From DallasE: Roadkill Garage BBQuda for Gaslands (Babylon 5)(37 points)

Presenting... the BBQuda!

There's a bit of a story behind this... one of my other enthusiasms is old cars, and TV shows about them. One of my favourites is "Roadkill Garage", broadcast on the Discovery Velocity channel. Roadkill Garage follows the misadventures of its hosts David Freiburger and Steve Dulcich as they play around fixing up old cars on the cheap, and as they put it, "doing the wrong things the right way."

They give their project cars fun names too - "Stubby Bob" the cut-down wheel-standing pickup; "General Mayhem" the clapped out big-block Dodge Charger; "Crop Duster" the beaten-up old Dodge Duster; "Vanishing Paint" the rusty Dodge Challenger (inspired by classic '70s car movie Vanishing Point); and the subject of this post: a 1968 Plymouth Barracuda called "BBQuda".

The story of BBQuda is rather sad - apparently it was a decent car owned by host Dulcich, who loaned it to a friend who intended to use it to design an engine-swap kit for the car. Unfortunately the friend lived in the way of the California wildfires... and the car burned to the ground. So in true Roadkill fashion, Freiburger and Dulcich decided to fix it back up on the cheap - low-budget fun for sure. 

The project started with trying to find a suitable donor car for the BBQuda. Fortunately Hot Wheels made a "1968 Plymouth Barracuda Formula S" in metallic green and one was duly ordered from an ebay vendor in Saskatchewan.

The car arrived two days ago and I wasted no time in getting to work. First thing was to take the body off the chassis by Dremeling through the melted plastic "rivets" in time-honoured fashion.

Once the body was off I took out the glass, as the BBQuda ran without it.

I also removed the wheels and replaced them with resin "mag wheels" which look so much better.

A driver figure was placed in the car to represent Steve Dulcich, of course wearing a scary skull mask. He doesn't usually do that on the show but... artistic license was exercised. I stuck on a gas can from my spares box - it's from battlefront's 15mm Team Yankee range but I think it looks OK.

At that point the weathering really began. I painted the car body flat black with Krylon spray, followed by a coat of watered-down craft black as the finish was a bit sticky (!) - that solved it.

At that point I stippled soft Mechanicus Standard Grey in various places, and added the lighter parts in light grey. I also traced the panel lines in Nuln Oil. Lots of surface rust was also added with GW Doombull Brown and watered down Rust Effects wash.

To make the car suitable for Gaslands, I added a minigun from the excellent North Star "Implements of Carnage" sprue. Since the car body is non-magnetic, I superglued a magnet to the underside of the hood and that allowed be to magnetize the minigun for the hood top.

Here's what we started with...

Now for some gratuitous burnout pics...

I love the burnout pics... basically half of every show is just the guys doing burnout and donuts... their tire bill must be extravagant.

HOWEVER, I'm submitting this one for Babylon 5 as the Roadkill ethos is really "doing things on the cheap", as any viewer will testify. Hence using used parts, cars from junkyards, and a gas can for a fuel tank.

Points:

20mm vehicle: 15 points

20mm 1/2 figure (driver): 2 points

Planet bonus: 20 points

Total: 37 points

Thanks and have a great week everyone!

That's superb work, Dallas- worth the wait! I really like your rusty burned out weathering, and the comparison shots with the real thing demonstrate how well you have achieved this. There is, however, a noticeable lack of weaponry for survival and victory in Gaslands...

Barks