Built by: Terry W Rollins in Orange County, CA

First, let me give you a little bio about myself. My name is Terry W Rollins and I hale from Orange County, California.....I started building models in the early 60's. The first model I ever build was an Austin-Martin that my parents gave me when I had the Chicken Pox. I was hooked, I started building any and everything I could get, including ships, planes, dinosaurs, etc. But, cars where my favorite subject, especially customs. I had probably 200 builds by the time I was 15 when I lost interest. The last model I built was a custom Model T bucket. I entered it in a my local hobby shops contest and took first place. Well, more important things in life, like girls, took over and I quit building and gave away my childish hobby.

Well, around mid 2000, I stopped at a local hobby shop on a whim. I was permanently disabled with a back injury, so I had lots of spare time on my hands. I found a Œ58 Chevy Impala kit and being it was my brothers birthday soon and he had a 1:1 Œ58, I got it for him. When I got home and showed my wife, she asked why I didn¹t get one for myself. Two days later, I was back at the hobby shop buying the other one he had.

I then started getting tools, paints, etc. to do that model right and also started checking on line for Yahoo groups related to modeling. I ended up joining a couple of the groups. I learned from them that there had been all sorts of changes to my "childish" hobby and that most of the members of these groups where all "Old Farts" like me. Well, instead of building that Œ58 Impala, I started collecting other models off eBay and more tools then I ever know existed. I had never used an airbrush, but I bought one anyway, along with a lot of custom paints from places like House of Kolors and Leon Taft¹s "Cobra Colors".

Ok, now that I¹ve completely bored you with those facts, let me tell you a little about this build. Again, since my taste leans toward customs and the 58' Impala really doesn¹t lend much to that. I decided that Boyd¹s "Smoothster" look like it would take the least amount of modification and woud fit the bill better for my first build in 40+ yrs.

The build is basically box stock except for the scratch built tail lights, they¹re made from a toothbrush. The paint job is my first attempt at using an airbrush, with a lot of info and help I gleaned from the Yahoo groups. The body, fenders and engine where shot with HOK¹s "Solar Gold-FBC101" base coat. The fenders where then shot with Cobra Colors "Glitter Gold Metallic" and the running board shot with Krylon¹s Make-It-Suede "Buckskin". The body was painted using Cobra Color¹s "Cosmic Gold Pearl.

The interior is also Make-It-Suede "Buckskin", highlighted with Model Master¹s "Sand-33531". I scratch build the speakers that a mounted behind the seats from gemstone bezels and thin mesh screen I found at Michael¹s.

All the chrome is done with Alclad II except for the vents along the hood fenders and body trim which were done using kit supplied chrome, next time I would use "BMF". The chassis was shot with a mixture of Semi-gloss Black and silver.