Post by jpeeler on Jun 23, 2018 20:50:01 GMT -5
Just off the workbench:
There have been many models built of Janet's Kelly Girl car but almost all of them have been of later versions with the stars and the Kelly Girl trademark. This is how the car looked in the second half of the 1976 season, based in part on some movie footage I found of the car at the September race at Dover. (Janet retired 176 laps in with the kinds of mechanical issues that dogged this car.)
These decals were from a sheet I designed when the MPC Laguna kit was about to be reissued by Model King in 2006. I had been working with a decal manufacturer who was planning a whole raft of sheets for this kit. As it turned out, another decal maker released a bunch of stuff (including a Kelly Girl Laguna sheet) and our plans fell by the wayside. It was kind of sad because the sheet I designed had components for several different variants that had never been done before - early and late number types, several different versions of the Kelly Services/Kelly Girl titles, and so on. I'd put in a lot of effort to get things just right and took it kind of hard when we got scooped. I had about ten or twelve sheets printed by a limited-run decal maker, kept a couple for myself, and made the remainder available for sale. Everything you see on this model, with the exception of the tire markings and the grille, came from the decal sheet I designed.
I built this car as a testbed for another Laguna or two I want to build, in particular an especially lovely variant Janet ran in the 1977 season with white accents and green stars along the top of the front fenders. But for now I decided to build this early and unusual variant to see if this would actually work. I think it did.
The body is from the Model King kit but just about everything beneath comes from an AMT Thunderbird stock car kit. The chassis was lengthened to the 115" wheelbase and the roll cage was backdated to 1976 spec. I didn't have a GM engine handy and the MPC engine was too large to fit, so I had to rework the Ford engine to look like a Chevy engine. It definitely made things look better than the simple MPC chassis and engine, but if the forthcoming Salvinos JR Models Oldsmobile kit has a good chassis I will use that kit as a donor instead. (If their plans include a new-tool Laguna, that would save a ton of work, but since I only bet on sure things I'll keep the MPC Laguna kits handy.)
The body required a lot of work to look more like the real car. I had to move the fuel filler up to match the way Janet's car was configured. I also wasn't happy with the louvers over the rear side windows, which were the wrong shape and looked kind of simple, so I cut them out and built new ones to match photos of the real thing. While I was at it, I found the windows needed to be moved forward too. I also added the contoured lip to the door window openings on both sides.
I'd found out from other builders that the fit of the kit's windshield wasn't good at all (not to mention they were really thick and had that Coke-bottle effect), so I recontoured both the front and rear windows to better fit the car and then thermoformed new ones from clear plastic. New rear window straps from thin sheet plastic completed things.
You'll get a dozen different answers on what color green to use. Since the real car no longer exists (at least it doesn't exist in this state, to my knowledge) that means you're a free agent as long as it looks reasonably close. This car is Duplicolor Dark Jade over Tamiya Pure White. I redid the front and rear bumpers with Vallejo Chrome. There are pictures of the Kelly Girl car with both white wheels and dull silver wheels, and after dithering I stuck with white wheels (mainly because I didn't want to repaint them after having painted them once). I finished things off with photoetched hood pins, and called this one done. Now it can sit alongside Janet's Celica I built last year:
And with some luck, soon I can get the Lightning built that she ran in the 1977 Indianapolis 500. For now, though, I'm happy to have the Laguna finished. I've only wanted to build this car for the last dozen or so years, put it off because the subject meant a lot to me and I was afraid I'd mess it up. But I think I did okay. I hope you like looking at it, too.
Jodie Peeler
