Nov 20: The new car room, a cat and a Studie

After just over 36 years, my wife and I decided to retire from house ownership. No more yard work, no more shoveling, no more unexpected house repairs. Yep, we cashed out in the lovely Leaside area of Toronto, selling our little home and buying a condo about three blocks away. Same area, no maintenance, bigger place (and my own full bathroom!). Win, win, win! One of the areas that, I cherished most in the old house was my car room, so it was very important for me to be able to reconstruct one in our new digs.

Was I successful?

 

What do you think? I'd say I scored big time. Sure, I had to downsize my collection a bit, but lost nothing that I truly cared about. The focus now is on the 1/24th scale models that, I've been building since I don't know when (actually, I do). So now that everything is in place, the Car Modeling Cat (CMC) and I can get back to work. Our first project? Well, this pic gives you a hint.......

Yes, this is the adorable CMC looking over our workbench at a work in progress. The car? Going way back to 1953, here is an ad for it from back then.......

 Hard to believe that this '53 Studebaker Starliner didn't rock the world when it was intro'd, since it was so far ahead of anything else on the road. All the other cars featured lumpy and frumpy designs, but this one from Raymond Loewy was all elegant simplicity. Probably the fact that it was a Studebaker hindered it immensely. So what does our finished model look like?

 

Pretty darn close to the real car, missing only those happy occupants, but, hey, I don't build people.

This car was a real milestone when it came out, but it took many years for it to be appreciated as such. Back about ten years ago, the US Postal Service decided to do a run of stamps celebrating milestone cars and it's no surprise that this Studie made the cut........

Appropriate as well, that it be in the same colour as my model and that old ad. Note that, in all those winter scenes, depicted so lovingly back then, that the cars were always sparkling clean and all the windows were rolled (now it would be powered) down? So who was the artist? That's another blog for another day.

So there you have it. A beautiful and quite under appreciated car in its day, but a great model now. A good way for the CMC and me to get back into the swing of our model building. Next up? Well, I'm not sure, but my buddy is already at her post waiting for the action to begin.......

Until next time........