Function above form. Always.

The gold paint arrived (Tamiya’s X-12) so I started on the wheel lug nuts and then metallic silver (X-11) for the door handles. From the looks of it the door handles won’t look very good, since they should be chrome. But since there’s no way I can chrome them, flaky silver paint will have to do. From a meter away I think they will convince.

And this is a model car blog, so no comments on the (lack of) latte art. A cappuccino with the perfect proportion of espresso, milk and micro foam. And perfect shot of espresso. Flavor was friggintastic, and that’s what matters – looks be damned.

Boogers!

Do NOT believe anyone saying that this is an easy project… The white around the door handles is tampo-printed, and at least in my car, the paint was pretty thick. So I had a bear of a time to remove it without damaging the red paint around. But even using acetone-free nail polish remover, a bit of the red rubbed off. So I had to make some retouches to the paint in the recessed area around the door handle and of course to the door handles too.

Now I’m waiting to receive a flask of gold paint (for wheel nuts) and I’ll also have to paint the door handles silver. That done, then it’s decal time.

The project advances

But I have to say it was NOT easy to remove all the decals. It took a lot of scratching with fingernails and a plastic knife. The decals were really adhered to the paint, so it was not exactly easy. I can only hope that the decals on my other models from Minichamps are as solid as these.

And now the part that I’m most worried about: to remove that white around the door handles.