I've always loved formula one since I was little so when it came to adding a car to my portfolio, I went for one of the most amazing and bizarrecreations in the history of the sport; the Tyrrel P34. It was a six-wheeled car that raced in 1976 and 1977, with the legendary swedish driverRonnie Peterson behind the wheel in the '77 season. The car I've built here is a mashup of the different models of Ronnies P34, because there isn'tenough available reference to be able to build one specific iteration of the car.

"The Tyrrell P34 (Project 34), otherwise known as the 'six-wheeler,' was a Formula One race car designed by Derek Gardner, Tyrrell's chief designer.The car used four specially manufactured 10-inch-diameter (250 mm) wheels and tyres at the front, with two ordinary-sized wheels at the back.Contrary to popular belief, the idea of the smaller front tyres was not to have a smaller 'frontal area' to reduce drag, as the frontal area was still determined by the width of the standard-sized rear slicks. In fact, the six-wheel design reduced the lift caused by two larger front wheels, improving frontal downforce, increased the total contact patch of the front tyres and created a greater swept area for the brake discs."

- article at wikipedia

Modeled and rendered in 3ds Max with mental ray. I did this as a polygon mesh, although given the nature of a vehicle like this with wings and smooth aerodynamic surfaces, it would probably have been easier to make it using NURBS or a similar CAD process. But one advantage of doing it as a poly modelis that I can later convert this into a driveable racecar in a racing game like for example Rfactor.
The end result is fairly decent, I suppose. Having to work with photos from many different iterations of the car was awkward, I'd start to build one part and realise the other angles are from a different model where that particular part had been heavily modified or wasnt there at all. The suspension provedespecially problematic as I didnt have enough source material to get reasonably exact measurements. Theres also the question of at what level of detail youdecide to call it quits, if I would have modeled every nut and bolt on there it would have taken years.
But it was fun to do and good exercise, if I do another one I'll probably buy a technical manual with blueprints for every single part so I wont have to spend so much time guessing what goes where.