[Nuvolare]

Hi,

Here is my latest built, it's a tribute to one of the few women that raced at the top of pre-war GP.
Hellé Nice born as Mariette Hélène Delangle in France.
Almost forgotten, as it was not for Miranda Seymour who wrote an autobiography about her, in a book called "The Bugatti Queen".

She named her 1931 Alfa Romeo Monza "Bidon", that she raced until it's fatal crash in Sao Paulo in 1936, that Hellé miraculously survived.

The model it self, started with a body made by Jérôme Mardon, known on e-bay as Geodies.
I started by cutting away the chassis beams of the resin body and build a chassis to the real model out of brass.

The superb wheels are made by Peter Seager thomas.
And the figure is scratch build from an white metal Aurora female swimmer.

And this is the final end result

Cheers,
Danny

 

[CJA]

Excellent.

vbr Chris A.

 

[Slots-O-Fun]

That looks great!

 

[loosesalute]

All your builds are fantastic Danny.
Thanks for posting these pics.
Cheers
Kev

 

[vfr750]

I read the "Bugatti Queen" recently. Nice choice of car.

Cheers

John

 

[Gordo Bond 007]

Really, Really nice build!!

Did you put those rivets on yourself, and if you did, can you please explain how you did it?

Thanks in advance

Gordo Bond 007

 

[Ember]

Oh my goodness! And you even remembered the bows on her sleeves! Magnificent!

Hard to know just how much of "The Bugatti Queen" is researched and how much is pure conjecture. The author herself admits there were many gaps she could not fill. But suffice to say Helle was one sassy woman and a class driver before the accident.. We shall never know what might've happened had she not hit that hay bale in the middle of the track.

Brilliant build Danny. Thank you so much for sharing it with us.

Embs

 

[Nuvolare]

Thanks for the nice coments.
QUOTE (Gordo Bond 007 @ 14 Nov 2012, 19:09) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Did you put those rivets on yourself, and if you did, can you please explain how you did it?
Yes, I made the rivets myself. It's very simple all you need is a 0.3mm drill a hard 0.3mm brass wire, a self made tool to put in every rivet at the same depth and lots of patience.

You start by making markings on the body with a permanent marker where the rivets should come. If you make wrong markings don't worry with a little alcohol you can was away the markings an start all over again.
When you are satisfied with your markings, you can start drilling, you can do it with a small electrical drill, but I prefer to do it by hand, for the simple reason that a 0.3 mm
drill is very fine and tends to break very fast with machinery. And the rest of a broken drill in your resin body can be a real nightmare.

When all the holes are drilled, you can start by making the rivets out of hart brass wire, don't use soft brass or copper it only will bent when you try to insert the rivet into the body.
Now it's very important that you make the head of every rivet smooth. You can do this on a lathe with a file or a small drilling machine with a sandpaper disk. Each time you've finished a rivets head, you cut about 7mm of the wire and a rivet is born.

Ones all rivets are finished I use a self made hollow needle, the hole thing comes down that the hollow space in the needle acts as a mold to punch in every rivet at the same depth. Make sure that the revert don't stick out to far, the end effect won't be beautiful.

I've use and explained these techniques before in my other topic's, they are linked in my signature.

If there are more questions feel free to ask them.

Cheers,
Danny

Ps. indeed Embs, and the way her life ended, is pretty miserable, that's why I felt that a homage to her was a descend thing to do.

 

[Gordo Bond 007]

Thanks for the explanation, sounds pretty involved, but the results are awesome!

QUOTE The author herself admits there were many gaps she could not fill.

Poor thing...tee hee hee hee

Gordo BOnd 007

 

[Bigblock]

fantastic job . I really enjoy your work.

 

[Hobby]

Hi Danny.
Another master piece!
How did you arrive at the colour?
With Pre war cars, it is very difficult to get colour photos, and sometimes the description in books gives you a clue, but with such a striking scheme as this, I feel you must have managed to get a reasonable colour photo. Or, does the car still exist somewhere?
Well done on superb model.
Regards Bill.

 

[stoner]

oo-ee-baby-let me take you on a nice big track. wonderfully ingeneous build. neat workmanship. i like it very much. john

 

[HAPPY]

Althought I'm not very fond of that kind of pre-war sport cars, I find your model nicely built.
Female driver is finely painted.

 

[Dave Sykes]

I like the Pale blue grey it has a patina of age all on its own. another stunner.

 

[Nuvolare]

QUOTE (Hobby @ 15 Nov 2012, 09:38) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>How did you arrive at the colour?
With pre- war cars, it is very difficult to get colour photos, and sometimes the description in books gives you a clue, but with such a striking scheme as this, I feel you must have managed to get a reasonable colour photo. Or, does the car still exist somewhere?

Hi Bill,

There is no color picture available, and indeed colour choice on pre-war cars is very difficult, even if the car still exist today you can't be sure that it still has the identical colours on it. Now and then you find a colour picture and even then they are of such a bad colour quality that you won't get far with that information.

Now for the monza my first clue was in the book "The Bugatti Queen" it says that Hellé was invited by Alfa Romeo to test drive a second hand Monza in 1933.
What also is worth while mentioning is that she test drove it in the 1933 Monza GP, one of the blackest days of Monza when Campari, Borzacchini and Czaikowski where killed due to an oil stain on the track.
Coming back to the colours, it says when she came home whit her new secondhand Monza, she banished Lehoux's tricolor stripe and had the car patriotically repainted in two shades of French Blue. (see page 76/77/78)

When I was in School where I've been educated as a graphic designer, one of the practises we had to do in the first year, was to take a piece colour photo and transform it into a black & white whit gouache. This was a practice to learn to see shades. After worth the teacher would take the your colour photo and transform into a black & white photo and compare it with what you made of it
Taking that knowledge and looking to the black & white photo I found of the car, I did my interpretation of the colours.
here are the black & white photos:

And here is the test

I let you decide what you think of it?
The fade of the car after the sao paulo crash, according to the book it was soled to a local race driver who had restored it.
I found some pictures on the net, that claimed that that was the Nice Monza, and if this is true then its restored beyond recognition.
Here is a photo after the crash

Cheers,
Danny

 

[Hobby]

Hi Danny.
Thank you for such an interesting and thorough reply, much appreciated.
Fascinating resarch work on the colour!
Never thought of 'reverse' black and white theory...very clever indeed.
I bet your as close to the real cars colour as anyone is likely to get, great work.
Kind regards Bill.

 

[Diogenes]

Lovely build Danny as per usual, any chance of a chassis pic. I am building up the courage to have a go on a brass chassis for a 1927 Delage.

Thanks

Mel

 

[Nuvolare]

Hi Mel,

On the first page of this topic you see a photo of the underside, that is the chassis.
The chassis beams are made of 2 mm plate, cut out, than milled in u shape and bend in it's form.

Here are a few more before it was painted, and without the springs
the underside:

From above:

Because the top brass sheet is so thin it was unavoidable that it would slidely bubble, but that can easily be worked away with a thin layer of milliput.

Cheers
Danny

 

[zagato]

A seriously nice bit of model making Danny. Very nice indeed.

Graham.