Thank you very much for visiting this site from autosport.com, nostalgia forum and from F1 modelling website, F1M. Thanks to Doug Nye (Motor Sport magazine) for posting the original thread on the Autosport.com Bulletin Board, nostalgia forum and for his continued contributions.
I am delighted you enjoy seeing this work, each car being for me increasingly like owning something, nearer to the real thing. Your observations concerning Tamiya etc are correct in that indeed the earlier models were simply that, straight out of the box, perhaps with some improvement. Increasingly though, they are scratch-built apart from engine block (DFV often) and wheel rims/tyres. In recent years (since the BT44 and 44B), I have used resin casts of my significantly improved Tamiya Hewland FG400 gearbox, rather than the inaccurate item in the box (as well as looking better, it makes me feel better about the completed car). Additionally, for latest on-going project (1973 Tyrrell 006, due autumn 2011), I have been producing all the round parts on a lathe, using aluminium which improves the appearance and means I can make more parts, but does take longer (two years per car, rather than one year). As for the site, I am adding text often (weekly) and supplying photos to my 16 year old son Thomas, to work the website magic.
I have really enjoyed seeing the fantastic work by capri-schorsch on F1M, namely the 1/12 Tamiya JPS III, Ferrari 312B and the Honda RA273, thank you for mentioning these in your post, models which have been beautifully and sensitively super-detailed and in the latter two cases, provided within skilful diorama settings.