Citroen 2CV by Landlubber Mike - FINISHED - Airfix and Tamiya - 1/24

[Landlubber Mike]

Here is another model that I've been building off and on the past few weeks.  It's the Airfix Citroen 2CV (or "Deux Cheveau").  

 

 

The 2CV (often called the "duck") was made between 1948-1990.  This particular kit is the "Dolly" edition, which was a 2-color special edition in the mid-1980s.  The 2CV is like the French equivalent of the Volkswagen Beetle - very simple design whose production spanned decades with cars exported all over the world.  It was even in a James Bond film chase scene!  The 2CV has basic features like a canvas roll-back roof, windows that opened by pushing on them with your elbows, seats that essentially were a piece of cloth draped over a metal frame, etc.  Early years had a 10HP engine, which later increased to a massive 30 HP.

 

I tend to go for more of the odd model choices, and saw this offered for $10 on eBay from a seller I had bought a plane or ship kit from, and thought why not?  First car kit, and now the stash has many more 🙈  The kit isn't bad, and is a fairly basic curbside model.  Even though the hood is a separate piece, I believe you have to glue it to the frame unless you trick it out somehow to be able to open (first model car kit since I was a kid so I'm not exactly sure).  That might be for the best as I've had to make a few tweaks to make the engine fit, and I'm not sure that people will be all that interested in the beastly engine.

[ccoyle]

Oh, I used to see a lot of these back when I lived in Germany in '79-'80. In German, it was the "Ente" (duck).

[Landlubber Mike]

I'm not building this as the Dolly edition, but as a standard one color model.  I've gone with Tamiya Dark Yellow (TS-3) and am using it straight from the can.  Haven't had too many problems with the can, though I've had to apply and then sand in multiple coats in order to get a smooth, blemish free appearance.

 

I finished putting together the chassis and the engine, primed them with Vallejo black, and have a lot of the other parts already pre-painted.  

The engine was a little tricky because I lost a piece to it.  I'm not mechanical so not sure what the part represents, but fortunately it was one half of a two-part assembly that had a mirror image on the other side.  I ended up using this epoxy putty tape to create a new piece - it worked really nicely and the completed part looked pretty good in the end.

[Landlubber Mike]

I'm at the point where I'm trying to figure out how I want to proceed with painting the model.  Unlike models of planes and ships where weathering, shading, and highlighting techniques are used, the car modelers seem to generally stay away from those techniques, and instead focus on getting as much of a shiny body paint job as possible (unless of course they are modeling an older, worn car) - essentially a show room finish with clean engine, body pans, etc.  I think, however, that basic one-color makes a model look "plastic."  I'm probably not going to weather this one (I still might, not sure), but I'm thinking about ways to at least add shading and highlighting to add depth to things like panel lines, the engine, wheel hubs, etc.   So, I'm thinking of adding subtle washes and dry brushing to add some depth to various areas.  If it looks like crap, I'll just weather and rust it out 👍

[fnick]

Good start Mike. Hope that airfix model is better than the Aston Martin I recently completed...

My cousin used to have one of those years ago. 5 of us in it going uphill on a mountain road. Probably would have been quicker to have ten real horses! 😄

 

Regarding colour scheme I've googled yellow 2cv and a few of them have a black roof and white and black front and rear bumpers. I know it goes against the single colour but might be worth considering to avoid the plastic look. Plus a few things like door handles are metal.

 

My two pennies worth! 🙂

 

Nick

[lmagna]

1 hour ago, Landlubber Mike said:

 It was even in a James Bond film chase scene!

If you duplicated that car chase I think it would be an opportunity of building the car upside down or right side up. I think it spent as much time in one position as the other.  Got a little "weathered" in the process as well I think.

 

 

I have also seen models of LeMans cars modeled in the way they looked at the END of the race. Pretty interesting models sometimes.

 

[Old Collingwood]

Talking of James Bond films  - I would love one day to build a model of a Lotus Esprit  mk2/3   (not the one that converted into a sub)   reason being I once nearly owned one  (got close to a moment of  excitement and madness)

 

OC.

[jwvolz]

A car now too???

 

Wow, you really have embraced the dark side fully Mike! 😄

[Old Collingwood]

1 minute ago, jwvolz said:

A car now too???

 

Wow, you really have embraced the dark side fully Mike! 😄

The say  "Once you dip your fingers in plastic modeling  - your fingers  turn to plastic, or if you come from wood  - you get plastic splinters"😄

 

OC.

[Landlubber Mike]

1 hour ago, fnick said:

Good start Mike. Hope that airfix model is better than the Aston Martin I recently completed...

