{"id":16175,"date":"2021-10-22T19:45:05","date_gmt":"2021-10-23T02:45:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/?p=16175"},"modified":"2021-10-22T14:12:13","modified_gmt":"2021-10-22T21:12:13","slug":"diy-automan-autocar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/2021\/10\/diy-automan-autocar\/","title":{"rendered":"DIY Automan Autocar"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last month I wrote about my <a href=\"\/journal\/2021\/09\/the-computers-voice-movie-marathon\/\">&#8220;The Computer\u2019s Voice&#8221; Movie Marathon<\/a> that I did, and that led to an acquaintance pointing out the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Automan\">Automan<\/a> TV show from 1983-84. The show is ridiculous. The premise is a computer scientist cop who creates a physical hologram who helps him fight crime. The technology doesn&#8217;t make sense, the plots are overly complicated, and it&#8217;s simply not a very good show. But it&#8217;s fun. As silly it is sometimes, it really broke my heart when I loaded up the final DVD and finished watching the series.<\/p>\n<p>Plus, I had company! The <a href=\"https:\/\/continuumdrag.podbean.com\/\">Continuum Drag podcast<\/a> was watching them too. A few days after each pair of episodes I watched, I would load up the next podcast on my walk or run, and voila! Some folks to enjoy the pain and laughs with. They were definitely harsher on it than I was, but I think I&#8217;ve come to be more comfortable with camp and older shows as I&#8217;ve gotten older. I also deeply appreciated how bad all the computer scenes were, so I had a fondness for the show that I think is hard for someone who doesn&#8217;t work full time in tech to appreciate.<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><a href=\"\/images\/journalpics\/102021\/automan_computer_scene.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/images\/journalpics\/102021\/automan_computer_scene_sm.jpg\"><\/a><\/div>\n<p>But my favorite thing about the show? The Autocar. It&#8217;s instantly recognizable as a Lamborghini Countach LP400, the car that, to this day, I think of when I think of &#8220;the car of the future.&#8221; I don&#8217;t know why the Countach landed in my head like that, but it probably is the most iconic car of the 1980s.<\/p>\n<p>The car graces the DVD cover:<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><a href=\"\/images\/journalpics\/102021\/automan_autocar_dvd.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/images\/journalpics\/102021\/automan_autocar_dvd_sm.jpg\"><\/a><\/div>\n<p>And Shout! Factory (who was responsible for the DVD release) put a lovely clip up on YouTube:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Automan (1983) Clip (5\/7) A Nice Set of Wheels\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/J98Kb55ZWLM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Cool. But then, our friends at Continuum Drag <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ContinuumDrag\/status\/1441755936142495752\">tweeted about Automan merchandise<\/a> and made me want an Autocar of my own! At first, I <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/pleia2\/status\/1442153741591859203\">publicly mused about 3-D printing one<\/a>, but after looking into designs and pricing, I started looking at toy cars that already exist and could be repurposed, so <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/pleia2\/status\/1442202302148845571\">that&#8217;s what I decided to do<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>First stop, eBay! I picked up a Matchbox 1982 Lamborghini Countach LP500 for about $10, shipped.<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><a href=\"\/images\/journalpics\/102021\/automan_autocar_begins.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/images\/journalpics\/102021\/automan_autocar_begins_sm.jpg\"><\/a><\/div>\n<p>A few things about this model for this project:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It&#8217;s green. Looking at the listing again, you can tell from the photos, but I guess I wasn&#8217;t looking that closely<\/li>\n<li>It has &#8220;Lamborghini&#8221; scrolled across the sides<\/li>\n<li>It has a spoiler<\/li>\n<li>Technically it&#8217;s the LP500 rather than the LP400, but I am pretty sure the exteriors are the same<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>My first decision had to be whether I wanted to repaint the whole thing black. I decided against it. I&#8217;m not very good at painting (as you will see), and I worried that I&#8217;d botch it, and it would just end up looking awful. Plus, this toy is the most fun when the lights are off anyway! And the spoiler? I&#8217;ll just have to live with it.<\/p>\n<p>So, paint. I learned from my <a href=\"\/journal\/2021\/09\/i-3d-printed-an-ibm-linuxone\/\">baby mainframes<\/a> the best paints to use for this kind of work were acrylics, and I went with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.goldenpaints.com\/\">Golden Artist Colors<\/a>.<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><a href=\"\/images\/journalpics\/102021\/automan_autocar_paint.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/images\/journalpics\/102021\/automan_autocar_paint_sm.jpg\"><\/a><\/div>\n<p>In the baby mainframe project I learned that putting on a coat of white paint over the black did wonders for having the subsequent color put on. Now, this is also true of the glow-in-the-dark paint, but it turns out the Light Ultramarine Blue I was using doesn&#8217;t need a white base coat. I could have saved myself a lot of time and ugliness if I had skipped the white base coat. Oh, well.<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><a href=\"\/images\/journalpics\/102021\/automan_autocar_white.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/images\/journalpics\/102021\/automan_autocar_white_sm.jpg\"><\/a><\/div>\n<div align=\"center\"><a href=\"\/images\/journalpics\/102021\/automan_autocar_blue.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/images\/journalpics\/102021\/automan_autocar_blue_sm.jpg\"><\/a><\/div>\n<p>But as I said, a base on the green was important for the <a href=\"https:\/\/spacebeams.com\/aquaris-glow-in-the-dark-paint\/\">Spacebeams Aquaris<\/a> glow-in-the-dark paint. When I put the glowing paint on without a base, it barely showed up. So the good news is, if you could put the blue coat on nicely, you could afford to be a little sloppy with the glowing paint. Unfortunately, I&#8217;m not very good at any of it, so my Autocar is a cute hobby craft, rather than a work of art. The glowing paint also is mostly transparent over the blue, but not totally, so it did make for a slightly toned down blue in the light.<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><a href=\"\/images\/journalpics\/102021\/automan_autocar_complete_day.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/images\/journalpics\/102021\/automan_autocar_complete_day_sm.jpg\"><\/a><\/div>\n<p>But once the lights were off, I was totally in love! The colors were perfect!<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><a href=\"\/images\/journalpics\/102021\/automan_autocar_complete_night.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/images\/journalpics\/102021\/automan_autocar_complete_night_sm.jpg\"><\/a><\/div>\n<p>It&#8217;s my very own toy Autocar!<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><a href=\"\/images\/journalpics\/102021\/automan_autocar_shirt_car.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/images\/journalpics\/102021\/automan_autocar_shirt_car_sm.jpg\"><\/a><\/div>\n<p>Oh, yeah, I also <a href=\"https:\/\/www.teepublic.com\/t-shirt\/5265493-automan\">got a t-shirt<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Once this was all complete, I felt a bit silly about it all. I&#8217;m a 40 year old woman with two small kids, and very little time to myself. This is what I spend it on? But this project is so very me that I kept me entertained and grounded through a transformative time in my life. It&#8217;s silly, but it&#8217;s mine, and right now I need more that&#8217;s just mine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last month I wrote about my &#8220;The Computer\u2019s Voice&#8221; Movie Marathon that I did, and that led to an acquaintance pointing out the Automan TV show from 1983-84. The show is ridiculous. The premise is a computer scientist cop who creates a physical hologram who helps him fight crime. The technology doesn&#8217;t make sense, the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-craft","category-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16175"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16193,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16175\/revisions\/16193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}