The idea is to make a weathered hotrod from Edwin Rommel. The kit I am using is the well-known re-issue of Rommel’s Rod. I finally have all the ingredients I will be using and the guts to work on it.

I started yesterday and worked on the body, I applied some heavy rust and rustholes and then some bulletholes . Today I applied a layer of primer and some coats of rustcolor.

This is the car with a coat of primer

And the first coat of rust

And the second, I think I will continue tomorrow on the body

Because weathering is a new technique for me, there is a lot of trial and error. Fortunately, the mistakes can be covered quite quickly.
This is how the rod looks now:

I have not made pictures of when I chipped the car, in this picture I made a dryfit and already added some rust to the body.

A close up of the hood, the rust does show pretty well in this picture

I dryfitted the headlights in this picture and you can see the rusted fenders.

The skeletons got a pit of bondo, so they can keep their heads together

Hard to see, but I gave the bulletholes some silver paint, to simulate a fresh gunfire

The tracks are not the kits best feature, actually they are quite general. If I would’ve builded more military, I would’ve replaced the tracks, but for now, this will do it.

Well, After the Chevelle, Pfalz and the Impala, I found some time to finish this one, it isn’t finished, but I am going to work on that.

One thing that bothered me much, was the convertible roof. It was just a neatly folded roof placed. I decided to make a frame and make a worn-out cloth roof. After I managed to do that, I painted it silk-mat black.

Here’s a picture with the original part left to it.

The chrome wheelcover got it’s decal and some flat-clear paint. I guess I need to at a bit of rust to it.

Detailpicture of the hood

The skeletons needed a bit more detailling, before I could provide them some appropriate clothing.
I started with removing it’s ribs

Before and after picture

And made new ribs out of metal-wire

Then the skeletons got painted (a bit too yellow, not sure if I am going to leave it like that or not) In the upcoming days, I am going to work on their clothing.

a picture in daylight. You can see it is not completely uniform.

After I painted all the bones, I started detailpainting the figures

The face got some more darker colors and starts too look like a proper skull

After that I started working on their clothes, I used the same technique as the convertible roof, but where that was 1 piece, the suit of this soldier was 6 and made it a lot more intricate.
But I think I managed to make something plausible for a weathered suit.
Does anybody know if they German Soldiers in the dessert also used their Nazi-armbands?

The little ornament on the grille

And a dryfit of the soldier, I think the look of the soldier in the car is right, just like the car completely busted up

Another small update, there is not so much happening, I haven’t lost the motivation, but I did lost speed and I keep waiting on stuff. I am now waiting on special paint for the wooden floors.

We’ll start with the floor, the side and bottom were removed, to give me the possibility for weathering it just like the uniforms.

I have been given it a lot of thought, but I decided to make a diorama, never done that before really and just fiddled a bit. I also decided to call this project: Der Fliegender Fuchs, which mean the Flying Fox, after Edwin Rommels nick: Desert Fox.
The idea is to make a car/ww2 equivalent of the Flying Dutchman, where Rommel haunts the desert and appears from underneath it.

I started to fiddle with toothpicks first, but way to unstable

Then I used a brass rod and it worked perfect.

I got a piece of waste-laminate and glued watered newspaper to it, on top I put some tissues and wetted them with a mix of white-glue and water.

This was the result:

When everything dried, I started with adding sand, I used ‘shell-sand’ and it took me an hour to cover everything with white glue and sand.

After an hour or so of drying, I took it to the paintbooth and sprayed it beige, the darkbrown/black shows the hole where Rommels shoots from into the air.

I also changed the configuration a little bit, the car was too much too the back, it looked like it was sitting on the sandbank rather than come out of that hole.

A small update, because i’ve been busy, I couldn’t do a whole lot, but my new paint came in and I was able to work on the floor.
In this picture I added the first layer of paint with a brush, since it is too thick for an airbrush.

And 1 in daylight.

Somebody on another board gave me a nice idea; spiderwebs. But it is a difficult thing to make in 1/24 and haven’t been able to find a tutorial on the interweb. Due to someone in I think trainmodelling, it gave me an idea. To work with Humbrol Clearfix and some toothpics to add small litte wires and make it look like spiderwebs.
I didn’t put too much in, but just enough to be noticable and look nice.

Now I need to do the last difficult challenge; making the car appear from the hole in the Desert.