AMT/Ertl '62 Pontiac Catalina Custom

“Life gets in the way” so I’ve been fairly quiet for a while but that hasn’t kept me from plugging away on various projects. I’m dipping my toe into styles of models I haven’t done much and this one is a good example. This is the AMT/Ertl ’62 Pontiac Catalina Custom kit, built largely out-of-the-box primarily to gain some bench time doing these mid-century big American cars – I normally do hot rods, old school customs and open wheel drag cars. It’s also an excuse to continue experimenting with various paint techniques, in this case working some more with transparent paints over metallics.



The project is nearly complete with the lion’s share of the work being the paint job and the assembly of what turns out to be a very nicely engineered and detailed chassis, motor and interior. Modifications are fairly sparse. The chassis is lowered about 2.5” all around, by offsetting the spindles in the front and using lowering blocks in the rear. The wheels and tires are Pegasus Sovereigns. Other than that the rest is from the kit. The exterior is finished in Duplicolor Metalcast Orange transparent paint over Duplicolor Metalcast Silver Metallic Ground (a coarse flaked base coat for a metalflake effect). The interior is finished in Metalcast Orange and Duplicolor Wimbledon White.

The restrained scalloping is meant to emphasize the body sculpting at the front and to echo it at the rear. It was done by simply masking off the shapes once the silver base was applied. The final paint was sealed under three coats of Duplicolor Clear and will be polished out before final assemble.

The foiling was my first attempt at doing a car with this much chrome trim. It took a while, for sure, but went relatively well.

Here are pics of where I’m at so far. As I said, what’s left is mainly final assembly. Here’s hoping fit and stance cooperate!

Thanx for lookin’,
B.

Looking really nice, I like the colour