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Who would of thunk , Hudson would be such a popular modeling topic ?


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Bear in mind guys that in today's market, there are relatively few 1940's or 1950's car subjects that can make it, sales-wise as a stand-alone model--meaning one version only. Simply put--it takes more than one version of any subject these days to make a viable, profitable model car kit of any production car!

Art

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So many cool car from the 40's and 50's that need to be offered plastic model kit form. I still find it interesting that die casts of a lot of these cars are, or have been offered. But no plastic kits. It can't be any more expensive to tool up a plastic kit vs. a die cast. Can it? I prefer my cars in plastic and in 1/25th scale. The thing most die casts are not. I bought a couple of Moebius' Hudsons. And there plenty more cars like them that I would be willing to buy and build. After all, once cool, always cool. And in some cases, some like Hudsons become cool again.

Scott

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I am personally acquainted with this car and the owner. Nice guy, gorgeous car, and probably one of the most correct '49s out there. This is a Super Six Brougham.

With the '54 Brougham coming out, it would be possible to make a Commodore Six Brougham with a little slicing and some scratch-building for the grille. The other thing you'd have to do is slightly modify the engine to represent the narrower 262 cu. in. block, which had a pronounced flare at the bottom of the block, as opposed to the fairly straight wide-block 308.

A Super Six could be made, but it's a lot of surgery, as it requires shortening the car noticeably.

Charlie Larkin

Edited by charlie8575
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Bear in mind guys that in today's market, there are relatively few 1940's or 1950's car subjects that can make it, sales-wise as a stand-alone model--meaning one version only. Simply put--it takes more than one version of any subject these days to make a viable, profitable model car kit of any production car!

Art

So many cool car from the 40's and 50's that need to be offered plastic model kit form. I still find it interesting that die casts of a lot of these cars are, or have been offered. But no plastic kits. It can't be any more expensive to tool up a plastic kit vs. a die cast. Can it? I prefer my cars in plastic and in 1/25th scale.

Art is totally correct in the above statement. Just watch both Moebius and R/M and how they have to maximize their new tools over several to many versions to make it viable from a commercial standpoint. Our market just isn't what it used to be.

Per Scott's question, the 1/24 diecast market was much, much larger than our 1/25 kit market in recent times. And the makers were more enterprising than the model companies, I remember seeing Danbury car ads in Australian car magazines. It simply is that ANY car guy could buy a Danbury or Franklin Mint vehicle and instantly have a very nice replica of a car they admired. And that audience is many, many times the numbers of guys who would sit down to build a model of that same car.

Danbury and Franklin did put a big dent into cars from the 1950s (as well as other eras), so there are wagons and 4 doors that we'd never see in plastic. They are easy enough to buy, or for the modeler in us, easy to find on the 'bay in damaged condition as the basis for a model project. And we've seen some dandy work folks from our herd have done to build credible models out of diecast cars.

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Make a 49 Buick Sedanette or 49 Cadillac Sedanette,i bet they will sell like butter. Even better then the Tucker or Hudson`s.

Honestly, I already prefer the Hudson and would prefer the Tucker over either of those. I think that the movie "Cars" probably helped with Hudson kit sales, and with the Tucker, if there were anniversary edition release of the movie which has to have been at least 20 years ago now, that would be a good time to get a kit out to market of the car.

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I think someone should make a full detail Duesenberg. Judkins or Mudd coupe would be nice. I like them, therefore it's a license to print money. I think that's how it works, anyway.

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I am personally acquainted with this car and the owner. Nice guy, gorgeous car, and probably one of the most correct '49s out there. This is a Super Six Brougham.

With the '54 Brougham coming out, it would be possible to make a Commodore Six Brougham with a little slicing and some scratch-building for the grille. The other thing you'd have to do is slightly modify the engine to represent the narrower 262 cu. in. block, which had a pronounced flare at the bottom of the block, as opposed to the fairly straight wide-block 308.

A Super Six could be made, but it's a lot of surgery, as it requires shortening the car noticeably.

Charlie Larkin

The '49 would be the next logical extension for the Hudson Moebius line. And I hope they do. The question is, how much steam does the whole "Hudson" thing have left?

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This is an interesting topic . Growing up in Detroit I was aware of the fact that Hudson Motor Company was financed by, and named after, department store giant-J.L.Hudson

After reading the Wikipedia page about the Hudson Motor Co. I learned that in the 1920's Hudson was one of the Big Three-Ford, Chevrolet and Hudson .

Another good read is to Google:

14250 Plymouth Rd. Detroit , MI

It talks about the last years of Hudson after it joined the AMC family.

I've enjoyed reading this thread-but in the original post , there is a Chrysler 300 pictured ( :lol: )

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The '49 would be the next logical extension for the Hudson Moebius line. And I hope they do. The question is, how much steam does the whole "Hudson" thing have left?

As to "steam," that's a little hard to say, but speaking for myself, I'd love to see a Commodore Eight. A '49 Convertible Brougham might sell because it's a convertible, and it would buy you the earlier nose.

Thinking beyond step-downs, though, I could see several Hudsons doing well.

I think a 1955-57, while not a record-breaking seller, would be an interesting diversion from other offerings, and if done properly, could open itself up to a variety of customs and other builds.

I always liked the 1941-47 cars; they're very handsome machines, especially the incredibly rare 1941-42 wagons. With the growing interest in wagons in plastic, I think a Super Six wagon might be well-received.

The 1937-38 cars are beautiful studies in Art Deco. I, for one, would like to see more pre-war cars, and ones that can be built replica-stock, and isn't a Ford or super-expensive luxury car.

