SUPER Model Car Sunday is a laidback one-day event held at the West Coast Street Rod Club clubrooms in Malaga, WA. Created to bring scale modellers of all ages and skill levels together, it was the brainchild of Alan and Ute Barton and a close-knit group of their friends. It didn’t matter what you built, as long as you did it yourself, so the show has always offered up a massive variety of cars, motorbikes, trucks and dioramas. This year’s show took place a couple of weekends back, and, after 20 years, Alan thinks this will probably be the last one – in this format – so it will be back, but it may look a different.

Built from scratch using mostly balsa wood by Rob Jones, this radio-controlled AEC bus of the MTT (Metropolitan Transport Trust) is exactly the kind of bus I used to catch to school as a kid through the 70s and 80s, so I can vouch for how accurate it is

Dioramas were a big feature of SMCS this year. A small-scale scene like this really adds extra dimension to the display because there is so much more to take in than just the cars

American muscle cars feature heavily, but that’s mostly because that is what is available in kit form. There is some Aussie stuff out there and we’ll see some of that stuff later on

I dusted off a couple of old gasser models I made about 10 years ago – a ’55 Nomad I dubbed Gangreen and the black version of the Stone Woods & Cook ’41 Willys. Young kids, sharp knives and glue don’t go together too well, but maybe it’s time I got back into it – to show the kids how to do it, of course!

One especially cool diorama was the drive-in display with a working screen. From memory, American Graffiti was playing

A radically customised ’40 Ford coupe with a LaSalle grille – although I think it’s actually a chopped up ’49 Mercury grille turned upright – and canted headlights cruises the streets

Cool service station diorama had lots going on and plenty to check out

A mixture of muscle cars, street machines and hot rods makes for a very colourful display

I also built the mildly customised ’55 Chevy convertible peeking out from behind the motel sign

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The diorama extended all the way to the beach and even included seagulls fighting over chips

Models come in all shapes and sizes. The great thing about the larger scale models – 1/8th and 1/12th – is that you can really go to town on the details

Allen Bunter prefers to modify die-cast models rather than plastic, but that doesn’t make it any less creative

Allen Bunter also did a killer job on this FX Holden, which features a quad-Weber sidedraught-equipped V8 and killer Pro Street stance

Dave Whitehead brought along a table full of his customised Hot Wheels cars. Yep, teeny-tiny Hot Wheels that he pulls apart and customises, repaints and puts back together

Check out the flame job! Remember, it’s a Hot Wheels car. You can actually get a very thin vinyl stencil to mask out tiny flame jobs. Cool!

I loved this customised F100, complete with Watson-style paint, slammed stance, and tuck ’n’ roll tonneau cover

Glenn John did a Photoshop rendering of a Buick cab-over panel van about 10 years ago and the internet lost its shit. It still pops up every now and then. Dave Whitehead dug it and did a Hot Wheels version of it

Roy Evans has a real eye for traditionally styled hot rods and customs. His chopped and channelled ’32 three-window won Modeller’s Choice in 2001 and was on display with several other winners from previous shows

I was honoured with Modeller’s Choice back in 2000 with my ’32 Ford hiboy roadster. I’d swapped in a triple-carbed Ardun and modelled it on a hot rod I spied in the great Andy Southard Jr. book Hot Rods of the 1950s – except the one in the book (on p.34) was a Model A and fully fendered

Richard Borozdin is one of the most talented modellers I’ve ever met. He put together this semi-trailer and car carrier to promote the event at a local hobby shop. His paint jobs are applied with an airbrush using automotive paints and are always stunning

More of Richard Borozdin’s work. The F100 and caravan was a tribute to the late great Al Erdman and his Big Al’s Poker Run event. The VW Beetle is also Richard’s and is another example of his spotless build technique and sharp eye for detail

Here’s some Aussie stuff for you, an XB sedan that most likely uses a resin body and Mustang underpinnings

If Chevrolet ever built an El Camino in 1955, then this is how it should have looked. The Nomad roofline works so well on the ute body and shows some very clever modelling by Roy Evans

Not the type of model I’d normally gravitate towards, but what was amazing about this build by Kevin Taylor was that the parts were modelled on the computer and then printed out on a home-built 3D printer! Even the decals were designed in Adobe Photoshop and printed out on a laser printer. The possibilities are endless!

The car that I picked as my favourite was the ’57 Nomad built by Mark Leonard. It’s modelled off the legendary Sam Hollingsworth Nomad that featured on the cover of Rod & Custom magazine back in May ’67

Another awesome build by Mark Leonard was this FC Holden, complete with twin-carb red motor and chromies

Show organiser Alan Barton has been tooling around in this Model A roadster for as long as I’ve known him – and that’s a long time

There is also a large display of radio-controlled trucks on display at the rear of the car park and they spend the weekend entertaining the crowd complete with sound effects for the engine and reversing beepers

This 1/12th-scale ’57 Chev is another gorgeous build by Mark Leonard and even has working headlights and tail-lights. The white fade across the side trim is a nice touch as well

You can really get some realism into the larger scale kits

And of course, if there’s a Rambler on display, I’ll find it. Nice build of a 1970 Javelin

The big winner at this year’s show, winning both Modeller’s Choice and People’s Choice, was William Stephens with his BGC Kenworth and float. It was essentially three models in one and had a mountain of work put into it

Most of that work went into making it look worn out and dirty and it’s a real skill to add that kind of detail and weathering (as they call it in modelling circles) to make the model look as realistic as possible. It’s pretty amazing, but I think I’ll stick to my shiny and clean models

The Top Junior Modeller was Cameron Fischer who brought along a couple of very nicely put together models, an R32 GTR and Ferrari Testarossa

The other person that came along with a table full of die-cast models was Rob Gras. This is just a tiny percentage of his collection of cars, which numbers in the tens of thousands

Rob modifies most of his cars as well and sometimes along some pretty weird styles, such as this Rat Golf with a giant junkyard turbo on it. There’s also a beige Subaru Brumby ute, because everyone needs one of them in their collection