This Story Starts with COVID…
This place is a combination of things — a journal of hobby projects, sharing the rollercoaster of start-to-finish, and a store front to see these creations go to new places. Inspired by the COVID Pandemic (ongoing), I revisited an old interest to see if it might help pass the time. It didn’t take much money or looking and like John Madden said, “BAM!” I was back into scale model building.
From there, well, just keep reading and you’ll have the full background on RCRestoMods.com and what we can look forward to in 2022 and beyond.
Part of me does this for myself, over 40 and still a big kid at heart, but also as a person who wants to share cool stuff. I’ve learned so much from other people’s videos posted, from their writings, from their passion that I just want to join the wave in my own way. I’m excited to build this dream out and connect with other folk who see the joy in this kind of stuff like I do. Let’s go!
The Scale Models
Back as a kid I loved cars and airplanes, and I still do. The problem at that time is I was impatient and wanted to conquer a model in one sitting. With off-the-shelf Testors glue and no desire to let things set properly…they mostly turned out bad. When trying again, I set out to condition myself as a person twice as old and maybe a little more disciplined:
BE PATIENT. IT WILL BE WORTH IT.
As much as the new tour looked fun and productive, new problems showed up. Scale model cars are typically 1/24 scale, and the good ones have you build a whole lot of parts. The Porsche 918 (second attempt) had something like 180 individual pieces to assemble. By contrast, the SR-71 Blackbird airplane I built needed under 50.
Back and forth I went between cars and airplanes. There were some beauties along the way for sure. An F-4 Wild Weasel, a ’70 Dodge Hemi Cuda in metallic Plum Crazy Purple, an Apache AH-64 (what a beating), and of course the most favorite of all, one Lamborghini Countach 5000S.
After building models but also having a good eye for diecast quality, I picked up a few 1/18 scale nice finds to fill my eye candy desires. Countach, Diablo, Murcilago, Aventador, Centenario, Sian…even Ferrari got love with the F40, Testarossa, and Enzo. The one thing that bothered me was these cars looked so cool and yet they just sat still. What if they could be Remote Control cars with this level of awesome?
The Beginning of RCRestoMods
As a bargain shopper most of my professional clothes — shirts and slacks — come from Ross and Nordstrom Rack or other various semi-retail shops. The problem with Ross is they also carry toys and I like to go look. Turns out there were several remote control cars at low prices, under $5 kind of low. Neurons fired and I decided to go all-in and get started.
Fast forward a few months and I’ve snagged everything at Ross, TJ Maxx, Target, Walmart, and the local Goodwill and resale shops and, understandably, inundated with useless dead-ends. My wire cutters, dremel, paints, and soldering iron were ready, but I was stumped. The bodies I had wouldn’t fit the new stuff and it was intimidating.
Thanks to THIS VIDEO about a guitarist picking up a vintage find through their online auction site that I discovered something awesome. GOODWILL HAS AN ONLINE AUCTION SITE! Oh no, said my wallet…
Goal #1: Lamborghini Countach RC cars.
Without a question, my favorite car of all time is the Countach. Preferably low body with the 5000S running gear. Personally I pretend the 25th Anniversary aesthetic doesn’t exist and you won’t convince me otherwise. Fortunately, almost everything available was based on the Radio Shack version of the Countach from my posters.
Current Status of Goal #1:
For a full chronicle, please do see the Lamborghini brand page of this site for a plethora of images and notes. The flip side is I can inventory a good number of projects in various stages of revival. There’s a Red Countach mounted on a Porsche body with added twin turbos sticking out the back. There’s a White Countach being drilled for police lights with no running gear. There’s a day-glo Yellow Countach with no running gear (shown below in its original form). There’s a 1/24th scale metal body Gold Countach I intend to wrap in carbon fiber vinyl as a tribute to Horatio’s fingerprint on the progress of technology. More than what I know to do with? Nope.
Long-Term Community and Opportunity Growth
Having an arena to sell off some of the standing inventory may be able to free up bandwidth for more next year, maybe even commission pieces! It’s not a greed thing, mind you, because I’ve fronted all the money and time and efforts for nothing more than the journey. I hope automotive icons I admire can recognize this mentality as genuine. This is risk vs. reward, this is the fun in spending 10,000 hours in practice.
When young I was charged with doing community service and volunteer work to give me a sense of gratitude and humility. It made an impact and while I’ve not put in efforts to go above and beyond in helping my fellow humans other than paying taxes and treating people with the Golden Rule Mentality…it’s on my to-do list. For the longest time I haven’t seen any way other than labor or money to help…but these are different.
Maybe one day I can participate in some fund raising by way of sending over a creation to benefit the cause. Because my interests have seemingly narrow appeal, I’m going to be patient about this part. For now though, things are very fluid. If you can help me find the appropriate outlets to do good for others, I’m sincerely interested.
