Search the Community

This is the 1/32 Pyro Kit, and is definitely one of their better offerings. I did replace the kit's black vinyl tires with a set cast in white RTV.

I was getting a little frustrated with my '39 Chevy, so I decided to throw together a "quick build" to regain my perspective. I've had this 1:32 scale Pyro '32 Chevy cabriolette in the stash for a while and I figured it would be just the thing to relieve some stress: Low parts count, small scale, and a kit for which I didn't have high expectations in the first place; I was under the impression that the early Pyro kits were less than stellar. Well, we all know what Robert Burns had to say about the best laid plans of mice and men.... Actually, it did serve its purpose. I now have a finished model to look at instead of a mountain of parts, materials and sketches. But seeing the result of "throwing it together", I now wish I had spent more time to bring out the kits potential. Other than having a few parts missing (horns, landau irons, windshield and head light lenses), it's not a bad little kit. By the way, I'll be coming back to this one when I'm done with the '39 to fix the mess I made trying to touch up the steering wheel after I had installed it. Also, the headlights look funny because they're filled with Micro chrystal clear which hasn't fully cured yet. Thanks for looking in, and as allways, please feel free to share your thoughts.

Since my club is in New Jersey, we had a discussion a while back as to where exactly in Union, NJ Pyro was actually located. Note that on their kits, they merely listed their address as "Pyro Park", which obviously doesn't exist anymore. Dave Wood is a long time resident of Union and started to ask around. Consensus was that the factory didn't exist today, and it was "somewhere off of Route 22". Recently I found this image, which is from one of their instruction sheets.. that peeked my interest so I was off in search of Pyro... I found the site Historic Aerials.Com and pulled up Route 22 in Union. It's not a big town so I thought I stood a good chance of finding it. I knew the plant existed back a bit, so I went to the 1954 maps, before the area was populated. Bingo! There she was. I matched up the roof elements from the factory sketch to those on the roof in this photo. Next step was to lay in all the then current and future roads to get my bearings. By 1966 suburbia exploded! Note all the houses that were built in the later part of the 1950s and everything else that popped up. I used this 1979 view since it was in color. Note that by 1966, Pyro had added onto both sides of the building (the white roofs). This was also the last year (of the provided pix) that the factory building exists. And he we are today... Costco! You can see the three smaller buildings in the upper left corner are still there from the Pyro era. Nothing like progress. I thought you all might enjoy that bit of history. A bit more history... was we thought of Pyro as a minor player in the model field, the owner William Lester actually was a pioneer in injection molding technology back in the 1930s. Pyro's main business was selling molding equipment, and in the early 1950s they were the largest seller of military toys in the country. They also did sci fi stuff, and their ray guns are big collectibles today. Bill sold the company back in the early 1970s because he wanted to pursue an emerging technology, blister packaging! He was truly a plastics guy!