Zoom Zoom

Great work so far! Interesting conversion, and I recently acquired the latest Monogram '64 GTO reissue to compare side-by-side w/the original built AMT '64 GTO I got from an estate sale collection, including fresh Modelhaus chrome the previous owner procured to restore it. I built the Monogram '64 decades ago in a very similar color to the one you've chosen, I want to build the fresh kit as a HT this time with skills acquired in the decades that have passed. Looking at your build inspires me to get my Revell '66 kit out and see what's what. I loved building the '65 GTO Craftsman kit and a pair of '68's as well in the past few years.

Looking forward to seeing this, it brings back memories! In the mid-90's someone local chopped a 1:1 Edsel and showed it at the Goodguys show in Perry GA, and it may have gotten a national Goodguys award as next year it was on their T-shirts. I fell in love with the car. Then surprise of all surprise, the Modelhaus offered a trans-kit of the same car for use with the then-updated AMT '57 Ford w/the new custom interior pieces. I had to have it! The real car was a 90's shade of teal (non-metallic). I decided to paint mine a pearl tangerine orange. IIRC the bumpers were molded to the body. This was peak '90's pastel look.

I find it hilariously ironic that the color I despise on a new Miata isn't terribly far off the color I'm currently working on with a new Tamiya GT3 RS 😁

Just like the tire melt from some of the original kits they cribbed. In my foggy memory, didn't the tires have a groove for a whitewall insert? If so, that whitewall insert will be the first thing to melt...the generic wheels were plated.

Not sure but it might be an old Entex/Bandai kit, IIRC theirs was 1/16th scale. From foggy memory this looks like it could be one of those.

Thanks! There's some major irony that I painted the Porsche Olive Green while complaining about a sorta/not sorta similar color Mazda is using in another thread here about ugly paint colors, specifically for their Miata. Somehow I accept the Porsche color while the Mazda Zircon Sand makes me barf when used on a Miata. Then again as a model builders we can paint any model, any color we desire.

Agreed. I have a few friends w/orange '19 anniversary cars. One got totaled at the race track unfortunately. One sold a vintage $400k Porsche at Monterey and bought a new Miata with part of the proceeds, his Turo rental for Monterey was an ND Miata and he fell in love with it, he was going to get a Boxster until that drive. I love that bright orange combo w/the Recaro seats.

One of my old friends, also a Miata owner, his wife has a Mazda3 turbo hatch in that color scheme. I haven't seen it, they love it. One of my friends showed up at the ACME show in his new/used Mazda3 hatch in Soul Crystal Red with a manual transmission. I hope to get to take a spin in it. He practically stole it from a Toyota dealer, he had to do all the driving to even get it out of the lot on a test drive because nobody at the Toyota dealer knew how to drive a manual LOL. I recently helped my sister shop for a new car, she got a pearl white w/dark red Nappa leather interior'd CX 70 Turbo S and she loves it. First new non-Toyota product for her (other than Mom's Z3) since the mid-80's. That CX 70 feels more like my old Protege5 than I could have imagined, weighs 500 lbs. more than the Lexus she owned previously and is now mine, but drives 500 lbs. lighter. It really scoots, and has actual steering feel.

It's 1/25th. All those Hasegawa American cars cribbed in the '60's were copied from American model kits.

Those kits are a completely different animal than the recent subjects I showed, it's been decades since I bought one of the old-school American kits from them. Fairly accurate bodies that were copied from US kit manufacturers, but with generic interiors/chassis. IIRC Tamiya even had a '65 Chevy (or similar) in their lineup, 1/25th scale, I believe primarily for slot cars. They pretty much match (body dimensions) 1/25th scale. With some work you can get a really nice model out of them, depending on your own level of skill and desired results. I built the Pontiac years ago, used some AMT guts underneath, looks pretty okay next to an AMT kit (they have their own design issues) and have the Cadillac in my stash. I'm not averse to making something from it...I had the opportunity years ago to drive a friend's Dad's mint '65 or '66 Coupe DeVille, I'd build my kit to emulate that particular car, maroon with a black vinyl top and parchment interior, but might make add some modern flair to it. They're curbside kits. I love curbside kits. I'm a designer and I'd make a lousy mechanic 😆 I'd love it if Hasegawa took even one of those vintage models they cribbed nearly 60 years ago and went full-bore on making a modern kit to their new standards. Probably will never happen...and it might be a huge financial mistake on their part.

I have despised the sea of gray scale that has dominated in the past 30+ years. Yet now I no longer have a Mazda (had a white Protege5, that cured me of white on at least a hatchback) and a bright red Miata, and now have a really nice Lexus in a boring shade of nebula gray. Go figure. I'm still a Mazda fan though, and I was disgusted when they started making (and selling very few thankfully) Zircon Sand Metallic MX5 Miatas. Saw my first one in Naples FL a couple years back, an RF retractible HT no less, it was way worse in person than pics and have only ever seen a handful of them since. Why Mazda offers only boring colors aside from Soul Crystal Red is so sad...they're built alongside nearly every other Mazda in Japan, some having cooler colors than any Miata (at least stateside). This color looks better in photographs than it does to the naked eye in person. It's almost okay on a CX-50, barely acceptable on a Mazda3, but on the Miata it's just atrocious. I did see one with a black soft top that wasn't as bad, the black contrast helped a lot...but still, NO.

Incredibly nice work on both!