My cousin used to have one of those years ago. 5 of us in it going uphill on a mountain road. Probably would have been quicker to have ten real horses! 😄

 

Regarding colour scheme I've googled yellow 2cv and a few of them have a black roof and white and black front and rear bumpers. I know it goes against the single colour but might be worth considering to avoid the plastic look. Plus a few things like door handles are metal.

 

My two pennies worth! 🙂

 

Nick

The bumpers are actually a matt gray with black accents.  Rims are same Matt grey with silver hub caps.  Not a fancy chromed out car for sure!

 

Just for clarification, by single color I was trying to say where a color is applied but no washes or highlights are applied.  With planes people accent panel lines but that isn’t done when it comes to door seams, etc.

 

That Aston Martin must have been a lot of fun!

[JohnB40]

Hi Mike, I think this is great. One of my all time favorite cars. A friend had the van version in Morocco,nothing could stop it. 

 

 

[Landlubber Mike]

16 minutes ago, jwvolz said:

A car now too???

 

Wow, you really have embraced the dark side fully Mike! 😄

I think so 🙄. I find the subjects a little more interesting than 18th century British warships - at least at the moment.

 

[Landlubber Mike]

10 minutes ago, JohnB40 said:

Hi Mike, I think this is great. One of my all time favorite cars. A friend had the van version in Morocco,nothing could stop it. 

 

 

Oh man that must have been fun to ride in and drive!

[Landlubber Mike]

1 hour ago, lmagna said:

If you duplicated that car chase I think it would be an opportunity of building the car upside down or right side up. I think it spent as much time in one position as the other.  Got a little "weathered" in the process as well I think.

 

 

I have also seen models of LeMans cars modeled in the way they looked at the END of the race. Pretty interesting models sometimes.

 

Ah yes, post race or bad guy car chase would be fun to model.  Good idea!

 

[lmagna]

31 minutes ago, Landlubber Mike said:

post race or bad guy car chase

Shows you how bad my memory is. When I first thought about the chase scene I was thinking that it was the Citroen that ended up in the tree and what a great diorama that would make. But the video shows that I am obviously getting senile.

 

Some of the post race cars though can be quite the effort. Not only can there be grime and dirt but dents and duct tape EVERYWHERE! All of the Duct tape on Buce McLaren's MK IV above was the result from the back of the body blowing off at 150+ mph! He had to go around the track again, pick it up without assistance and carry it back to the pits before the pit crew was allowed to tape it back on. It was only one of several incidents that happened to him on that race. The car did complete the 24 hours though. Another example would be Rodger Penske's  Lola T-70 in the 1969 Daytona 24 hours.

[cog]

21 hours ago, Landlubber Mike said:

I'm at the point where I'm trying to figure out how I want to proceed with painting the model.  Unlike models of planes and ships where weathering, shading, and highlighting techniques are used, the car modelers seem to generally stay away from those techniques, and instead focus on getting as much of a shiny body paint job as possible (unless of course they are modeling an older, worn car) - essentially a show room finish with clean engine, body pans, etc.  I think, however, that basic one-color makes a model look "plastic."  I'm probably not going to weather this one (I still might, not sure), but I'm thinking about ways to at least add shading and highlighting to add depth to things like panel lines, the engine, wheel hubs, etc.   So, I'm thinking of adding subtle washes and dry brushing to add some depth to various areas.  If it looks like crap, I'll just weather and rust it out 👍

There are some car modellers whom do weather, and have some very nice results. You could use the same techniques as used on army vehicles. The reason most cars are spotless, derives from athe fact that men feel the need to polish them to perfection ... their baby. However, there are some genuine rust tubs driving around, although, less and less as the materials tend to change to plastic ...

 

Love choice of car Mike, I would mix the red with a bit of white, red always discolours ver fast or she comes straight from the factory

[Landlubber Mike]

Thanks Carl!  Not sure if I'm going to weather it per se (e.g., add rust and grime).  I'm more thinking about how to accent the deeper areas with shading and highlights - for example, the door edges typically look "black" when you look at a car, but solid black might be too stark on a model.  I've seen some people use a black pen or marker, or panel wash, to add depth to areas like the door.  Others I've seen deepen the recessed areas by scribing them, which adds more natural depth and do not use paint, etc. Part of that seems to depend on how in scale the panel lines are.

 

This is kind of the problem I have with paint on model ships.  Areas are typically painted without shading and highlighting for a more "plastic" look, yet the same model has natural wood which is oiled or finished which has natural "shading and highlighting."  So juxtaposing the two together seems a bit schizophrenic.

 

Sorry to go back and forth on this.  I'll just play around with it and figure things out as I go along.  I'm just not very artistic  

[Egilman]

Single color cars or anything for that matter, especially when scaled down generate a monochromatic effect. Like an all silver car, all the details get lost in the color. It happens more with lighter colors than darker colors... It's why manufacturers use trim and other exterior parts in other colors complimentary or contrasting to breakup the monochrome effect.... bumpers in black chrome, bezels around lights, door trim etc etc...

