’51 Merc. Cruiser "Satan’s Terror"

   Satan’s Terror was a AMT ’49 Mercury kit. It was a model I had built when I first started building again. I had put some flame decals on it, and one day I decided I wanted to take the decals off, well I tried removing them and ended up messing up the paint job on it. I had painted the Merc with a metallic lacquer, and it was thick, well to strip it I couldn’t use lacquer thinner or acetone because they would melt the plastic, and then I remember what brake fluid did to paint, so I tried it, and it worked! It took about 24 hrs. and a little scrubbing, but I got all the lacquer off, and the body was in perfect shape.
   Now, what to do with it, I had already built a stock, custom convertible, woody and a chopped, channeled, section, and shaved  AMT ’49 Mercury, I want something different. A ’51 Merc, yeah that’s it. Well I brought out the saw & body filler and away I went. First things first, off with the roof, I dropped it 3 scale inches, slanted the B pillars, and to see if people would notice, I left the ’49 rear window in it. Next I had to build up the rear quarter panels, BONDO to the rescue, I keep putting it on and sanding it down until I got it just right.
   The tail lights are from a piece of spruce, filed down and polished.   Now it was time for the front. I frenched  the head lights, molded the top grill section and turned it upside down for the grill opening, puttied that and the roll pan to the body. I sanded the Merc down, washed it, and primed it, it’s time to paint it a sapphire blue over the black primmer, or so I thought.
   Time to paint, I’ve got the paint mixed, airbrush out, and ready to go, NOT, I start painting, and the model falls off it’s holder onto the floor, the hole roof section has broken off. OK I put every thing away, went back and fixed it. A few days later, I’m ready again, NOT, I drop it again, I dropped this sucker a total of 4 times, all right before, or while I was painting it. Well by the 4th time I was ready to slam-it. Up to this point I have never dropped a model before, at least not by accident, so my wife says to me "maybe it’s possessed or it just doesn’t want to be painted" and I thought about it for awhile, maybe she was right. I got it all fixed up and shot it in black primmer and left it alone. This is how it got the name "Satan’s Terror".