Black Mirror Mazda MX-5 Miata

       

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Original Kit:
Eunos Roadster
Made By:
Tamiya (kit #24085)
Scale:
1/24
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Mazda MX-5 Miata from the TV series Black Mirror
Mazda MX-5 Miata interior Mazda MX-5 Miata chassis Mazda MX-5 Miata rear

 
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Black Mirror has far more hits than misses, but even among them "San Junipero" remains one of my favorite episodes of any show, ever. It had the usual great acting and clever twist we expect from the series, plus a genuinely happy ending (a rarity for this show) and a killer soundtrack. It was definitely something I wanted to add to my pop culture collection, and Yorkie's MX-5 Miata seemed like the perfect candidate.

I started with Tamiya's Eunos Roadster, an older tooling of theirs but still nicely done. The chassis was built straight out of the box, with painted details done in a mix of several blacks and metallics to add interest. Likewise the body, which was first coated with gray primer to even the base between the white body and black mirrors, then white to give a little extra pop to the TS-8 color coat. The rockers were done with TS-29 Semi Gloss Black, and the window trim and lights were all done with Sharpie markers.

One place I deviated from the kit was the dashboard, which was only available with a righthand drive configuration out of the box. I replaced this with a cleaned-up and modified dash out of a Revell MX-5 Miata gluebomb I had bought at a garage sale years ago. It fit relatively well, though in retrospect I should have raised it a hair...if you catch it at just the right angle, there's a small gap between the windshield and new dash. I also used the US-spec steering wheel, and changing the driving position meant I had to swap the wipers for a set that swept the right way from my parts box. In an attempt to give it a little more visual interest than straight "black," I painted everything inside TS-63 NATO Black followed by TS-71 Smoke Tint. It gave it an nice "new" appearance withot being too glossy, and is something I'll have to keep in mind in the future.

The final detail was a set of screen-accurate license plates, drawn up in Illustrator and printed onto high quality stock.

 

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