Three fast cars

In the classic 60s heist caper, The Italian Job, a British criminal crew put together a collection of vehicles with which to steal a cache of gold and drive it across the Alps. As well as the iconic 3 Mini Coopers, they also get hold of an Aston Martin DB4* and two Jaguar E-Types. These three fast cars, as Michael Caine's Charlie Croker explains, were on standby in case anything goes wrong. They were to be used as emergency escape vehicles, presumably for rapid redeployment of the senior gang members, should things go belly-up.

This idea of having fast back-up vehicles in case of trouble is not entirely dissimilar to something my dad once told me about motorcycling. If you're going to ride around on a bike, at some point you're going to get into trouble. So try to make sure the bike is quick enough to get you out of that trouble, before hospital or the morgue catch up with you. Of course it's not flawless logic, but in my time as a biker it definitely came into play on at least one occasion.**

Civilian motorbikes should play out in a future project, but for now the idea of quick, nimble transport, that isn't military in its design, is going to concern itself with vehicles of the four-wheeled nature. It's something I've wanted to bring to my Warhammer 40,000 tabletop wargaming collection for a while, as it fits well with my interest in the domestic side of life in Games Workshop's far future. Of course, in the game, we rarely get to see this civilian side, and the setting only occasionally reveals the existence of what it refers to as groundcars. There are scattered mentions in some Black Library fiction, but the only official models I can think of that come close to being actual cars are the Achilles Ridgerunner for the Genestealer Cult armies and the Tauros and Tauros Venators from the Enforcer and Astra Militarum ranges. And to be fair even these are substantially more like military buggies than civilian cars.

Achilles Ridgerunner and the old Elysian Drop Trooper Tauros

So what might civilian groundcars actually look like? The first time I saw any kind of model to represent this was probably way back in April 1990, in White Dwarf issue 124. In the 'Eavy Metal section we were shown Dale Hurst's scratch-built Genestealer Cult Coven Limousines.

Dale Hurst's seminal Genestealer Cult

This sparked a wave of similar-looking converted vehicles, that used contemporary cars from other toy companies as their basis. Eventually smaller wargaming companies got in on the act, and some truly incredible models were produced. Most notably for me was the line of civilian vehicles made by Grim Skull, for use not just by the aforementioned Genestealer Cultists, but by Inquisitorial warbands as well. At the time of writing, these models can still be purchased over at Wargame Exclusive. I might well take another look myself at some point in the not-too-distant-future.

Gothic sci-fi vehicles from Wargame Exclusive

The models include a wealth of incredible detail, from armour plates, to hood-mounted weaponry, caterpillar tracks, vents, spikes and even wings. But they were not quite what I was after for this project. I wanted something a little less ornate. Something that looked fast and utilitarian.

When I first heard Necromunda was taking to the Ash Wastes, I thought it was going to be a vehicular combat game, along the lines of Games Workshop's much earlier Dark Future. I had already made a handful of civilian vehicles (for use as both generic working sci-fi vehicles and as burnt-out terrain), so I was inspired to finish another small batch. But most of these earlier projects were about getting something finished, or exploring a paint scheme, rather than pursuing a specific design idea. So this time I wanted to go a bit further, taking The Italian Job's three fast cars as a starting point, and seeing what they might look like, ripping across the wastelands of the far future.

Enter the somewhat niche concept of customised, off-road sports cars. 

This was pretty much what I was after. But maybe not quite so pristine. So for the general condition of the vehicles I looked to the 2008 movie Death Race (the Jason Statham remake of Death Race 2000). The cars in the movie sported cool-looking guns, which were very tempting to appropriate on my models. But I had promised myself that my three vehicles would remain civilian to look at, being used for the deployment of gunmen, gangers and heavies, rather than carrying obvious mounted weaponry. Thus the cars themselves needed to be unarmed. So from the Death Race aesthetic I just wanted to incorporate some of the scratched and damaged panels, and hastily welded field repairs to give my vehicles a bit of much needed dark future flavour.

I was lucky enough to already have an unfinished model car in my collection that seemed like it might fit my desired look. It was the Marua Nemesis from the sadly now defunct Antenociti's Workshop. It's the black undercoated model in the below photo, and you can see my initial clean up of it here, from way back in 2016. After some scouting around in my local pound shops I managed to find another couple of fast cars that looked like they might be roughly the same scale. The red one is plastic, whereas the orange one has a metal shell. 

I broke all three models down to their constituent parts, in order to see what could be done without cutting anything up. 

Then ordered some additional bits from the ever-reliable Zinge Industries. Mainly wheels and lights.

After this, a quick raid of my bits box, including scouring through any left-over parts from Ramshackle Games, in order to find some extra gubbins to stick on the roof of each model.

And then just one last thing before painting. The two pound shop cars both had see-through windows and interior detail, meaning I was able to create a few armed gangers sitting inside, either driving the cars, or riding shotgun. This really helped, er, 'drive home' the message about ferrying manpower from one place to the next. If you look closely at some of these photos you can just see them through the plastic windows. 

After painting the first two in something approaching the Death Race style, I decided I wanted a lighter, more obviously different colour scheme for the third vehicle. So instead I went for a slightly newer finish, that, although clearly dirty, was only just beginning to take more serious damage. I should probably have used an airbrush to achieve smooth colour transitions between the lighter and darker areas, but to be honest I think I'm still a bit apprehensive of that particular tool. Perhaps more effort with an airbrush can be one of my goals for the year. I guess I can check back in December to see if it has transpired.

In the meantime I foresee quite a few more Orks on the immediate horizon, as I'm hoping to put a significant dent in the remainder of their un-painted army this year. But I'm getting ahead of myself. There'll be more on them and their machinery next time. Until then.

* Apparently the Aston Martin was damaged early on in filming, so a Lancia Flaminia was disguised to look like it for the Mafia hilltop scene where all three cars are pushed off the cliff.
** For the sake of balance, it's also worth noting that the sheer instant power of a sport bike probably got me into trouble as well.