Blue Nissan VERSA Car Cake

It's been a while since I've made a cake purely for fun, but I had a little more free time than normal this week, and had a craving to get lost in a cake.
At first I was thinking of making a new shoe cake, as the Converse Sneaker Cake was my first ever sculpted cake. Back then it helped me decide to do my own thing, instead of relying on someone else to teach me the trade. I remember spending hours adding details to that mound of cake and being fascinated as the cake slowly began to look like a real shoe. Pure excitement.
But this time I decided to make a cake more symbolic of my next step. I'm heading to San Diego in about six weeks with nothing but my new car and cake supplies. I figured, why not make my car?! It would also allow me to try out a few different decorating methods from my first two cars (Maserati and Batmobile).
On the first two cakes I covered the entire thing in black fondant and then an additional layer, and cut out the windows. This time I decided to cover it in white, airbrush it, then cut out and replace the windows with black fondant. In the future...I will definitely go back to my original method. I also took advantage of my new edible printer to save some time on the details. Unfortunately with all the printed details...the cake started to look like crap. I decided that the front lights and detailing had to be done in fondant, but used the edible images for the tires, license plates, and rear lights.
I wasn't sure if I would be able to get the LED lights in this cake because it was significantly smaller than the maserati cake. Fortunately they JUST fit. Everything else is edible. Grass is buttercream, "pavement" is crushed rice cereal mixed with granulated and brown sugar.

My biggest beef with this cake is the shape of the front. It is so off! Unfortunately the sketch I created at the beginning (check out pics on my Facebook page) was not accurate, and sadly, I did not realize until I was really far along. Oh well, next time I will be more careful with my sketch.
I added the laminated paper map in the background because I thought it would be fun to highlight my upcoming route. I am very excited for the next step, and nervous of course. I will surely miss making cakes in my kitchen, but I've come a long way from making cakes out of my tiny apartment in Montreal. I know whatever is coming next is going to be that much better.