1/24 Miami Vice Daytona Spider (Fujimi)

ridefast

New Member
Joined
Mar 20, 2011
Messages
41
This year I have decided to join the Contest with a model of one of the best known cars in the history of TV series. Daytona Spider from Miami Vice. I think most of you still remember the fabulous scene and music from the series pilot.

Miami Vice In The Air Tonight

I am going to base my model on Fujimi's Enthusiast Model kit of Ferrari 365 GTS4 Daytona Spider, but since the car in the series was not a real Ferrari some changes are necessary.

-D09E-493C-A5AE-F6CC9ACC0074-7202-0000058712A5CB2F.jpg

I will try and sort out some of my progress photos and I will do my best to post those tommorrow. =)
 
I can feel it ......
Well can't wait post the pictures man ;)

BTW when you’re finished can we reenact the episode with arms dealers?? ;) Please :)
 
Biskup, you know I am building this model to a friend of mine, who is an avid Miami Vice fan. I suppose he would not be too pleased by your enthusiasm to blow up the Daytona.

OK. Some information about the model. I want this car to look more or less like the one from Miami Vice series, but I am not going for 100% accuracy. At the time of filming the producers could not afford a real Ferrari so they decided to use a Corvette kit car, so I am going to build a Daytona that looks like a Daytona wanna-be. Fortunately the list of changes is not too long.

First I sanded the whole car and deepened all the panel lines with modelling knife
986A-42F3-8B50-2A3E13CC5DD9-11757-000009D554A1EEB0.jpg
913C-4732-ACE2-D8A962B40EC6-11757-000009D51ED3C9DC.jpg

Removed door locks
3594-4BC6-A346-8F71604B5135-11757-000009D51A28E718.jpg

Removed a front part of the body molding
-28C4-4C2B-9417-5A6E0C7A2371-3876-000002AEB04CDC6A.jpg

The molding in the kit is for the later version of Daytona (the one with opening light pods). To make it look like an early - Miami Vice version you have to remove that part, fix the headlights underneath and fill the space between the lights.
null-4.jpg
null-5.jpg

Filled and sanded smooth the places on the doors where door knobs should be on a real Daytona
null-6.jpg

Applied some surfacer
null-1.jpg

And some black paint
null-31.jpg
 
Time for some update =)

I removed all parts from the sprues, sanded them and painted them. It might sound a bit strange, but since most of the parts are either some shade of black or silver, it was the easiest and most efficient thing to do. All that remained was putting the things together and painting the details like emblems, bolts, etc.

So in short time I could put the engine together and start some slight weathering
null-13.jpg

Paint and add oil filters
Paint the whole part orange first, mask the filters
null-14.jpg

paint silver
null-16.jpg

remove mask
null-17.jpg

glue to engine.
null-18.jpg
 
In the meantime I prepared the brakes
null-12.jpg

I decided to use some Kosutte Gin San to add some metalic shine to the discs
null-11.jpg

Here engine and front suspension are already attached to the frame
null-19.jpg

null-20.jpg
 
Next - interior.
In this case I had to make some changes to the original Ferrari Daytona interior colours and stick to Miami Vice 'paint scheme'. =)
null-15.jpg

In this picture you can see some shading on the interior pieces. I tried to add some realism to the panels by some gentle colour modification and slight weathering
null-7-1.jpg

Seats from the kit
null-2.jpg

Modified (removed headrests) and painted (basic shading)
e25a2495-ee9f-4d3d-bb1a-29c62e5f48e5.jpg

Added stripes
null-32.jpg

And I felt I had to add seat belts (the real Miami Vice Daytona also had those). Any car in this scale looks odd without them =)
null-43.jpg

Here you can see the dashboard. It is different from the movie car because here we have the genuine Ferrari Daytona dash, but I tried to keep the colour combination
null-44.jpg

And finally the complete frame, engine, chassis and interior together =)
null-46.jpg
 
To finish today's updates a photo of the exhaust pipes

null-45.jpg

The exhaust manifolds and front parts of the exhaust pipes were painted with Sabitennen paint first.
It is a two component paint that rusts (yes, it covers the painted parts with real rust). After that the pipes were painted with some silver paints and heavily shaded to imitate heat discoloration. I will add some weathering to the chassis, engine and exhaust system at the last stage.

I hope you like it so far =)
 
Next job - the wheels.

Initially I thought that stripping chrome from the kit parts and painting them with Alclad would be necessary to make wheels look real but on all Ferrari Daytonas wheels really are that shiny. =) Great! Less work. Better outcome. ;) First I assembled just one to check if it needs any additional work
null-7.jpg

Since it looked good I prepared all the pieces and started the assembly.
null-8.jpg

To add some realism and slightly tone down the brightness I shaded back sides of the wheels with Model Master 1404 titanium metalizer
null-22.jpg

Sanded down the mold seam from the tires (the two on the left are finished)
null-4-1.jpg

Painted the tires flat black (to add some realism) and completed the wheels
null-59.jpg
 
Window wipers.

This is how they look in the kit
null-1-2.jpg

I decided to improve their look by replacing the blades with PE parts
null-25.jpg

null-6-1.jpg

I like the look of the modified part =)
null-26.jpg
 
Time for the most importat piece of any car model - the body

I already made some modifications (removed door locks and door handles and remodeled the front section) but I forgot about one very important 'detail'. Miami Vice Daytona does not have small side windows next to the windshield. Here is how it looks on all Ferraris
null-39.jpg

And after
null-40.jpg

The windshield
null-41.jpg

null-42.jpg

I applied another layer of Ferrari Nero Daytona paint
null-23.jpg

null-27.jpg

And after a couple of days I applied clearcoat. I have access to real automotive paints at work and I often experiment with them when building models. And already for quite a while I used two part automotive clearcoat. This time, however, I decided to try ceramic clearcoat. It is much harder, brighter and adds depth to the colour =)
null-114.jpg

The outcome (before sanding and polishing)
null-50.jpg

I sanded down some minor imperfections and smoothed the surface
null-51.jpg

null-52.jpg

And polished the car...
null-55.jpg

Ceramic clearcoat is not for the faint at heart and it requires A LOT of work and polishing but I think it is worth it. I like it =)
 

Latest posts

Back
Top