I searched and my build thread for this model is in the threads brough over to this new platform, however the pictures did not carry over. So I thought I would revive the fun build in a new thread.
I came across a Johan 1935 Mercedes Benz Roadster when I was looking through vendor tables at a swap meet. When I saw the illustration on the box I didn’t see the beautiful flowing curves of that roadster body, I saw a hot rod.
I immediately bought the kit…
Since I already built this kit I’ll post some highlights.
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First thing I did was cut off all the fenders and excess body work.
Which left me with a bare coupe body shell. I glued on some half round trim to help accent that belt line that Model A’s and other cars of the time had. Mainly because some of the body prep I did kind of removed the features that were there.
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I wanted to paint this similar to the box art. I liked that maroon color. So I ised black primer.
I tried Mission Models Paint for this build. I looked online and foud that it is a 3 part paint. So I bought the required bottles. Online the recommend 10 parts paint, 1 part poly clear, and 1 part thinner. I mixed it up like that and it seemed a little thick for airbrush use still.
I found a sweet spot. 10 parts paint, 3 parts poly clear, and 3 parts thinner. And this paint covered really well. Even over black primer 2 coats of paint was all I needed for nice eve color.
Here is the body.
And the chassis. I removed all the body mounts and brackets I will not need. Puttied over all the sunk in spots from the mold process. and smoothed the whole thing prior to paint.
Then I hot rodded the engine. The engine is a supercharged straight 8. I replaced the air cleaner with a chrome scoop. and straight piped the exhaust.
The side pipes are styrene tubes. Then I drilled into the outer ends to make the walls thinner.
All the chrome on the engine is Green Stuff World. I airbrushed the the Valve cover and the exhaust pipes. and brushed on the smaller parts.
I grabbed the wheels and tires out of Revells new 29 Roadster kit. Painted the wheels BBS Gold from Splash paints. and mounted them up. Here is the rolling chassis.
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And finally here is the finished hot rod.
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Oops. I forgot to show the interior.
I used a creme color. Blocked off the back seat. And I used some 3D printed hot rod seats.
@ctruss53 awesome job! I love your vision for the car, and the final look is amazing! The only thing missing is the backstory. Was it used by runners during prohibition? or did a rich kid wreck it and this is how the mechanic brought it back to life?
That looks awesome! As for a story, my humble submission, post war Germany early to mid 50s. Germans are still having to rebuild the country so materials are rare or hard to come by. A young man finds this pre-war benz, but doesn’t have the means or supplies to “properly” fix it. After much ingenuity this is what he makes it into.
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Wicked looking roadster. Well done.
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A young man working as a valet parker at the local country club stole it and hot rodded it.
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