It's always a bit nerve-racking making radical changes to something you've spent a lot of time on, but if it's not right, it'll never be right and your only recourse is major surgery. I cut a chunk out of the bonnet and added an inch to the side. I found that using the filler to glue the foam together was better than the wood glue I'd used previously. A thin coat on each surface - just like applying a contact adhesive - did the trick, though it's best to leave it to set for at least 12 hours before going at it again.

Following my last post, Mr Burnett was kind enough to mention that the Embiricos Bentley might be worth a look and proposed that, taking a lead from the Bentley body, by extending the rear wing on the Alvis model and shaping it to reflect the flow of the front wing, it might help achieve a better balance and pull things into shape. Three quarters of the rear wing was removed, leaving a step to key the new shape of foam.

Spot on Mr Burnett; thank you. More material was shaved off where the top of the door transitions to the slightly pitched roof in an attempt to thin the hip at the 'B' post and get rid of the hunchback look of the earlier version. The radius of the roof viewed from the front, is still a bit square, so I may have to blend the door inwards from the swage line giving the top of the cabin a more dome-like profile.

With a bit of shape added to the rear wing (I did the awkward-to-get-at inside face bits before sticking the wing to the body) the model is definitely looking a lot better.

There's work to do in making a fillet to help the flow of the inside rear wing to the boot area - it's looking a touch 'applied', at the moment.

Putting the model to one side whilst it set, I took my new clock into the workshop. It had been rather erratic over the past couple of weeks, sometimes going for three days, stopping and then, after restarting, going for only three minutes. Time to investigate. All the cogs and gears looked a bit dry so, on the advice of The Great Collector, I partly dismantled the works, applied some very light machine oil and, following reassembly, it was still running after 18 hours with a nice, evenly spaced tick....tock....tick....tock. The wheels at the front are the date display mechanism - a hand on the face points in the general direction of the relevant number - and it appears that the outer wheel operates semi-independently of the time-keeping, allowing the date to be adjusted to accommodate the length of the month by simply moving the hand forward. Clever stuff.

I've disarmed the chime for now as the striking mechanism, once activated, doesn't stop until the weight runs out of rope, announcing (fully wound) roughly 1248 o'clock. That can't be right.