 

It's a lighting effect problem that has been around for ages and will not go away ever. (especially for what we do) It's just the nature of how light/colors work..... 

 

You fight against it on shiney car bodies, you accentuate it in camouflage....

 

Find a scheme you like that looks good to you and replicate it.... 

[Landlubber Mike]

You just said what I have been trying to say much clearer and in fewer words   It's the monochromatic effect that I'm trying to avoid.  On silver cars, I saw one guy use a black marker in the door and panel lines to good effect.  I just wonder if that will be too much against the dark yellow I'm using now. 

 

The other interesting thing is that many car modelers don't seem to try to add depth and highlights to the interior.  Things like seats have lots of crevices, but they just shoot it with a color and that's that.  Looks very toylike to me, but at this scale, I'm wondering what can be done.

 

I'll just play around with things and see what happens.  I have to remind myself that this was an inexpensive kit to give me experience.  It's not like I'm starting out the gate with a Pocher kit or anything.

[Ringadingdong]

14 hours ago, lmagna said:

Shows you how bad my memory is. When I first thought about the chase scene I was thinking that it was the Citroen that ended up in the tree and what a great diorama that would make. But the video shows that I am obviously getting senile.

 

Some of the post race cars though can be quite the effort. Not only can there be grime and dirt but dents and duct tape EVERYWHERE! All of the Duct tape on Buce McLaren's MK IV above was the result from the back of the body blowing off at 150+ mph! He had to go around the track again, pick it up without assistance and carry it back to the pits before the pit crew was allowed to tape it back on. It was only one of several incidents that happened to him on that race. The car did complete the 24 hours though. Another example would be Rodger Penske's  Lola T-70 in the 1969 Daytona 24 hours.

Now, Roger Penske and the Daytona 24 created quite some stories...

 

...in 1966, he gave his debut as a team owner by entering a Corvette L88 to the race, lightning quick, running in practice some seconds faster than the next car in the GT category and just 13 slower than the fastest prototype. During the night, George Wintersteen t-boned another competitor which destroyed the whole front. He limped back to the pits, the mechanics somehow reattached the front, or what was left of it, but the headlights remained scattered around the track. Despite his protests, Penske sent Dick Guldstrand back into race - without headlights('But I'm going to die, Mr. Penkse!' - 'That's allright, Guldi, now the the hell out of here!'). After a lap later, the car was blackflagged for running without headlights, so the team had to improvise again - an attached some flashlights to the front with duct tape. That solution satisfied the officials in having two working headlights, the but the driver still couldn't see a thing out on track. But luckily, Guldstrand could soon fetch some taillights he was able to keep up with through the night. At 2 a.m., he could even set an overall lap record. Turned out the lights he was chasing belonged to no one else but the race leading prototype Ferrari.They finished 12th overall and first in class, distancing the next car in class by measly 48 laps...

 

...fast forward into 1971, and Penske entered a Ferrari 512M, extensly reworked and lightning fast again, earning the team pole position and allowing them to carry a good fight against the allmighty Gulf-Porsche 917. A couple incidents of varying severity later, the car finished the race in 3rd position. A piece of modern art, made from GRP and duct tape...

 

...you gotta love these old stories! :-)

 

A friend of mine had a 2CV, fun ride, though I always ended up somewhat sea sick 😉

[wefalck]

My first ride in one was back in 1962. The rear bench then was still strung with plastic ribbon like certain garden chairs ...

 

I owned a 1972 one, my first car, from early 1977 until summer 1986, when I sold it for nearly the same price, for which I had bought it nine years early (ok, a lot of money went into repairs in between. Loved it. Speed certainly was not a merit of it, but I got through places and weather situations, where much bigger cars had to give up. Light-weight and most of the weight due to the engine on the driven front-wheels. I wa a geology student and used it for my field work, it served me almost like a 4WD. Once we some snow overnight in the mountains in late spring, everyone had changed back into summer tyres (I never had winter tyres) and I remember a Mercedes getting stuck on a hill - two people in the boot to balast the rear wheels, but still couldn't get away - still remember the acid look from the driver, when I simply drove past him and up the hill ... when travelling across Europe, I left the rear bench at home; for the night I drove to a camp ground, took the passenger seat out, put it behind the driver's seat and stretched out in my sleeping bag on an air-mattrass ... up hill my small-engine (498 cc, 23 hp) 2CV was struggling, but I 'made' most of the major Alpine passes, including the Cime de la Bonette, at 2860 m the highest European pass with a surface road ... in first gear and at 15 km/h. Downhill I was a lot faster and often had to push mountain-wise challenged flat-country drivers from The Netherlands and Belgium ... still no match for those mad local French drivers - I remember a 60 or 70 something year old farmer's wife in a Renault 4 chasing me on a mountain road ... how boring Alpine roads have become now in cars that have five or ten times the horse-power ...

