Fiat 500 (Castle of Cagliostro)

Lupin the Third: The Castle of Cagliostro (Japanese: ルパン三世カリオストロの城 Hepburn: Rupan Sansei: Kariosutoro no Shiro) is a 1979 Japanese animated action-adventure comedy film co-written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki as his feature film debut. It is the second feature film featuring Monkey Punch’s master thief Arsène Lupin III, from his manga series Lupin III. The film was Miyazaki’s first time directing a theatrical feature after having previously worked as an animator for Toei Animation and Telecom Animation Film and directing several television shows including Lupin III and two episodes of Lupin III Part II.

– courtesy of Wikipedia

The finished model:

The story:

As Miyazaki’s directorial debut, Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro (1979) [Japanese: ルパン三世カリオストロの城] appeared several years before he found fame with the release of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984) and the subsequent establishment of Studio Ghibli.

So, as a huge fan of Miyazaki’s Ghibli works, I went out of my way to avoid it.

I mean, it was impure… after all, Lupin wasn’t even Miyazaki’s creation! It was a character created by some weirdo named Monkey Punch. Obviously it couldn’t be anywhere near the quality of Laputa – Castle in the Sky (1986) or Porco Rosso (1992)!

And then, one day many years later, I realised that Miyazaki didn’t create Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) either… or Arriety (2010) for that matter, and I liked both of those fine. So, when I ran across a copy of the DVD version at my local library, I though “what the heck, let’s give it a go.”

I was hooked by the car chase… and have lived in shame ever since at having given this one a pass for so long.

By the time Lupin’s little yellow Fiat 500 goes driving up the side of a mountain road, I realized that creating the characters wasn’t nearly as important as how you interpret them and what you do with them. The Castle of Cagliostro (1979) might not be Studio Ghibli per se, but it’s all Hayao Miyazaki alright. It’s even got a wacky flying machine in the form of a bright red/yellow ornithopter.

But man… that car chase. There’s an urban myth that Steven Spielberg saw a screening of Cagliostro at the Cannes film festival and called the chase sequence one of the greatest ever filmed. I’m no film critic, but it’s easy to tell why. The frenetic action and crazy driving stunts make that little yellow Fiat 500 almost as much of a character in the film as well… the other characters.

So, in my quest to create 1/72 scale models from all of Miyazaki’s work, the Fiat 500 was near the top of the list… like, the WHOLE list, not just the Cagliostro section of it.

The build:

But the first question was, how? As usual, there’s no kit (commercial or otherwise) available for a Fiat 500 in 1/72 scale. Luckily I was able to find a very authentic looking (and scaled) plastic toy (might’ve been a PEZ-style giveaway) for a few bucks off eBay. The only problem, which I discovered after it arrived and I’d started working on it, was that the toy was actually a Fiat 600 not a 500! Even though I tried to soldier on, the body shape is just too different to make it work. So it was back to the drawing board… and back to eBay.

Despite the first setback, I was able to get my hands on an actual 1/72 scale Fiat 500 toy. The details were a lot less sharp than the first one, but more importantly the shape was bang on. It was a bit of a challenge to work with though.

I decided that the best way to tackle this project was to make a two-piece silicone mould and recast the body shell in resin. Besides the ability to declare multiple “do-overs” if necessary, having a good supply of resin shells allowed me to open up the trunk and the side doors without the need of a surgeon’s precision in cutting. I used two shells, one to cut the holes into and the other to cut the doors out of.

That part worked like a charm.

What didn’t work so well was the original piece. The shell and base was split rather awkwardly just above the base of the door and below the front and rear bumpers. I didn’t want the interior/base, but I did need the mould to include the full exterior shell. To that end I cut the need bits off the base and tried to attach them to the shell. However, the car was made from some kind of non-stick nylon… so the glue seam was about as delicate as you can get and still be attached. It was a nightmare to keep attached in the mould as I poured in the silicone.

Once I had the body cast in resin, I had a ton of work to get the tiny little bubbles filled and sanded smooth. I don’t have a pressure chamber for degassification of the resin, so I just had to make it work as best I could.

That was really the hardest part. I used a little Bandai “Ultraman” non-scale car easy kit as a donor for the undercarriage and then scratched up the interior and started painting.

It didn’t quite turn out as I’d hoped, but for a car that’s just a bit over 4cm in length… I’m happy enough with the result. Check it out: