A '59 Caddy looks like it's ready to take off anyway, so turning one into a space-going hover car required no great leap of imagination. I had several incomplete Monogram '59 Cadillac convertibles left over from other projects. My spare parts drawers would provide nearly everything else.

After the wheel wells were carefully filled in, the Caddy was painted, wet sanded, and polished to a street rod finish. I then set to cementing dozens of bits and pieces to the undercarriage, including my old favorites, plastic register tape roles as thrusters. After a fair amount of debris had been somewhat "logically" arranged on the chassis, the whole mess was painted with Testor's buffable stainless steel and aluminum, shined to varying degrees, then weathered down with oil and exhaust streaks.

Pieces of this diorama came from the far reaches of my parts bins. Scuba tanks, tail lights, radar dishes, part of an HO scale Kentucky Fried Chicken sign, a doll house dinner plate...the rocket ship on the "Robby's" sign is a 1960's gum ball machine prize. The figures are Preiser nudes from the spare parts morgue. The burger bun was sculpted out of putty, then the toppings cut out of sheet styrene, painted and pegged drifting apart in zero-g on a straight pin. The signage, bumper stickers, Venus license plates and navigation display on the center console of the Caddy were made on our computer.

This model was a tremendous amount of fun to build. The only real frustration has come after the fact...no one ever realizes that this piece was scratch built!