AMT '66 Buick wildcat

[ranma]

Anyone else think the front seats look to thick in the back area's? I mean when looking at it by it's side view . to me it looks way off. I used my dramel cut the seat back off at the back seam, and then  smoothly ground the seat back sides down. I then Reattached the back of the seat, and added the seat side/back chrome brackets made from some evergreen. Now the seat back look closer to what the real ones do.

[Mark]

It's probably traceable to its promo model origins.  To make the seats one piece, they would have been engineered to have hollow seat backs.  The core part of the tooling that forms the seat probably had to be a certain thickness, which added to the thickness of the seat.  Had they tried to mold it solid, the seat back would have been relatively thick, possibly the hot plastic injected into the mold would have taken too long to cool enough to allow removal from the mold.

This also happens when an interior is re-engraved over last year's upholstery patterns.  The area is smoothed off and the new pattern engraved further into the tool.  That would make the seat thicker too.  This didn't happen with the Wildcat though, as it was new for 1965 and was not reworked or updated for '66.

[StevenGuthmiller]

This is nothing new.

I've begun cutting up and re-doing the seats in nearly every annual kit that I do.

Some are worse than others, but they can all benefit from some work.

 

Johan '68 Olds 442.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Steve

[Tabbysdaddy]

1 hour ago, StevenGuthmiller said:

This is nothing new.

I've begun cutting up and re-doing the seats in nearly every annual kit that I do.

Some are worse than others, but they can all benefit from some work.

 

Johan '68 Olds 442.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Steve

Wow what an improvement. 

[Snake45]

I didn't notice that with the Wildcat, but it's probably not uncommon with models of this vintage. 

Here's another thing about those '60s seats that can be improved quickly and easily. Often the front edge is molded slanting down forward, like some kind of modern lounge chair or something. This can easily be cut and filed back to a more realistic profile that looks a lot better. Here's the seats from a '66 Skylark before and after the mod: 

[pack rat]

8 hours ago, Snake45 said:

Here's another thing about those '60s seats that can be improved quickly and easily. Often the front edge is molded slanting down forward, like some kind of modern lounge chair or something. This can easily be cut and filed back to a more realistic profile that looks a lot better. Here's the seats from a '66 Skylark before and after the mod: 

A few swipes of a sanding stick at the back edge of the seat helps too; this took about 15 seconds. 

[Snake45]

I  like it! 

[Motor City]

GM went to the thin-shell bucket seats for '66 on the big cars (Impala SS, Bonneville, Wildcat).  The '66 Wildcat has always had the incorrect '65 interior.  You might be better off starting with the Revell '66 Impala SS buckets.  The dashboard, door panels and seat patterns were all changed for the '66 Wildcat.