Live a Little, Love a Little Meyers Manx

       

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Original Kit:
Live a Little, Love a Little-Mobile
Made By:
AMT (kit #847)
Scale:
1/25
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Live a Little, Love a Little Meyers Manx
Live a Little, Love a Little Meyers Manx interior Live a Little, Love a Little Meyers Manx engine Live a Little, Love a Little Meyers Manx rear

 
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This was, for the most part, a box stock build of AMT's Meyers Manx kit as released under the banner of Elvis Presley's 1968 film Live a Little, Love a Little. It was released with co-sells for their Beverly Hills Cop Nova and Three Stooges Ford, but unlike either of those kits this one was much closer to "screen accurate" right out of the box.

It's a surprisingly complex little build, with a ton of unexpected details like the eight-piece front suspension and fully detailed engine. Unfortunately, a fair bit of this complexity translated into a lot of flash, parting seams, and ejector pin marks that needed to be cleaned up. Fortunately, once this was done the parts generally fit together nicely and with good positive locators.

For maximum accuracy I should have stripped the chrome plating off the engine and given it a set of short dual exhausts. But I decided to lean into the "dressed up" kit parts instead, repairing the part attachment points and finishing the filled seams with Bare Metal Foil, Molotow Liquid Chrome, and polished metal repair tape to retain a bright metal look. So that it didn't look too much like a wad of vac-metalized plastic, I hit the main block and heads with Tamiya TS-71 Smoke to accentuate the shadows and give it an overall darker appearance. The exhaust pipes were painted TS-88 Titanium Silver, and a few minor details like the distributor and ignition coil were painted contrasting colors.

The chassis was painted semigloss black with white shocks, silver wheels with parts box tires and hubcaps. The interior was made of the top surface of the chassis, two seats, a dashboard, steering wheel, and roll bar. The seats and dash were straight out of the kit, and the roll bar needed just a bit of tweaking to get to fit correctly, but the steering wheel got replaced with a two-spoke Buick wheel from my parts box that more closely resembled the one in the movie.

Finally, the body was cleaned up and sprayed TS-47 Chrome Yellow over pink primer to create a rich yellow that looked close to what we saw on film. Satin black was used for the lower half of the body, and the final detail was the kit-supplied license plates.

If I were being stricter about screen accuracy, the parking lights should have been replaced with a set mounted on top of the front fenders and the windshield should have been rebuilt as a taller, more squared-off design. I may revisit these details at some point in the future, but for now I'm happy to call it done.

 

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