Would you believe....this was actually a production/assembly line color....

[tim boyd]

It was part of the 1961 Chrysler paint palette and was featured in the brochure in this color scheme.  The paint was called "Dubonnet" Metallic and the Jo-Han Chrysler New Yorker hardtop annual kit was finished in MCW Automotive Finishes formula of that color using the Chrysler assigned code of "00-1". 

The rest of the model was assembled factory stock to duplicate the brochure image.  1961 was the last year the New Yorker was offered as a 2-door hardtop until it returned to the carline in 1965.  After the 1961 annuals, Jo-Han started duplicating the Chrysler 300 2-door hardtop in their annual line through their las Chrysler C-body offering for the 1968 model year.  The 1962 kit was actually the 300-H version.  

Here's some pictures....

Thanks for checking it out....TIM  

Edited May 5, 2022 by tim boyd

[ea0863]

Beautiful job on all that brightwork!

[ksnow]

Very nice build. My wife would drive a car that color every day, and twice on sundays.

[StevenGuthmiller]

Yup, I absolutely knew of the existence of "Dubonnet".

I wasn't able to find the color when I built my '61 New Yorker, so I tried mixing some MCW lacquers to see if I could get somewhere close.

The result was not as bright, but I believe that I got somewhere in the neighborhood.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Steve

[peteski]

That's a pretty color.

[rrb124@sbcglobal.net]

Looking at the ton of effort to produce the perfect trim too.

Cars of that era are loading with beautiful trim.

[ChrisR]

Looks great!

[Peter Lombardo]

It looks great, too bad those old Jo-Han kits appear to be lost, with few exceptions for he old-time guys (like me) who remember the real cars and want to build a scale model of them. I think the 50s and 60s were the zenith period for the American automobile.  Looks like a few drops of panel-line accent in the door jams and it could pass as the "real deal", but all and all, a very well built model and worthy of the scarcity of those kits.  I wish my mother didn't toss away my old AMT and Jo-Han builds I did as a kid when I went into the Navy.  I would love the opportunity to rebuild many of those.  Really great looking past beauty.   

[Tom99]

Very nice!!

[espo]

I can see why Chrysler used that color on a display vehicle. The paint works looks great and I like the clean trim. I agree with you on the Jo-Han models, they would be nice to have some of them back as no other kit maker has offered the selection from that time period since. 

[StevenGuthmiller]

A photo of the real deal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Steve

[tim boyd]

5 hours ago, Peter Lombardo said:

 Looks like a few drops of panel-line accent in the door jams and it could pass as the "real deal", 

Thanks everyone for all the positive comments, and especially Steven for showing your own '61 NY.  

I did want to comment on Peter's suggestion above.  I intentionally do not use use panel line accent, and I realize that this runs against the views of many of you as to what constitutes a fully detailed and completed model.  

Ever since I was a kid I felt that the panel lines of a car - those that distract from the overall flow of the car, are something you would like to visually eliminate in a real car, and that feeling continued to scale replicas.  Later in my career in the auto industry, I saw various manufacturers actually emphasizing the panel line separations with their design languages (late 1990's-2010 Bangle era BMW trunk/tailamp treatments as an example), which further intensified my dislike, as did learning more about car design while working (in a business management/chief of staff type role) alongside some of the industry's best car designers during the last 1/3rd of my career, and then still later on while having overall leadership responsibility for my then-employer's three global advanced design studios. 

All of which means that I personally do not like the emphasis panel lines add to scale model cars, particularly those that use black ink on a light colored car.  I put it in the same camp (in my own view) as military modelers who go way overboard on the aging and patina effects they use on their armor models.   Of course, this is all a matter of degrees, and some could just as righly  and accurately point out that the lack of panel accents (such as on my models) unduly draws visual attention to the unduly "lighter"/lack of realistic appearance of those body panel separations.    

All of which is to say, isn't it great that we all get to make our own decisions and choices as we build and display our models? 

Thanks very much Peter for bringing this up as it a gave me the entree to address this as I've been wanting to comment on it for some time now.

Now back to our regularly scheduled program   

Best all....TIM 

Edited May 5, 2022 by tim boyd

[StevenGuthmiller]

1 hour ago, tim boyd said:

Thanks everyone for all the positive comments, and especially Steven for showing your own '61 NY.  

I did want to comment on Peter's suggestion above.  I intentionally do not use use panel line accent, and I realize that this runs against the views of many of you as to what constitutes a fully detailed and completed model.  

Ever since I was a kid I felt that the panel lines of a car - those that distract from the overall flow of the car, are something you would like to visually eliminate in a real car, and that feeling continued to scale replicas.  Later in my career in the auto industry, I saw various manufacturers actually emphasizing the panel line separations with their design languages (late 1990's-2010 Bangle era BMW trunk/tailamp treatments as an example), which further intensified my dislike, as did learning more about car design while working (in a business management/chief of staff type role) alongside some of the industry's best car designers during the last 1/3rd of my career, and then still later on while having overall leadership responsibility for my then-employer's three global advanced design studios. 

