[Coides]

Our club will start a new race Series in about a month's time that features the NSR, Slot.It and Policar models of the Ford and Ferrari sports prototypes that fought each other in 1966-7 (see here). To liven up the grid I decided to enter painted white kits of the NSR Ford GT MkII and MkIV, plus the Policar Ferrari P4/412P, oh, and a couple of ready painted Slot.It Ford GT40s, which are so gorgeous I couldn't resist them!

First up was a Policar 412P. The choice of model was a no-brainer for me because the first motor race I ever attended was the 1967 BOAC 500 at Brands Hatch and the most beautiful car there was the Maranello Concessionaires 412P (in my humble opinion!). Here's a shot I took of it in the paddock using my aunt's Kodak Brownie (well, I was still a schoolboy!).

The Policar body was assembled, using the 412P bodywork variants provided (see here and here) a few imperfections erased with scalpel or wet 'n dry sandpaper, primed then sprayed with Tamiya TS8 Italian Red. Then it was basically a decal job. For this I used a technique I'd worked out earlier while building another '67 BOAC contender. This involves painting decal paper with the desired colour then cutting it to size and applying it to the body. This way you get perfectly sharp borders and no colour bleed-through from below. This time I used brush coating to get the correct light blue for Maranello Concessionaires. For the number roundels I used a 1.6cm punch and this was mated with the blue stripe by cutting out a piece using the same punch - giving a perfect fit.

The rest was plain sailing, here's the result:

That's one down, two to go . . .

Andy

 

[SpeedyNH]

gorgeous!

but light blue on the rear end? bet that got covered with oil and rubber pretty fast.

curious, no visible injectors on the back deck?

 

[Kit Spackman]

The only two 412Ps built didn't have injectors anyway, both had carbs and they drew their air from inside the bulge in the rear deck.

 

[Coides]

I've also wondered about where the air came from for the P series Ferraris. The most likely source is the large vents in the doors. These migrated forwards from the rear wheel arches in the 250P of 1963. The holes in the rear decks of the P2 and spyder variants of the P3 and P4 were outlets, not inlets.

There were three 412Ps built, I think, Kit. At Le Mans there were 412Ps for Maranello Concessionaires (this one, #23), Scuderia Filipinetti (red/white, #22) and NART (white/blue, #25). With the four P4s (#s 19, 20, 21, 24), every proper 330P3 and P4 ever built was in the race.

Andy

 

[Slots-O-Fun]

Very nice! I've never seen that livery before. Does anyone know where did the light blue comes from as it was also used on some of the F1 cars?

 

[PeterSussex]

Fine model, fine livery, fine work.

Brilliant.

Peter.

 

[driver#8]

Very nice! I've never seen that livery before. Does anyone know where did the light blue comes from as it was also used on some of the F1 cars?

Maranello Concessionaires was/is the UK importer for Ferrari and ran with factory support. The baby blue stripe and rear end was on all the team's cars - 250 GTO included!

 

[Coides]

Does anyone know where did the light blue comes from as it was also used on some of the F1 cars?

Another question that I didn't know the answer to. I've done some looking around and found this here

"Final, final word must go to Colonel Hoare on why he chose Cambridge Blue as the colour to separate 'his' Ferraris from the rest. It was 1964 and taking delivery of the Team's first prototype, a 330P, at Sebring he was horrified to see a bright green stripe on the red bodywork. "I said 'That's not my car!'; they insisted it was, green for England you see, but green has always been a particularly unlucky colour for me and I said 'Take it off, quick!'".

Col. Ronnie Hoare was the boss of Maranello Concessionaires. As far as I know the light blue used on the wheels of some mid-60s GP Ferraris had no connection with this - but I could quite easily be totally wrong!

Andy

 

[PETER GUNN]

Interesting subject and in my pictures i have one of what i believe to be one of Hoare's 275p with Innes Ireland at the wheel , but being black and white i,m not completly sure , perhaps others might know.

 

[Coides]

That's the Maranello Concessionaires 275P at the Nurburgring. Colour pics of it are rare - here's the best I could find.

Just a hint of colour in the stripe. This may be the same car that finished 2nd at Le Mans three weeks later and there are conclusive pics of this one - and its stripe has been repainted!

Just to confuse the picture a bit more, here's the winner of the 1963 Goodwood Tourist Trophy, entered by Maranello Concessionaires. It seems that light blue (Cambridge blue apparently) was in use before 1964.

Andy

 

[Coides]

Here's the second of the three Ford vs Ferrari cars, an NSR Ford MkII. I spent some time thinking about which car to model. This one from 1967 Le Mans came a close second

A real monster, driven by Hawkins and Bucknum, it lead the race for the first hour before overheating problems dropped it back to 42nd position. It spent the next 15 hours driving flat out up to 6th before its engine blew at 9.40am.

But in the end I chose this one, mainly because it was the last time a Ford GT ever raced in its classic colour of white with a matt dark bonnet (originally dark blue, black in this case).

This car is even less well known than the blue Le Mans car. It's the Alan Mann entered MkII from the 1966 Spa 1000km, just 4 weeks before Le Mans. A single MkII was entered, driven by Whitmore and Gardner. It qualified 2nd, behind Surtees in a 330P3 Ferrari and finished second, a lap behind Surtees.

