Saturday, September 12, 2009

YELLOW JAGUAR ROARS OFF TO YELLOW WHEELS




It was birthday time in the office of our friends at the Yellow Wheels website. So it was SMN personalized gift time, in the form of a Saico 1:36 scale diecast Jaguar E-Type, with Yellow Wheels logos tastily applied.

Aaah, it was much appreciated! As Tim Andrew of YW put it: “...I was blown away that David (Jefferis) had taken the trouble to hand-decorate the model with miniature Yellowwheels decals. Especially as unknown to him I had shot a whole book about restoring Jaguar E-Types back to their original state with writer Philip Porter. I immediately searched for the book to check with my hunch that this was a Mk1. The Saico model and box doesn’t offer info about its model number but I think it’s a Mk1 3.8 because of the early bumpers and especially the spun-aluminum dashboard, but I’ll gladly be corrected. The Jag now has pride of place on the YW office shelves!”

The real thing is definitely one of motoring’s all-time greats, and regularly comes at or near the the top of ‘most beautiful auto design ever’ polls. Here at SMN, we just say: “IWOOT”.

As for the Saico, it’s more of a toy than a scale model (well, it comes with a pull-back motor anyway). However, like many similar products it’s almost there in the scale stakes. If Saico finessed some details, the E-Type would be transformed.

As for the logo decorations, procedure was speedy:

1 Copy and paste YW logos to the desktop.
2 Open them up in a suitable program (SMN used Adobe Photoshop).
3 Crop and size to fit.
4 Print direct from Photoshop, or import images into a page layout program (SMN used Quark Express).
5 Print onto suitable paper. Self-adhesive and decal sheets are available, but we printed onto standard A4 paper.
6 Trim out images with scalpel or craft knife, turn upside-down, spray lightly with lo-tack glue (SMN used Spraymount).
7 Apply carefully to the Jag, using scalpel or knife for precise positioning.
8 Voila! Presentation complete - add a couple of logos to the box and all’s done.

Visit the Yellow Wheels site where you can see more Jaguar and other auto stuff, here.