SCALE MODEL NEWS

THIS 1:25 SCALE BUICK RIVIERA CUSTOM is a reissue of a kit first released by AMT in 1965. Mat Irvine: I mentioned the chassis of a 1965 AMT Buick Riviera in my recent article, ‘Scale modellers and Self Isolation’ so here’s a closer look at the Riviera, the chassis of which was in the photo of my workbench ( circled below ). The kit is a reissue of the AMT 1965 Buick Riviera, one of the company’s ‘annual’ kits, released each year from the late 1950s to the early 1970s. These were ‘3 in 1’ kits, meaning that you could build one of three supplied options, almost always being stock, competition, or custom. The 1965 Riviera was a 3 in 1 kit, but there was no competition version, instead having two custom options. The ‘Villa Riviera’ came about as a present from General Motors’ Buick division to car-customiser George Barris ‘to do with it what he thought best.’ Unsurprisingly, Barris accepted the car, and was ready to start some mild customising on it. George Barris workshop The Barris wor...

THE ERA OF CLASSIC CAR CUSTOMS seems to be passing, with the deaths of such well known names as Ed Roth in 2001, Dean Jeffries in 2013, Mike Alexander in 2014, and George Barris, self-styled ‘King of the Kustomizers’ in 2015. Mat Irvine:  So it’s the right time for a biography of George Barris to be published. And the 500 colour pages of King of the Kustomizers: The Art of George Barris certainly do him justice. The book jacket ( header ) shows George Barris with his most famous creation, the TV Batmobile. Barris created some of the wildest custom cars, and although there have been other books about him, this one is probably going to be the definitive title. The book is authored by George’s son Brett, together with Douglas Nason, an anthropologist with a keen interest in American culture of the period. The two have produced a book that covers just about everything you might want to know about George Barris and his kustom creations. The back cover ( below ) illustrates some of the ...

  GEORGE BARRIS, PERHAPS THE BEST KNOWN US car customiser - and inspiration for many custom car kits - died on November 5, 2015.  Mat Irvine: George Barris was born George Salapatas on November  20, 1925, in Chicago. He was from a Greek background, and started a lifelong love of cars at seven years old, building balsa wood models, and winning local model-building contests. George and his brother Sam, who died in 1967, later started working with full-size car repairs, and also altering their design - which signalled the dawn of the customizing boom. Barris and friend ( below ) show off the bat-winged X-Pak 400 hovercar.   George got involved with TV and movies in the early 1960s, with two of his most famous creations, the Batmobile and the Munster Koach. Around this time, he also got involved with the fledgling model car industry, particularly with the manufacturer AMT.  AMT made models of the Munster Koach and Drag-U-La, though not the TV-series Batmobile, whic...

A QUESTION WAS ASKED THIS WEEK: Why did the first Space: 1999 George Barris Moonscope have six wheels? The real-life machine ( above ) was built by Barris Kustom, and made an excellent basis for MPC kits that have featured both six and four wheels. Mat Irvine:  Why six wheels? It’s a good question. After all, the Moonscope’s layour didn’t match the real-life wheeled vehicles that travelled on the Moon’s surface. The Apollo Lunar Rover had four wheels, the two robotic Soviet Lunokhods each had eight. But if we move to Mars, a six-wheeled design approach is the norm. All four Mars Rovers to date - Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity, Curiosity - roll on six wheels each, but we don't know if there is a direct design link to Barris. And the reasoning for six wheels? Basically, redundancy - if the electric motor in a wheel fails, the rover still has five left, at least two per side. Redundancy was also built into the independently-driven four wheels of the manned Lunar Rover , so if a moto...