In The Rainbow Orchid Julius Chancer's car was a red Mercedes SSK. The reason this became his car is because I was visiting family in Reading in the late 90s, when I started the strip, and saw a toy model of the car in a department store and thought it would do as reference. Cars are difficult to draw, and if you have to draw the same vehicle from different angles a model can really help.

The first appearance of Julius's SSK in 'Orchid' and the Lorraine Dietrich in 'Samurai'

In The Secret of the Samurai, which is set a couple of years earlier (when the SSK had not yet been built), Julius drove a blue Lorraine Dietrich (for which I also used a toy model for reference). But for The Brambletye Box, Jules is back with his red Mercedes.

The SSK followed by a Hispano-Suiza in The Brambletye Box

These days there is way more reference available online (I even visited an actual SSK at Beaulieu a couple of years ago), so I've been able to be a little more accurate with some of the car's details. I'm not going overboard - I don't need the drawings to take any longer than they already do. As I've improved I don't need a model for every car - Lily's gold Bentley 3-Litre is drawn with just a sheet of photo reference at hand.

Lily's gold Bentley 3-Litre

An editor once asked me what I found most difficult to draw - my answer was "cars". A month or so later I submitted the first chapter of my comic for him and there, on page one, panel one, was a big white Bentley Continental. "I thought you wanted to avoid drawing cars?", he asked. But that's kind of why I put it in there. I have this little bee in my head that says "you can draw anything", and when I know something will be difficult I find myself writing it in, almost as a challenge.

A Bentley Continental from 'Charlie Jefferson and the Tomb of Nazaleod' for The DFC

This is something that so-called 'A.I. artists' will never understand, and A.I. can never reproduce. It is not just the finished result, it is the process, the choices, the mistakes, the challenge, the struggle, the effort, the evolution - the human being - that makes the finished art. (And, still on A.I., beware the amount of A.I.-rendered cars now online - they're not accurate!)

That Bentley was more modern, and I do find them particularly hard, all curves and streamlined. 1920's cars are a little more boxy - but also more beautiful in my eyes. The SSK is a work of art.

The Mercedes SSK at Beaulieu, once owned by Sir Peter Ustinov

Only recently I discovered the SSK featured as another comic character's car of choice - or in his animated version anyway (I'm not sure about the original manga) - Lupin III drives, and regularly crashes, a yellow Mercedes SSK. This has been eclipsed somewhat by the Fiat 500 he drives in his most famous outing, Miyazaki's Castle of Cagliostro.

Lupin in his yellow SSK

I'm very happy to have that link, in a similar way to when I chose the Breguet 280T as the aircraft that takes Jules and co. to India in The Rainbow Orchid, only to discover, on a later visit to Angouleme, that this uncommon aircraft had also been featured in pioneer French comic character Bécassine's adventures (Bécassine en Aeroplane, 1930).

Bécassine with a 280T, and Nathaniel Crumpole with a 280T

Anyway, in line with this bee in my head to challenge myself, I've crazily written a car chase into The Brambletye Box (a Hispano-Suiza H6 chasing the SSK down the A22), and that's what I'm drawing at the moment. It's enjoyable - but definitely another challenge!