Peugeot 403 Taxi (The Castafiore Emerald)

The Castafiore Emerald (French: Les Bijoux de la Castafiore) is the twenty-first volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. It was serialised weekly from July 1961 to September 1962 in Tintin magazine.

 

In contrast to the previous Tintin books, Hergé deliberately broke the adventure formula he had created. It is the only book in the Tintin series where the characters remain at home in Marlinspike Hall, Captain Haddock’s family estate in Belgium, and do not travel abroad or confront dangerous criminals. The plot concerns the visit of the opera singer Bianca Castafiore and the subsequent theft of her emerald.

 

Although The Castafiore Emerald received critical acclaim for making its characters follow a lead of false trails, it was not a commercial success due to the experimental nature of its narrative. It was published as a book by Casterman shortly after its conclusion.

 

– courtesy of Wikipedia

The finished model:

The story:

The Castafiore Emerald is basically Hergé’s version of a “murder in a locked room” mystery.  People who are expecting yet another of Tintin’s far-flung adventures are bound to be disappointed – which is probably why I usually gave this one a pass as a youngster.  However, the story itself is meticulously well-crafted – something which probably makes it far more engaging for adults than it is for children.

Interestingly, due to the “locked in a room” nature of the story… Tintin doesn’t travel anywhere beyond the grounds of Marlinskpike Hall.  That makes finding a vehicle to include in my Tintin 1/72 project a bit of challenge.  I mean, there’s no planes in this adventure and there’s barely any cars.  Although I still think I might make a stab at building Thomson and Thompson’s comedy-rife Citroën 2CV, the one I thought I’d have the most success was the Peugeot 403.

I usually try to choose a vehicle that has a direct connection with Tintin, however there really are none in this case.  So my fall-back is a vehicle that’s somehow or other representative of the story.  In this case, the taxi that arrives at Marlinspike to (finally) whisk Bianca Castafiore away seemed the most iconic.

The build:

Of course, finding a 1/72 scale Peugeot 403 was no easy matter.  There’s no commercial kit available and building one from scratch certainly wasn’t going to do.  So, taking a page out of my Lupin III Fiat 500 build, I decided to hunt down as close a toy as I could find.  Luckily, someone back in the 1960s or 1970s (judging by the plastic) found it in their heart to create a small toy Peugeot 403.  It was very light on detail, but at least the shape of the shell was close enough for my purposes.

Once I was able to get my hands on one (thanks eBay!) I decided to create 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.

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 “Kamen Rider” car easy kit as a donor for the undercarriage and then scratched up the interior and started painting.

The “final touch” was to scratchbuild a set of luggage to go on the roof carrier and in the trunk.  I followed the image from the comic for the top part, but just made a best guess as to what Bianca would have stashed in the trunk – all matching and monogrammed of course.

The only real nightmare on this build was the final step before glueing the luggage in place – the windows.  I’m not sure why, perhaps it’s the loose details of the toy coupled with my own rough resin casts, but the shape of the windows just wouldn’t keep the think plastic sheets I was using as a stand-in for the glass.  I got glue all over the place in my frustration and it necessitated a couple of careful re-paints of the shell to make it all (mostly) fit in place.

All in all, I’m happy with the final result.  Feel free to check it out below: