V-12 Powered Dry Lakes Style Modified for this year's NNL West - W.I.P.

NNL West is coming up next month on February 11th. Each year I fly down to the Bay Area and stay with my friend Raul Perez and we go to Santa Clara, Ca. for this very big model car show. With more than 1,100 cars showing the variety and quality is amazing. I bring whatever I’ve gotten built over the previous twelve months and just hope I don’t embarrass myself too badly.

As always, the show has two themes with a special table for models that you may want to be exhibited within one or the other. This year the themes are V-12’s and R.I.P.’s (makes of cars that no longer exist). Raul and our mutual modeling buddy Curt Raitz decided they would build “salt flats” V-12 cars. By “salt flats” they meant lakes cars so, of course, when they invited me to join the fun I couldn’t turn them down. This is my project for the show.

Curt had gotten a “hot rod Lincoln” style V-12 from Early Years Resin so I decided I would order one too. I first considered building a belly tanker, but since I had never built one and it would take a great deal of scratch building, I decided to stay on more familiar ground … sort of. Besides, I was rapidly running out of time.

This will be a dry lakes style single seater “Modified”, based on a narrowed AMT Ala Kart body shell. The frame is scratch built except for the Revell ’29 Ford RPU crossmember. The front and rear suspension are modified from an AMT ’34 Ford 5-window. The interior is a modified Ala Kart bucket with the upholstery re-skinned to resemble a late Forties tuck and roll. The car that inspired this build is the “Spasmodic” modified which I believe t be from the immediate postwar era. But with a suicide front end, the V-12, and the Model A bucket narrowed but otherwise intact, that car is only an inspiration – this is by no means a replica. I plan to do a proper lakes modified more closely resembling the Spasmodic at a later date.

I’ve got less than 4 weeks to get this beast completed so I’d better get moving!
Thanx for lookin’,
B.

The Spasmodic modified, circa 1946 (?):

Manny Ayulo Luca Badoer Giancarlo Baghetti Julian Bailey