From the Challenge: "Who's the U-boat commander?" Porsche 928 for Gaslands

 

<<FROM THE ANALOGUE HOBBIES PAINTING CHALLENGE BLOG>>

A bit of a backtrack here... back to the Aquifer on the first level of the Dungeon. However, I hate painting boats... so I had to be a bit more creative in fulfilling the theme.

Everyone remembers the classic 1983 film "Risky Business", in which suburban straight-arrow high-schooler Joel Goodsen (Tom Cruise) cuts loose to Bob Seger's "Old Time Rock and Roll" and things go downhill from there... culminating in the classic scene of Joel's dad's Porsche 928 plunging into Lake Michigan. Watch the clip to the end... "who's the U-Boat commander?" indeed.

So there's the theme - aquatic Porsche 928. One of our group's favourite games pre-pandemic was Gaslands, and everybody has great fun converting Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars for combat. Should be easy to find a Hot Wheels or Matchbox 928, right? Wrong... although I had one as a kid, it's long gone, stores here can't sell toys in person, and I shudder to pay $20+ for one on eBay, not to mention the wait for it to arrive in the mail...

Enter "Mr. 3D Printer" Byron M to save the day! I found a 3D file online for free and sent it along to Byron, who shared it with his friend and fellow 3D printmaster Scott to tune up. And it did need a great deal of tuning up... in fact after Byron printed it up, he emailed me to say "you're going to have to buy a Hot Wheels car" as he didn't think it was salvageable. 

 

But as you can see, where there's a cheap financially responsible Scotsman, there's a way... it did take quite a bit of cleaning up, greenstuff wing mirrors, and some clever painting, but I think it's quite presentable.

The machineguns are from the excellent "Implements of Carnage" sprue from North Star.

I quite like how it turned out, especially as it completes a room that I struggled to find a project to suit. I'll take 30 points for this one - 10 for the car and 20 for the room bonus. It's a small car but did require quite a bit of work!

Big props and thanks to Byron and Scott for their work on the file, and to Byron for printing it for me. Cheers lads!