Down Memory Lane 2: The Teenage Years

It is fashionable for people to recall their teenage years as a period of unfettered and hedonistic rebellion. Just as well then that I’m not interested in being fashionable, as I spent my teenage years resolved to stay out of trouble and lead a quiet life – much like the majority of teenagers, if we are going to be honest. Modelling fitted nicely into that kind of lifestyle, and between the ages of 13 and 18 I picked up some skills which have stood in me good stead ever since.

I can’t think of any obvious reason why a 13 year old in Lincolnshire should be an ardent fan of American cars, but I was. I loved their incredible, dramatic styling, their luxury and size, and their powerful V8 engines. I suppose I had been influenced by the popular TV and film programming of my childhood, with the Dukes of Hazzard, Smokey & the Bandit, Gumball Rally, Cannonball Run, American Graffiti and Steven King’s Christine all making impressions on my mind. Perhaps I was, in a simple childish way, also mystified by the fact that cars at home were very different: I mean, why did people drive around England in Austin Rover Maestro 1.3Ls instead of 5.0-litre Chevrolets? Unhindered by adult practicality, my young mind decided that US cars made much more sense than our own, and I started building them.

My first ever American car kit was a Revell 1979 McLaren Mustang, built when I was about 10. I didn’t know much about the real car, but I made a reasonable job of the model. However, in my mind my American car building career began for real when I built a Monogram 1956 Chevy, bought by my brother Ash for my 12^th birthday. I spent many evenings happily painting parts and gradually building the Chevy, also choosing from the various options in the kit. My Chevy ended up with the slightly unlikely combination of factory wheels and suspension coupled with twin turbos on its old V8 engine. In those days I didn’t paint the car body shells, though I did carefully paint the interior of the Chevy in two-tone blue and white.

In the next couple of years I expanded by American stable nicely, with such additions as a 1958 Ford Thunderbird, 1966 Shelby GT350, 1970 Buick GSX, 1969 Oldsmobile 442, Shelby GT500 and 1966 Ford Fairlane. At this time, my local area (and I think the UK generally) had adopted US diner imagery as a fashionable cultural reference: American-style diners and bars sprung up serving American beers and menus, the shops were full of checked shirts and Caterpillar boots, and my stereo at home played ZZ Top tapes almost every night. At this point, I had stopped building model aircraft entirely, and I had begun to paint all my cars with car spray paint.

It was during this time that I joined a local model club, IPMS Fenland, which I am pleased to see continues to thrive. There I made new friends and also leaned many new tricks, which helped me to generally raise the standard of my builds. While a club member, I built a number of cars which I still own including a 1989 Corvette, Ford F-350 pickup, 1959 Cadillac Eldorado and my first truck model – a Revell Peterbilt 359 custom truck called Black Widow. At my first and only appearance at a model show (in Stevenage, Lincolnshire), I won my first and only trophy: Best in Class for vehicles, awarded to my Ford F-350 pickup. In a hobby dominated at that time by aircraft models, it felt great to win something for the club and to see some recognition of my own emerging skills: at this point I had been modelling for about 10 years.

I continued building, with more cars and another truck coming off the production line in the next year, until I was about 18 years old. At that point modelling began to take a back seat to my social life, and the final builds from my teenage years were an Italeri Volvo F-16 truck and a Monogram 1/12-scale 1957 Chevy.  Soon I left for university, and modelling was forgotten about – but not for long.

To be continued