Barn Find

About This Project

Barn Find is a Shelby Mustang GT350H diorama inspired by a real dusty Mustang and the story behind its return to the spotlight.

The scene imagines the car still inside an old wooden barn, part forgotten relic, part rescued muscle car, just fixed enough to come back to life.

Full Story

One random day I came across the Revell Shelby Mustang GT350H kit in a store and bought it because I have always liked classic Mustangs. While researching reference photos for the build, I found an image of a dusty old GT350H that immediately caught my attention. Further searching led me to an AL.com blog post about a barn find connected to a Mustang gathering, which became the starting point for the whole idea.

You can read more about the original story here:
https://www.al.com/engine-block/2009/04/mustang_45th_350gth_gathered_d.html

Instead of building the car as a clean display model, I wanted to imagine the moment when it was found in the barn after years of being left there. In my version, the person who discovered it had already fixed it up just enough so it could run again and eventually be driven to the car show mentioned in the article. The diorama became a small representation of that quiet moment inside the barn.

The build began with the Mustang kit, with a few updates to the interior panels and LED lights added to the front and rear lights. One of the bigger upgrades was a set of custom radial tyres, which are very common on muscle cars but rarely included properly in standard kits. I made the master from styrene and used plotter-cut vinyl stickers to form the raised lettering and tyre tread pattern. From that master, I created a two-part mould using dental mould-making rubber and then cast the tyres in two-part resin.

The car itself was first finished with a mostly glossy surface, so the weathering could be built up more realistically. I do not really like the completely flat, matte look that sometimes appears on weathered models. Real aged surfaces still catch light in places, so I wanted the Mustang to keep small areas of subtle gloss, dust, and uneven reflection rather than looking like it had simply been sprayed flat.

The barn was built from various strips of balsa wood, using Old Barn plans from ModelJunkyard as the base. Around it, I added many small accessories, some scratchbuilt and others taken from the Fujimi garage kits listed below. With the mechanic figure, workshop clutter, and the obligatory US flag, the scene finally had the atmosphere I wanted: a forgotten Shelby slowly coming back to life.

Model: Shelby Mustang GT 350 H (Revell 07242), Garage & Tools (Fujimi 11635), Garage & Tools Series Mechanic (Fujimi 11003)