Jaguar C-X75 puzzle
Think of it like a giant car-shaped puzzle.
That’s how Bay of Islands resident Jeff Cartridge described the ambitious project of building his very own Jaguar C-X75 out of ply.
Cars have always been a big part of Jeff’s life, so when he heard about a man in South Africa that built his own Ferrari from scratch, starting with a true-to-size wooden model, he was inspired to do the same.
It’s how cars were made in the old days. It’s essentially a life-size car body framework. Otherwise known as a ‘body buck’, the wooden car acts as a design masterplan for the real thing.
With a solid structure in place, the next step is to build the body of the car around it.
Choosing to build a Jaguar C-X75 was an obvious choice – Jeff says he’s loved Jags for as long as he can remember.
His Dad even owned a Jaguar when his parents first met. The C-X75 is a rarity, as a concept car best known for its appearance in the James Bond Spectre movie.
After that, the model never went into production – it simply doesn’t exist on the market.
With the design plans in hand, Jeff approached Cutshop with the idea for his project. I had all the files for every sheet of ply. We needed 30 of them, all 9mm thick and cut by a CNC machine.
Jeff says he was really pleased with how quickly Cutshop responded to his enquiry, given he was working to a tight timeframe. Bryce was super helpful in resolving the technical issues we encountered converting the files to a format for the CNC machines.
We were able to get the cutting done by our deadline.
Putting the car together was a challenge at first, says Jeff. I did a trial on the boot, I thought to myself ‘I’m not going to do the car first’, but the boot was actually the hardest part!
From there he found his groove – it became “a bit like putting together a big jigsaw puzzle”.
“The way that it was cut was excellent, you had a slot in each sheet and they went together seamlessly.”
Now taking pride of place in his garage, the car buck serves a reminder of Jeff’s ultimate dream of bringing it to life – complete with its own engine, spaceframe chassis, scissor doors and plush leather interior.
