Scale Model" is a joke even if you consider the age of the kit - many other manufacturers' kits of the same era are still usable.

After comparing the box content with an excellent scale drawing found on the web it was clear from the start that this would be a most challenging and very time-consuming project.
As expected I had to convert almost every spot of the nine-piece body:

All the rest of the kit was completely useless because it was so poor and so incorrect that it couldn't even be modified. Finally the finished model was half conversion and half scratch build, and my sacrifice of time exceeded 900 hours.

Since the proportions are now completely different some more pictures than usual in my topics may make sense.

Trash69 · 02-13-2018, 04:58 PM

Nice very nice

safetyfast · 02-13-2018, 10:44 PM

I have just one word "WOW". Great Build.

Jim

Kjenjak · 02-14-2018, 02:35 AM

That looks beautiful!
If you don't know the base kit, there's no way to tell that so much had to be reworked. Fantastic!

DRUMS02 · 02-14-2018, 08:29 AM

This is a monumental conversion. Extremely well done. I am always impressed with your work.

ZoomZoomMX-5 · 02-14-2018, 09:29 AM

Wow...that's amazing, especially knowing how truly awful the basic kit is.

firun · 02-14-2018, 12:49 PM

Jurgen, good Lord, you are amazing!

ianc911 · 02-14-2018, 01:35 PM

Phenomenal! Shoulda made molds and resold a resin kit!

ianc

BVC500 · 02-14-2018, 10:17 PM

Impressive!!

Mech@niC · 02-15-2018, 06:50 AM

Scheiße....this is really AMAZING!
That's scale modelling

stratos75 · 02-15-2018, 10:24 AM

Perfect result of a great work. Congrats!

Plastheniker · 02-17-2018, 03:01 PM

Thanks for the comments!

For those interested here is a lateral view of the body shell before and after reworking. Together with the top view picture already posted it gives a better idea what had to be done than many words.

kadler18 · 03-20-2018, 09:07 PM

Simply put...... Perfect!

lovegt40 · 03-23-2018, 02:13 PM

amazing masterpiece, as usual from you .

F1Tommy · 03-23-2018, 06:23 PM

Very nice finished model. I have gone over to the metal diecast side for many of my models as they are a lot better in many cases. I take the paint off and grind away. I also noticed if you heat diecast metal and cool it off in water fast it is much easier to work with. This is a case in point study as the Franklin Mint model Auburn is a lot better.

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