Upgrading the Corgi '59 Impala

It was all going to be so simple. “I’ll just change the wheels and tyres”. Right. So I had a selection of 1:43 whitewalls, but this “1:43” Corgi actually scales out at precisely 1:50. The ’59 Chevy had 14 inch wheels and the outer rolling diameter of the standard tyres was 27” or 28”, so to scale I needed something a fraction over 13 millimetres. As luck would have it, mine measured 13.2 mm.  The may look a bit on the small side, but actually they match up pretty well to the real thing.

  Unfortunately the tyres didn’t come with wheels, hubs or wheel trims so those had to be cobbled together from bits and pieces.

There was nothing much wrong with the original glazing, but it was quite thick plastic and had dulled with age. Time to try some more heat-moulding for the front and rear windows, and if I screwed up on that, I had the original glazing to fall back on. But they came out OK, and are clear and bright.

So, with clear glazing front and rear, and the side windows rolled down in my 4 door hardtop, the original rather vague vacu-form seat and dash unit would now be exposed to view. Not really fit for purpose. I found a salvaged seating unit that looked suitable and it fitted nicely once the raised channels on the floor that held the suspension springs were ground off. But it had no dash, so I looked in the parts box and  . . . goodness, I don’t recall ever dismantling a Vitesse ’59 Impala but there was a Vitesse dashboard (complete with correct-pattern steering wheel). Slightly oversize for the Corgi but much too nice not to use, and with a bit of grinding round the edges it fitted fine, thanks in part to my thinner glazing. OK, so the steering wheel is a bit big, and I could have found a smaller one, but the pattern is correct, so I just went with it.

The headlamps were ground off to accommodate 2.5 mm chrome-backed clear plastic lamps, and just for fun the little fake air vent (?) over the rear window was fabricated from snippings of P/E brass, foiled and black-washed.

For the paintwork I obviously considered a two-tone, but I have an awful lot of Yank Tanks looking like that and it’s getting a bit predictable, so I went for a single colour (and was surprised to discover online that there were actually 14 single-colour options versus 10 two-tones on the Impala, so there’s nothing weird about my choice).

As always, fitting the glazing without getting glue marks on the glass or on the bodywork (or both) was a nervy business, and applying BMF to the fairly fine body detailing took a bit of concentration and was done in stages.

And then, when I finally got the floor glued in place, I discovered to my horror that although it had seemed fine on an earlier test fitting, now that the glazing and seating unit were in place the floor didn’t sit into the body quite as far as it should, so my carefully “lowered” Chevy actually sat a fraction higher than the original! Oh dear. Take a deep breath, then another deeper breath, prise off the epoxied floor with a screwdriver, drill slightly longer slots in the new axle mountings to let the body sit a little lower, and glue it all back together.

Ready for photography now. But hang on, looking through the viewfinder, that grille definitely looks a bit dull. I seem to have overdone it with the black wash. Take it back indoors and try a very quick wipe with silver paint with a very dry brush. Hmmm, better.

These desperate last-minute fixes got me across the finish line. Story of my modelling life, really.