I’m no engineer, but I’d guess that the majority of real cars aren’t made from precious metals because that would make them prohibitively expensive and very, very heavy. Nobody said anything about scale model cars, though.
The car you see in the picture above is a one-off, 1:25 scale model of a Mk2 Ford Escort. It was made by a man named Russell Lord, who is a jeweler and also loves Ford Escorts. A video that Ford uploaded today reports that Lord has owned 55 Escorts over the course of his life.
“The shell is predominantly silver,” Lord explains, “The wheels are 18-karat yellow gold. And you’ve got 600 fine, black, Russian diamonds. The headlights are 70-pointers each, the rear brake lights are ruby and then the oval for the Ford is a salon cabochon sapphire.”
“And there’s a diamond on top of the gear stick as well,” he added.
The video estimates that about £70,000 worth of materials were used (approximately $90,000) for the model. But far more valuable is the amount of time that Lord put into his project—about two and a half thousand hours to create it.
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It’s incredibly detailed, too. It has spinning pulleys on the front of the engine, the diamond and platinum gear stick moves and making the windows involved “smashing countless vases to find sections of glass with exactly the right curve,” according to a press release.
Lord apparently started working on this model 25 years ago. “It’s been a hobby that I’ve come back to again and again but three years ago I determined to finish it. I know this car inside out—so there were no plans I just built it from the ground up piece by piece,” he said.
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Here’s the video:
He doesn’t want to sell the bejeweled Escort for personal gain, though. All profits that he makes at auction will be donated to local charities of his choice. The model will be up for auction on May 2 here. And his next project? A Mk1 Escort.
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The model is simply fantastic and I hope it goes to someone who loves Escorts just as much as Lord does.
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