[cog]

5 hours ago, Landlubber Mike said:

Thanks Carl!  Not sure if I'm going to weather it per se (e.g., add rust and grime).  I'm more thinking about how to accent the deeper areas with shading and highlights - for example, the door edges typically look "black" when you look at a car, but solid black might be too stark on a model.  I've seen some people use a black pen or marker, or panel wash, to add depth to areas like the door.  Others I've seen deepen the recessed areas by scribing them, which adds more natural depth and do not use paint, etc. Part of that seems to depend on how in scale the panel lines are.

 

This is kind of the problem I have with paint on model ships.  Areas are typically painted without shading and highlighting for a more "plastic" look, yet the same model has natural wood which is oiled or finished which has natural "shading and highlighting."  So juxtaposing the two together seems a bit schizophrenic.

 

Sorry to go back and forth on this.  I'll just play around with it and figure things out as I go along.  I'm just not very artistic  

Mike,

 

Scribe the lines from doors and windows, even the roof in this case. Deepen them, and use either a dark grey, or - which I would prefer, a very darkened version of the colour the adjoining panel is in. Always use the panel which turns bottom inward for shade and top outward for brightness, as shade naturally drops down the panel beneath the protruding part should be in the shade whilst the edge just above often has a light streak to it ... you can lightenen the top edge or use a whitish wash to make it look like light is bouncing off. It is much the same as weathering, you just use different colours. When I apply rust it should start at the edge of a panel, or it must have been dented ... keep in mind the natural order of things. If you have enough leeway, you can even use an opaque colour and solidify it by layering whilst moving towards the light, and the edge/ridge causing the shade.

 

When painting, normally one starts with the dark shapes and on top of that the colour is layered as opaque sheets. A bit like airbrushing. You work with a solid base colour and then with a transparent colour towards a solid one. The smaller the object the fewer the layers which you can add as not to loose structure/detail. Building a gradient on a 4" heigh surface is far easier than on one with a mere 0.04" height. Greg (RGL) does the same with his hull plating

[Landlubber Mike]

Thanks Carl, this is very helpful!  Really appreciate it - things to think about  

[popeye the sailor]

late to the party Mike..........following along      nice start!

[Landlubber Mike]

Thanks Popeye!

 

I've been focusing on my F3F builds, but while paint and glue have been drying, I've put in a little time on the Duck.  Got the engine and the chassis put together and painted.  The kit doesn't include a hinge to open the hood, so I'm not sure if I'll just glue the hood to the body or not.

 

I know what people tend to just paint the undercarriage black, paint a few parts a metallic color, and call it a day, but it looked way too black and plastic-y for my tastes.  So, I ended up using washes and dry brushing to help break up the visual mass of solid black.  I'll probably add a clear coat to help even things out on the undercarriage.  For the interior, I think I'm probably going to similarly use washes and highlighting to break things up.

 

 

I decided to go with a black interior, and brown seats and door trims (the brown is Vallejo Model Air US Flat Brown).  I think the color matches up pretty well with the exterior, which is Tamiya Dark Yellow.  I'll probably add a darker brown wash to help bring out the details in the seats and give a little more rich and nuanced look to the brown.  Like the rest of these cars, the interior was fairly basic.  The seats for example were just a piece of fabric draped over a metal frame which oddly enough, supposedly was pretty comfortable.

 

[Landlubber Mike]

Here's a question for you car guys - do you do anything to prepare the rubber tires?  The tires in this kit are rubber, but there's sort of a whitish film in some areas that might be residue from the releasing agent.  I'm not sure that I want to paint the tires, but am wondering if there is a way to clean these up.  I tried rinsing them off, which helped a little, but I might need to use a toothbrush or something to get them cleaner.

[Egilman]

Are they really truly rubber, or vinyl?

 

If they are rubber scrub them up with a toothbrush under running water......

 

If they are vinyl I would suggest denatured alcohol with a light scrubbing.....

[Landlubber Mike]

Hmm, seem to be rubber to me, but not exactly sure.  I'll try the toothbrush first, thank you very much!

[cog]

4 hours ago, Landlubber Mike said:

The seats for example were just a piece of fabric draped over a metal frame which oddly enough, supposedly was pretty comfortable.

Well not if you had to sit in the middle in the rear ... I can still feel the blasted metal frame!!!

[popeye the sailor]

I just wash them in a light detergent with a bit of a scrub.  then I buff the tread with sandpaper to give them a worn look.  likely vinyl.  great looking chassis