Alfa Romeo P3 (Cigars of the Pharaoh)

Cigars of the Pharaoh (French: Les Cigares du Pharaon) is the fourth volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. Commissioned by the conservative Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle for its children’s supplement Le Petit Vingtième, it was serialised weekly from December 1932 to February 1934 before being published in a collected volume by Casterman in 1934. The story tells of young Belgian reporter Tintin and his dog Snowy, who are travelling in Egypt when they discover a pharaoh’s tomb filled with dead Egyptologists and boxes of cigars. Pursuing the mystery of these cigars, they travel across Arabia and India, and reveal the secrets of an international drug smuggling enterprise.

 

– courtesy of Wikipedia

The finished model:

The story:

I love Cigars of the Pharaoh. It’s easily in my top 5 favourite Tintin adventures. Now a lot of that has to do with the fact that it’s arguably part one of a two-part adventure with my all-time favourite, The Blue Lotus. If you want to understand how Tintin ended up in Shanghai, you first need to know why he went to Egypt.

That’s only part of the reason though. The truth is, I’ve always been fascinated by ancient Egypt, pharaohs, mummies and pyramids. This was especially true around the time I first discovered Tintin and his friends as a child. The first time I laid eyes on a Tintin album of any kind was at school. As an anglophone attending a completely French immersion elementary school, reading almost anything in French seemed an awful lot like homework. However Tintin (and to a large extent Asterix) was the shinning exception to that rule. I have many fond memories of the mad student scramble to be the first to hit the comics section and get the pick-of-the-litter during library period. It was during one of these rushes that I fought off some other would-be contender and got my hands on Cigars of the Pharaoh.

Obviously it also ranks quite high on my Tintin modelling project list… and it certainly doesn’t hurt that there are several great vehicles to choose from.

While I’ve got plans for both the orange DH Puss Moth that Tintin steals during his escape from Arabia and flies to India, and the pale khaki Arabian Hawker Hart that pursues him, I decided to start by focusing on the cherry red Alfa Romeo P3 that Tintin commandeers for the climatic mountain chase scene.

What a sweet ride.

The build:

If you want to know exactly how sweet a ride it is, I suggest you check out Rajesh Sinha’s article on the subject in the Transport Journal – part of his series covering all the cars that appear in Tintin’s many adventures.  How great is that?!

As usual, the difficulty in adding cars to 1/72 scale project is actually finding one in that size to build. In this case though, I got a bit lucky. I couldn’t get a P3, but I was able to snag a 1/72 resin “kit” of an Alfa Romeo 12c/312 from Minairons Miniatures. With only 7 parts (1 body, 2 axels and 4 wheels) it wasn’t much of a challenge to assemble, but I made some alterations and scratched up some additions to try and bring it more in line with the P3. Besides adding my own (clear) windscreen, I also cut back the moulded exhaust pipe and scratched up a pair of my own.

The biggest problem with the build is that I didn’t notice until I had it pointed out to me that the Alfa Romeo only has an exhaust pipe on the right side. Talk about not seeing the trees for the forest! I must’ve looked at every picture of Hergé’s car ever printed and not once did I notice the asymmetrical design. So at almost the very end of the build, I had to pull off the pipe assembly from the left side, fill some holes and repaint. I think I cleaned it up alright, but what a waste of work.

Check out the project below and tell me what you think: