Model Car Garage - The 1926 Citroen B14 Normande by Heller - A Model Car Unboxing and Building Essay
Channel: Monster Hobbies Model Car Garage
Date: 16/02/2024

Our story begins in France at the 1926 Paris Auto Show.  
French industrialist and automotive pioneer Andre Citroen presented his company's all new B14 line of automobiles in a display alongside Peugeot and Ford. 
Andre strived to make his cars state of the art and the latest creation was a testimony to his accomplishments.
 
The car proved to be successful with 128 000 units sold in it's 3 year model run.

It is interesting to see how popular the car was and still is. Throughout the 1920's and 1930's, artist Sonia Delaunay created paintings, textiles, clothing and even painted various automobiles based on her modern art style which included geometric shapes and patterns. These cars had either images of her circle style images or her recurring four quadrant patterns which matched her line of clothing. Many of these cars now reside in museums across France. 

The car appeared in famous cartoon strips like TinTin by Herge as seen in the 1950 book "Land of Black Gold" and driven by Thomson and Thompson where the car was filled with an unstable mixture of gasoline and formula 14 resulting in an engine explosion.  

In 1985 Heller of France released a 1/24th scale plastic multi-piece construction assembly kit of the 1926 Citroen B14 Normande which is the subject for this video. 

The Heller 1926 Citroen B14 Normande includes 5 plastic parts trees the first one being molded in white plastic, the second in grey, the third in clear, the fourth in chrome and the fifth includes the rubber tires. Some of the parts on the parts trees are molded in a way which is unusual compared to the way in which model kits are molded in America. 

For example, the hood of the Heller Citroen B14 is molded with the sides half way unfolded and the cowl of the body molded as a separate piece. An American model kit would have the hood molded with the sides fully down and the cowl attached to the body. Some of these parts were a bit of a challenge to assemble, but this video shows how I handled those issues. 

Since I could not find enough mechanical information on this year of Citroen on the internet, I did find similar information through my Uncle's 1926 Dyke's Automobile and Gasoline Engine Encyclopedia. Although the book contains mechanical information covering American cars, it does show similar parts and concepts used in the European cars. I have included images from the book to explain what the plastic parts represent and a basic understanding of how they work. 

Along with my exposition of the model kit instructions and parts tree investigation, I also build and paint the model kit and provide my solution to some of the fit and finish issues as well as my solutions to some of the more complex issues of the 1926 Citroen B14 Normande model kit by Heller. For glues, I use only Testor's tube glue and some Crazy Glue in the load bearing areas, such as in the cowl to door assembly.

To paint my model kit, I used various enamel and acrylic paints from Testor's, Tremclad, Humbrol and Citadel. All of these paints were applied using a brush and no part of the kit was painted with sprays or an air brush. 

For the body, I have replicated a paint job in the style of Sonia Delaunay using Tremclad gloss black, Testor's yellow, green, orange and a vintage bottle of Testor's pink which hasn't been in production since the 1990's. I do believe my bottle of Testor's pink is from the 1980's and I was surprised that it still stirred up and dried as if it was a brand new bottle. That is a true testimony to the longevity of Testor's enamel paints if they are properly stored and cared for.

Masking the body for painting was rather easy once I analyzed the Sonia Delaunay pattern and layout. Basically, the vertical surfaces of the car were used as a starting point for the pattern. Sonia measured the height of the car from the fenders to the body line and then divided that distance by three to get the height of each pattern region. For the length of these regions, Sonia measured the distance from the cowl to the front of the door and used that measurement as a guide for the size of her rectangles. The rectangles were then divided into quadrants and each quadrant was assigned a color different from the other quadrants. This patter was repeated for each pattern area of the car. The solid color regions of the car were the original color of the car she was painting. The pattern was laid out with one region directly on top of the other instead of overlapping like bricks. Once I understood this layout, masking the body with masking tape was easy. I show you how this is done in this video. 

Overall, I found that the Heller 1926 Citroen B14 Normande went together nicely and was a fun build with a fair amount of building and painting challenges. The only issue I had with my particular model that I could not solve was that one of the wheels for the kit was missing so I couldn't use my fender mounted spare. 

I hope you enjoy this video. #citroen #legendarymodels