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Whatever happened to the old Renwal Revival kits? The modern versions of classic cars.
Renwal closed up in the late 1960's or early 1970's, one of the original makers of plastic toys and hobby kits. Some tooling was bought by Revell (Renwal was the original mfr of the "Visible V8" kit for example). Some model car kit subjects from Renwal made it into Revell's lineup, notably the 1/12 scale '65 Mustang Fastback and the 1/12 scale Mercedes Benz 300SL Gullwing coupe, along with much of the armor kits that Renwall produced in the late 1950's. Some other Renwal tooling was acquired by Glencoe Models as well.
As for the "Revival" series of car kits--those started in the mind of Virgil Exner Sr., who was the chief stylist at Chrysler from 1953-l962; as renderings for an article about what the great Classic Cars of the 20's and 30's might look like in 1966 if still in production (Mercer, Stutz, Duesenberg, Packard, Jordan Playboy, Bugatti), in Esquire Magazine about 1964 or so. Two of the designs were actually built as real cars: The Mercer-Cobra, coachbuilt by Ghia on a 289 Cobra chassis for the American Copper & Brass Association (all the trim, and the cast wheels, were in copper, bronze and brass), and the Bugatti 101C also got coachwork by Ghia on one of just 3 or 4 T101C chassis & drive trains that Exner spotted on a visit to Molsheim in eastern France in the late 1940's, buying that rolling chassis from Le Patron himself. Both cars still exist today, in the collection of General William Lyons USAF Ret. in California (I've seen both cars, and they are stunning).
Renwall introduced those Revival kits in either late 1965 or early 1966, but they were notoriously poor sellers--several hobby wholesalers still had unsold stock of them well into the early 1980's, believe it or not. I think it's doubtful that even if the tooling could be found, they'd do very much in the marketplace today.
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