Modelling the holy grey grille

Bringing the Hornby Sierra up to scratch

I haven't written about model vehicles on this blog for some time, so here's the story of a recent project that has kept me busy for a few hours and turned a piece of rubbish that most people wouldn't give a second glance into an accurate scale model. I work exclusively in 1/76 scale, the same as OO gauge model railways, which is well-served for bus and lorry models but not so much for cars until recently, and the subject of this piece may be nostalgic for those who modelled modern-image railways in the 1990s.

The old plastic Ford Sierra made by Hornby was just about all you could get at the time but doesn't seem to have much potential to make a decent model from first impressions and is now all but ignored as it is so inferior to the model cars now available. Don't write it off completely though: with a bit of hard work, as I have proved here, it can be transformed into something that wouldn't look out of place alongside the new generation of diecast cars. The car I have chosen to model is well-known in certain circles and its fascinating story has already been told here, so read on to find out how I replicated it in this small scale... 

A Hornby Sierra that actually looks like a Sierra, and the all-important grey grille is in place

The holy grey grille

It's all about that Base...

It's amazing how certain car registration marks become memorable considering they're just semi-random combinations of letters and numbers. Take GVG 510Y for example. This may not be particularly famous and probably means nothing to most of you, having never been owned by a celebrity or featured on television, but the car spotting community on Flickr will recognise it immediately as a legend among them, and those lucky enough to have encountered it speak of it in hushed tones of reverence.

Why are those guys looking so happy to see a crusty old Sierra?

So what is the vehicle this ordinary-seeming numberplate belongs to? A priceless supercar? Maybe a unique prototype? A car involved in an historic event? Nope, to the casual observer it's nothing more than a grotty old Ford Sierra that looks fit for scrap and isn't remotely exciting, so what's so special about it? Well, it's the only known surviving example of the rare early base model with the unpainted grey plastic front grille, long thought to be an extinct or mythical beast that existed only in the brochure and was never actually built, so the discovery of this specimen in the wild a few years ago caused a sensation among those who appreciate the underdogs of the motoring world.