Cockpit part 1

That part will give me some troubles when I try to get it into the body of the car. The assembly manual shows that the cockpit should be ready in place before the cover is placed onto the monocoque. However, I chose to close the body before anything else, mainly because the parts do not fit perfectly together. So now I do not have much choice but slide the cockpit into the body from the rear opening. Easier said than done... There are lots of plastic ends that go in the way of the ribs at the bottom of the monocoque. I had to cut them out in order to make some way. The artillery at Jena all over again!


After a thin coat of primer and some assembly, I painted the side walls in a neutral grey tone. Blame the various pictures from 1967 found on the internet for that... Some would prefer a metallic approach, but I will stick to the real thing as much as I can.

























The seat is also a source of trouble. I do not intend (at least for the time being) to use the driver figurine of the kit, so I have to find a way to render a visible seat. The Modeler Site guide uses a piece a real leather shaped in the plastic part itself. Even thought the idea is tempting, I think it would look a bit bogus since the grain of the material would not really be at the right scale. I may still change my mind about this, but for the moment I went the easy way by painting the seat in flat black. I painted a first layer so as to cover all the primer and minimise the lighter areas. Then I painted a second, very diluted layer so the crevisses in the moulding would be completely soaked. With the quality of this moulding and the slight variations of reflectivity of the paint, I would say that the look of this seat is more than enough. Until of course I think about something better... I initially wanted to dry-brush the seat with a slightly different tone of black, but I have the feeling that the big scale of this model does not require it here.