Here's the paint job, nothing particularly dramatic needed and the whole thing finished within a couple of weeks. The bonnet was sprayed with Tamiya TS6 Matt Black and came out perfectly. The white acrylic spray was a generic can from Hobbycraft and worked excellently too. The decals were designed, as ever, in Powerpoint. I'm very happy with the outcome.

Next up is the Ford MkIV - not much room for manoeuvre unfortunately!

Andy

 

[42redcat]

I'd never seen the Spa 1966 car before. Nice livery!
It's interesting that the MKII was at least as fast as the MKIV at Le Mans 1967. Makes you wonder why they bothered with the MKIV, although I believe it gained a lot of weight as they improved the structure after Ken Miles' fatal crash.
Mike

 

[Coides]

I think it's down to how hard they were being driven. The absolute fastest lap time of the MkIV and the Chaparral was about 3.24, the MkII was about 3.26 and the Ferrari was 3.30. In the race the winning MkIV was typically lapping in the 3.30s, though 3.25's were also common early on. There are no records to my knowledge of the fastest race lap posted by the #57 Ford MkII - but it wasn't quicker than 3.24!.

Andy

 

[Coides]

Just found a race report that quotes an average speed for the Hawkins/Bucknum MkII during the first hour as 229.365kph (142.52mph). For the '67 Le Mans circuit (13.461km) that equates to an average lap time of 3min 31.28sec, which is serious motoring, considering the fact that for a lot of that time they had a heavy fuel load. At the 1 hour point Gurney was only 7.6 secs back. Both these cars were Shelby-entered and must have been running to a plan. Meanwhile, the MkIV of Hulme (a Holman & Moody car) was setting successive new lap records of 3.27.8, 3.26.8 and 3.26.5 behind them and in the third hour he would get it down to 3.23.6, seven seconds quicker than the previous year.

Andy

 

[Trisha]

Andy

In 1971, Jackie Oliver took the 5-litre 917 (chassis 043) around Le Mans in 3m 13.6 during the test weekend. Pedro Rodriguez got pole with the same car in June with 3m 13.9.

Oliver's time stands as a record on the old circuit.

It's also known that Rodriguez and Oliver regularly topped 252mph down Mulsanne with this car - Gulf longtail - but the French have never recognised this as a record...

 

[Trisha]

PS

For those unfamiliar with 917-043, which, most regrettably, no longer exists, a couple of pics herewith.

 

[stuckinthe60s]

Mk IV's were actually lighter than Mark II's, a completely new car using an aluminum honeycomb structure borrowed from the aviation industry.

 

[Coides]

Here's the last of the three cars I've prepared for our upcoming race Series - an NSR Ford GT MkIV. This was the most difficult to decide upon, because the real car only competed in two races (Sebring and Le Mans 1967) and only five cars ever raced. These have all been manufactured to death, most recently by MRRC, Scalextric and NSR so what was the point of painting a white kit to look like any one of them?

I didn't want to make a model of a presentation day car or one of the more recent rebuilds that have shown up at concours meetings or Goodwood - I wanted a racer, not a show car. How about fantasy liveries? NSR have done loads of these but they also have tended to turn me off because mostly they make no sense in terms of the history of the real car. Then a solution occurred to me. Ford entered seven cars for Le Mans in 1967 but only four of them were MkIVs, presumably because even the resources of the Ford motor company racing division were not infinite. The rest were updated MkIIs (MkIIb). But what if they managed to prep five MkIVs instead of four? Maybe that number 57 would have been a MkIV? A good enough excuse for me!

Again, this was a pretty simple paint and decal job. The paint was a random can of enamel from the same supplier as the MkII above - these paints are a big bargain and they work just great. The biggest problem was that curly go-faster stripe down the side of the car. I did exactly this about 20 years ago in Macdraw (remember Macdraw?!) but it didn't turn out so well. OK, back to Powerpoint and lots and lots of those curly lines in the 'Shapes' menu. The font for the number turned out to be pretty close to Haettenschweiler - ever heard of it?! Here's some Ford porn for you.

. . . and the complete Coides racing stable for the Ford vs Ferrari Series, which is now just two weeks away (and I haven't driven a single lap with any of these cars yet!).

As ever, Ferrari is outnumbered by Ford but let's see how they go - Looking forward to this Series a LOT!

Andy

 

[stuckinthe60s]

so kind of a "half-fantasy" livery car? Admirable graphics works, Andy. In it's box it looks ready for sale straight from NSR! Stay tuned as I hope to re-learn how to post here: in recent weeks just finished up my version of that Mk. IIB. It's really different!

Steve in CO

 

[stuckinthe60s]

OK, here1's the MkII B I finished just a couple weeks ago to join my '67 LeMans lineup. Just 2 more to be finished up before I have the first 20 qualifiers! This should probably be over in vintage corner, but since this prototype is topical here, I'll go ahead. All vintage components: a vac Lancer Mk IIB body riding on a Russkit Rattler chassis and guide, with a "27" motor. The Cox driver is steering through a Cox gear and magnesium "Shelby style" wheels. Ortmann repro rear tires and original Cox fronts ground down a bit to fit.

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took some liberties with the striping, most of the decals being applied inside before spraying the acrylic blue. While researching, I discovered that the "B" designation meant an upgraded induction system and something else I'd never heard of: a "dry deck" cylinder block, ie, no cooling channels into the heads! I wonder how that works!