I'm a huge fan of Tamiya's new LP line of lacquer colors in jars, I can mix nearly any color I want from them, and sometimes match aftermarket colors if I think I won't have enough of those paints to actually complete the paint job. I also can mix the color slightly lighter than the actual color so the model looks more correct with a more in-scale color appearance indoors under artificial light where they are primarily viewed. They airbrush and hand-brush beautifully. The jars are pretty small, I'd like them to be offered in the larger jars they offer their acrylic paint jars. I use both Gunze/Mr. Hobby #46 lacquer clear and Tamiya LP-9 on 99% of my builds. I find the lacquer clear (airbrushed) gives the most authentic in-scale finish on top of the colors, and I've had a lot of positive comments from other respected builders when they see them in person. I recently acquired a DSPIAE polisher that's kind of a game-changer, it's a small miniature rotary tool and they sell both polishing pads and a variety of compounds specifically for polishing. I have a larger set of polishing pads for my older Dremel Stylus, it's a bit much, where the DSPIAE is amazing to work with on 1/24th/1/25th scale models. Two recent examples, both Tamiya Porsche GT3 RS builds, both are still getting finishing touches. The first one is inspired by an illustration of the 1974 IROC Porsche in stripes of all 15 colors. I'm likely the only one crazy enough to attempt this paint job, it took a stupid number of hours to accomplish...but I'm really happy with the results so far and I got a ton of positive comments in person at our recent ACME show. The model is still unfinished as I'm creating a smaller vignette display and it'll get more markings to be a fantasy modern pace/safety car with a combination of vintage IROC sponsor markings Both it and the Olive Green GT3 RS Touring were cleared with Gunze #46 and polished with the DSPIAE polisher.

I believe they are accurate 1/24th scale, all the ones I've built have been excellent at least for the time period they were created. Their latest models in the past 5 years or so are rather amazing, they are truly the only company that is close to and in fact sometimes re-defining "Tamiya-like" which has been coined for far too many other Japanese/Asian kits that are not actually worthy of that moniker. What are the subjects you are interested in looking into further? That can help previous builders of them give an accurate assessment of the particular kit. My last Hasegawa build was an early '70's Nissan Skyline coupe and it was a spectacular kit to put together and nails the shapes/details quite well. They don't do many kits with full engine detail, but the hoods are usually separate and chassis/interior detail is pretty amazing. They seem to get better on each successive new tool. They have a new Toyota Soarer in development that spanks the old Tamiya kits. My Skyline and Isuzu 117, both built OOB:

I built the '65 Comet several years ago, I don't remember any issue whatsoever with the glass fitment. Quite unlike the flaming hoops you need to jump through on the '61 Ventura/Catalina to even begin to get the glass to fit properly, because if you don't accomplish that the glass/trim looks absolutely comical on an otherwise impressive body. Thankfully I built mine after learning how to deal with the issue, it's a rather advanced task modifying the body but it can be done, it was Bill Geary who found the problem first and showed how to correct it as well as other more minor foibles with that particular kit. There are sometimes issues with the fitment of grilles/bumpers, they seem to improve most issues with each successive new-tool kit, learning as they go.

Last weekend was Plastic Undercover, a newish show up in the Akron area, and it's the same weekend that the former Toledo NNL had.

The CARBS show normally in early November? If so, it was renamed the Gem City NNL and was held on September 13th to coincide with the Dayton Concours d'Elegance weekend that also has an invitational model car display put on by Randy Derr.

Corvair...not Corvette. I have the original kit and have seen the real car in person so that someday I can build it competently. I might get the new kit to have some fun with.

He has been on a ton of podcasts recently, I've seen this one and several others. I was wondering if that was some kind of a sign. I realized the sign was the recent Monterey Car Week where every automotive influencer known to mankind was there to make a whole bunch of content.

Them? Moebius or the young man who is N.Y.S? N.Y.S is a talented builder from New York State and has a YT channel, he's not an industry insider. He shared images from the internet, and made a minor mistake sharing the image on a product that isn't ready to show publicly at this time, therefore there's no news but lots of eager anticipation. Eric Solie posts here and is an insider, between he and others involved w/Moebius there will be plenty to see when they decide to make it public, when that time comes everyone known to mankind in this hobby and especially those with vested interests on the various social media platforms will be tripping over themselves to share the news.

Error is on N.Y.S.

Bill Cunningham was/still is an amazing designer/machinist/fabricator long before he graduated/shifted gears to 3D design and printing. Different process but it took him years to perfect it. Just a different skill set, tool set and materials. The actual printing takes less time, but the work to print parts to that level of perfection each time takes him countless hours of time and countless test prints until he's happy. I watched a master machinist at the shop take weeks to get a fairly new CNC machine moved over from Mazmart's old engine shop to work properly, with help from 2 others at the shop and lots of video conference time with the manufacturer. Meanwhile I was playing with quarter scale models, now complete...

The only safe one I recall is IMPS because people mis-type it all the time. And Imps perfectly describes some of their membership...

IIRC Bandai, the producer of the lion's share of Gundam kits, is the largest plastic model producer in the world. I'm glad that there's something that younger builders actually want to build. Car modelers got a big boost from video games/gamers. I know a bunch of car enthusiasts in their 20's-40's, some of them are now model car builders, they're into it due to life playing video games. I had a Playstation 5 and wore it out. I know the Nurburgring better than my own driveway 😆 . I wasted countless hours, but I also built models of some of my favorite cars. I didn't dare go out and drive after playing Need For Speed Underground....

If a person uses CAD to design a part from scratch, and 3D prints it, and uses traditional finishing techniques to detail it, how is that any different than if they drew up plans in pencil on vellum (or a napkin...I don't care) and then machined or scratch built the the parts from various materials? It could be equal effort in time alone. It's one thing if someone buys a ready-made 3D part vs. designing it from the ground up. This is a big problem with IPMS. In previous efforts to frustrate modelers they had strict rules about using more than X% metal/metal components in models because they can't get past their "International Plastic Modelers" moniker and get with modern times. They help create all the hilarious acronyms for IPMS...many that I don't need to spell out for obvious reasons (on this forum).