Hudson pickups are neat. As are the Terraplanes we saw earlier in this thread. I think those would be fantastic sellers for light commercial, rodders, rep-stock, and just about anyone else.

Hudson also made its own line of very expensive, custom-bodied cars, the Model L, from 1929-32. Not in Duesenburg territory, but certainly priced against junior Packards.

For fun, I'd love to see a 1916-29 Super Six. For those into replicating history, I understand organized crime loved these- very fast, very roomy and extermely reliable. I remember reading someplace that a lot of law enforcement agencies used them, too, for exactly the same reasons. Anyone for an Untouchables diorama?

There's a lot of potential here. We need a firm willing to tap it.

Charlie Larkin

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I think someone should make a full detail Duesenberg. Judkins or Mudd coupe would be nice. I like them, therefore it's a license to print money. I think that's how it works, anyway.

Personally, I'd love to see a new Duesenberg Model J kit--done to the very high standards out there today. However, to balance that desire, I have to remember the virtual demise of new Classic Car model kits, particularly American Classics. Sure, the 1980's saw us get some really superb kits of 30's European Classic Cars--both Heller and Italeri stepped up to the plate there.

Right at 40 years ago this year, Monogram laid a pair of beautiful classic car kits on us--first was their "1935 Duesenberg SJ Rollston Convertible Coupe" kit--never mind that the real car was built in 1931-32 and was a non-supercharged Model J, but Monogram had to go with what they had in the basic tooling--and that was their SJ, which dates from 1966 (still a pretty nice kit btw!). And then along came the 1930 Packard Speedster Boattail--wow, that still is a gorgeous model car kit. Following in fairly quick succession were the 1930 Packard Speedster Phaeton, and two metal bodied classics--the 1931 Packard Series 845 Dual Cowl Phaeton (completely different car than the Speedsters BTW), and metal bodied Duesenberg SJ Murphy Boattail--loosely a kit of the ex-George Whittell car from the then Harrah's Automobile Collection. Never mind that the real Murphy Boattail was a non-supercharged car, that kit still is gorgeous--it's only problem being that the metal body, fenders and hood were so heavy that the front axle tends to sag badly over time. These were never repeated, even though Monogram eventually converted their other metal bodied kits to all styrene. In 1979, Monogram introduced a very nicely done 1932 Cadillac Model 452 V16, with a Fleetwood Phaeton body--but that got caught up in the deep recession which hit in early 1981, and while reissued a couple of times since, never really sold that well. Interestingly, at the 1979 IPMS Nationals in Milwaukee, I was shown small printouts of another body style for that Cadillac: A '32 V16 Convertible Victoria by Fleetwood--but it was never tooled.

It seems that while, in 1965-67, there was a flurry of interest in model car kits of the great classic cars of the 30's (sparked in part by the intense interest in the likes of Elliot Ness and the Untouchables--that's when Monogram started their small lineup, JoHan brought out their '31 Cadillac V16's and that pair of Mercedes 500 K's, MPC getting into the act with a pair of late 20's Lincolns and two Chryslers (along with the '32 Chevy double kit), but by 1967, the bloom was off that flower garden--within a year or so, most all of these kits had been dropped, their tooling smothered in cosmoline.

There've been a few reissues of these kits over the years--JoHan running their '31 Cadillacs and M-B kits, Monogram repoppling some Duesenbergs and the plastic kits of the Packards, along with their '41 Lincoln Continental, but for Revell-Monogram, those have been the stuff of the likes of SSP, The MPC Classics made a return engagement in the 80's, under AMT Ertl's banner--but none of them seem to have sold all that well, judging from the lack of consistent reissues.

Testors, of course, generated at least some sales by putting Italeri classic car kits in their ubiquitous yellow boxes back nearly 30 years ago, but those were likely not large runs of those kits.

Even today, at shows, Classic Car kits from any manufacturer, as "OOP" kits don't really bring that much--I've seen far too many with $20-$25 prices written on them get packed up, carried back home again.

But, I can always wish for a new kit, right?

Art

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Been done. Either Monogram or JoHan, can't remember which.

Monogram did the Duesenbergs, the only domestic US manufacturer to do so in 1/24 scale: All were curiously badged as 1935 Duesenbergs, when in reality the only '35 Duesenberg that Monogram did call the year is their '35 Model SJ Weymann Torpedo Phaeton. The others are models of earlier years of Model J's--with supercharged engines that the actual cars were never fitted with (although a number of nonsupercharged Model J's did receive the outside exhausts and screen side hood panels that were the visual hallmark of a supercharged SJ: Rollston Convertible Coupe, Murphy Town Car, and the Murphy Boattailed Disappearing Top Coupe that I referred to in my above post.

Bandai "cloned" the underpinnings, chrome parts tree and powerplant of the Monogram Duesenberg series--adding a somewhat inaccurate Figoni et Falaschi Berline body to the kit.

Both Pyro and Revell produced a Duesenberg kit in 1/32 scale, Revell's being the LeBaron Dual Cowl Phaeton SJ, Pyro the Murphy Town Car and the Clark Gable SSJ (that 125" wheelbase 425hp muscle car from 1935!).

Art

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I was told by a long time Monogram/Revell employee that the 'Classic' car kits were the worst sellers in the kit line.....every time they were issued.

Really sad as I love automotive subjects of all eras.

Monogram Packard......

PACK1-vi.jpg

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I think someone should make a full detail Duesenberg. Judkins or Mudd coupe would be nice. I like them, therefore it's a license to print money. I think that's how it works, anyway.

Andy Martin at Aardvark has resin cast the Mudd Coupe. He was selling them on eBay (I purchased one). It needs a Monogram Duesenberg as a donor kit (needs to be modified). The price is/was on par with other high quality resins.

John

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