Lincoln Zephyr 1935

[palat]

Hi all

I have put the Jaguar in the backburner for a while and started this project.

The Lincoln Zephyr was developed by John Tjaarda, a brilliant Dutch-born engineer working under Briggs, Ford's coachbuilder. Tjaarda conceived a rear-engined streamlined car named "Sterkenberg", and managed to sell the idea to Edsel Ford. Along the way the Sterkenberg lost its rear engine configuration and had a "conventional" but very effective front design done by Ford young stylist Bob Gregorie (who kept the "slope" line apparent on the front), becoming the "small" Lincoln Zephyr. The Zephyr was advanced- looking but mechanically conservative. Buyers flocked to the showrooms and it sold very well, in fact it was the first successful streamlined American car, considering the flop of the Airflow twins and the "sharknose" Graham.
My idea is to model the DeSoto Airflow and the Graham in a near future, thanks to nb who supplied comprehensive reference material.

Started with a box:



Shaped the body and fenders, opened side windows:



Tweaked and defined the curves, opened front and rear windows, added wheels, cut doors and hood:

http://www.palat.com.br/images/zephyr/4.jpg
http://www.palat.com.br/images/zephyr/5.jpg

As usual this is done in 3dsMax and rendered with VRay (no GI yet).
Thanks for watching.

[Nik]

Great work dude.

[nb]

Wow! Great choice of model!
I was thinking many times of doing this myself. I was also considering doing Tjaarda's prototype. I doubt that this would be necessary anymore!

[tiberius]

Looking forward to seeing more! your other projects are good choices too. great thing about cars is that there are so many styles to choose to keep you busy for a long time. the stylists for the older cars are artists.
hopefully one of these days I can get into doing 3d, your attention to detail shows and I feel inspired to try it myself. I have Zanosa but have considered 3D studio max.

[nb]

I've posted the drawings by Bob Gregorie. I'm not sure if they for a later moder Lincoln or just a Ford. Perhaps they can be of some use for your project.
Good luck!

[Silent][Moebius]

sweet work palat. i admire your work style, it has never worked for me though :/

[Xoliul]

Agreed with S||M, I love how you work and show it to us. Looks like an excellent method for high poly cars. I'd like to try that method someday, but it still seems unclear how to do most stuff. Maybe one day you could make a small tutorial out of a project ? Nothing too elaborate: just wireframe views of the stages you show us here, and mentioning what tools you use and a bit how would be excellent.
Anyway, continue your great work please, I'm sure it will end up with the same high standard as your other work.

[palat]

Thanks all for the encouragement.

Audipower - thanks man.

nb - thanks. If you have references for the Sterkenberg please share them with us, as i have never seen it myself. Do model it, i would love to see it materialize in 3d by your hands.
Thanks as well for the 38 Zephyr donation, i copied it at once and -- guess what -- my top proportions were all wrong, as expected... I considered starting from scratch but with a little patience and a fair amount of FDD box modifiers managed to correct it; i was using the bodyshell of my Ford 40 model as a reference, it is similarly designed but presented many differences.

tiberius - you are right, and i have so many projects waiting in line. Haven't given up modeling the Mercury 55 someday. I don't know about Zanosa but i guess it would not be hard to buy an older Max version from someone who upgraded.

Silent][Moebius - i guess it's a personal choice of how you make a model. I can't work by modeling each part separately, would never finish the job if i tried that method. Better do the whole thing and split up to detail.

Xoliul - i did collect about 80 screengrabs while modeling my Toyopet, starting from the headlight with an octagon converted to poly. Since then my method has not changed much, although sometimes i start with a box, cutting and deleting faces. Someday i have to get some time spare to create this small tut.
But the key thing to take into consideration is actual dimensions. So now everytime i start a model i create a non-renderable box with the car's original dimensions in millimeters so i can be work with more precision.

I will try to do an update and post it today.
Thank you all again.

[nb]

Sorry for the trouble with rebuilding the model. I should have posted the pictures earlier... Another thing which you might have noticed yourself, but I'll still mention it: to save on tooling(?) some cars of the era had front and rear door made symmetrical. I'm *almost* sertain that Lincoln Zephyr was no exeption.

As for Zephyr prototypes, I think there were a few of them; and Sterkenberg was probably the first of them. I have very little references concerning it. I have more reference images for a later prototype that was like a sort of crossbreed between VW Beetle and production Lincoln Zephyr. I'll post them.

[DrumBoPing]

needs some work ... chamfer