Built by: Mike McMahon in Palatine, Illinois

This Tijuana Taxi is a complete restoration of a glue bomb I purchased on EBay (and paid way too much I might add). It was in decent shape. It was missing a couple parts, some were broken, but none of them were critical and fortunately, not allot of paint had to be removed. The kit came with a box (with minor water damage), but no instructions. The decals were never applied but were also missing, but I picked some up from Dekal Dan (Thanks!).

I carefully disassembled the kit, primed everything gray, and started from scratch. This is my first restoration so I was taking my time and learning as I went along.

I think the box art on this kit is so cool. It's a classic and one of my favorite Tom Daniel designs (I seem to say that about all his designs). I wanted to remain faithful to the way he designed it to look, so I set out to find colors that matched the box art. I ended up with Tamaya TS-3 for the body. Testors Plum Acryl for the roof, frame rails and inner wheels (three coats brushed on). Testors Candy Purple (has a nice metallic vinyl look to it) trimmed with silver for all the passenger seats and the divider inside the cab.

The floor was painted with a combination of dark tan and Italian leather then dry brushed with flat black to make it look dirty. The chicken coop was also painted to look well used and dirty. The decals for the roof marquee and the license plate were too small for me so I labeled them with an extra fine black Sharpee. They kind of present that "hand painted" look.

Most of the windows were quite yellowed, scratched and had gluey fingerprints on some places (reminded me of how windows turned out when I built models as a kid), so I fabricated new ones out of 1/32 clear styrene. I also replaced the missing driveshaft with a plastic Q-Tip stick and painted it silver chrome trim. The chrome firewall plate was also missing, so I made one out of mirrored 1/32 styrene.

Anyway, I am pleased with the way it turned out. I hope people will be immediately reminded of the box art when they look at it.