Thursday, June 2, 2016

1956 Ampol Trial diorama - update 1

At last, I have the full colour DVD in my hands (thank you local library) and I have struck paydirt on several fronts. I wanted the winning Peugeot 403 to be light blue, and even from the black and white photos I suspected that was the case. The first pic is from a home movie of the brand new 403 before they added bullbars etc, and the second pic is on the finishing line, complete with broken/non-existent windscreen.
 


 

And as I also suspected, the second-placed VW was dark blue, but even better, I have discovered a green VW to match the 1:43 scale one I've bought recently.




The old colour film stock used in the 50s has a greenish tinge to it, so all the lighter coloured cars at various angles looked green, but fortunately there were multiple shots of cars to check again and again, and the VW spotted in the rally is definitely green.




As for the third car in my diorama, I've decided I'd like a Morris Minor, and I've bought an "incorrect" Morris Minor 1000 model which has the full front windscreen, rather than the split windscreen of the earlier model. The Minor 1000, says Wikipedia, first appeared in 1956, so I was hoping there might be one in the 1956 Rally, but there isn't one in the DVD at least. So I'll enter this in the background for my dio, with these numbers, as it was a father and daughter team who both entered and finished. Conveniently enough also, the little Corgi 1;43 model is also a light blue.







Finally, I was totally thrilled to note that the Press Unit car for the rally was still a Peugeot 203, which I had modelled and modified in my earlier 1953 Redex Rally diorama. It doesn't look like it was the old Cinesound 203 Wagon, but it is nice to know that the sterling performance of the original 203 Wagon had made it the camera team's choice. I've seen footage of other round-Australia rallies between 1953 and 56, and sure enough there are Peugeot 203 Wagons hauling around the film units in those, too. There isn't going to be a Press Unit 203 in my diorama, I've just included it here because I was so pleased to see it going strong.


Next update very soon ....

 

No comments:

Post a Comment