All of which means that I personally do not like the emphasis panel lines add to scale model cars, particularly those that use black ink on a light colored car.  I put it in the same camp (in my own view) as military modelers who go way overboard on the aging and patina effects they use on their armor models.   Of course, this is all a matter of degrees, and some could just as righly  and accurately point out that the lack of panel accents (such as on my models) unduly draws visual attention to the unduly "lighter"/lack of realistic appearance of those body panel separations.    

All of which is to say, isn't it great that we all get to make our own decisions and choices as we build and display our models? 

Thanks very much Peter for bringing this up as it a gave me the entree to address this as I've been wanting to comment on it for some time now.

Now back to our regularly scheduled program   

Best all....TIM 

I'm coming around to this train of thought more and more as I progress in my modeling career.

I have been guilty of tinting my panel lines too darkly in the past, often using a darker shade of body color, which once applied to the recess of the panel line, can still appear too dark.

Going forward, my new plan of attack is going to be just to deeply scribe the panel lines, almost to the point of going all of the way through the body.

This may not work as well with some of the "thin skinned" modern kits, but it appears to work exceptionally well on older kits with thicker plastic.

Using this technique mimics a more realistic panel line by recreating something more similar to a real car's panel line, which is manifested by nothing more than depth. 

 

I recently had the importunity to test this technique, (which by the way, has been used for a long time by many modelers) on my most recent '68 Coronet build, and I was very pleased with the result.

From now on, I'll be using this approach whenever possible.

 

I've already begun "mining" the panel lines on my current '64 Pontiac Bonneville project.

I am hopeful that it will be as satisfactory to me as the Coronet was.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Steve

[Ace-Garageguy]

19 hours ago, tim boyd said:

It was part of the 1961 Chrysler paint palette and was featured in the brochure in this color scheme.  The paint was called "Dubonnet" Metallic and the Jo-Han Chrysler New Yorker hardtop annual kit was finished in MCW Automotive Finishes formula of that color using the Chrysler assigned code of "00-1". 

The rest of the model was assembled factory stock to duplicate the brochure image...

Fine looking model, great color choice.

Though the styling on these was almost over-the-top flamboyant, they were so well integrated and proportioned that they could pull off wearing colors like this without looking garish...kinda like how a beautiful woman makes a potato sack look good.

------------------------------------------------------------------

There was a recent thread about R2 (I think) scanning and reverse-engineering an ancient kit for which the original tooling is lost or unusable.

Sure would be cool if somebody could put together a similar deal to repop these beautiful old Johan kits.

And no need to enhance the details or upgrade the blobular chassis. There are plenty of donors around should anyone really want to get the undersides more "modern". Save that development money. And of course, going from accurate scans of existing kits would save a ton of $$ as opposed to having to measure, divide, and "creatively interpret and adjust" the actual numbers taken from a real vehicle. Johan kits were known for really looking like their full-scale cousins...unlike some recent offerings from other manufacturers.

Control costs well enough and I'd think there'd be a ready market for them as long as we have a bunch of graybeards who pine for the originals still building and collecting...but the target demographic shrinks every day.   

Edited May 5, 2022 by Ace-Garageguy
TYPO

[smellyfatdude]

Beautiful color, and it looks great on both those ' 61's. The deep scribing does work, for darkening. That's all I did on this Hudson.

 

 

Edited May 5, 2022 by smellyfatdude

[mangodart]

Again very nice build Tim, one of my missing treasure this 61 Chrysler, maybe someday....:)

[David G.]

Fabulous work on that!

That color does look right for the era.

David G.

[tim boyd]

18 hours ago, StevenGuthmiller said:

I'm coming around to this train of thought more and more as I progress in my modeling career.

I have been guilty of tinting my panel lines too darkly in the past, often using a darker shade of body color, which once applied to the recess of the panel line, can still appear too dark.

Going forward, my new plan of attack is going to be just to deeply scribe the panel lines, almost to the point of going all of the way through the body.

This may not work as well with some of the "thin skinned" modern kits, but it appears to work exceptionally well on older kits with thicker plastic.

Using this technique mimics a more realistic panel line by recreating something more similar to a real car's panel line, which is manifested by nothing more than depth. 

 

I recently had the importunity to test this technique, (which by the way, has been used for a long time by many modelers) on my most recent '68 Coronet build, and I was very pleased with the result.

From now on, I'll be using this approach whenever possible.

 

I've already begun "mining" the panel lines on my current '64 Pontiac Bonneville project.

I am hopeful that it will be as satisfactory to me as the Coronet was.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Steve

Steve....thanks for weighing in on this topic.  Your track record of replica stock projects and moving the goalpost in this model genre speaks for itself, so your thoughts on the subject I suspect carry a lot of weight with the audience here.  I have often re-scribed panel openings but not to the extent that you do.  Rest assured that I will be trying your techniques out on my next applicable build.   Best....TIM 

[tim boyd]

18 hours ago, Ace-Garageguy said:

Fine looking model, great color choice.

Though the styling on these was almost over-the-top flamboyant, they were so well integrated and proportioned that they could pull off wearing colors like this without looking garish...kinda like how a beautiful woman makes a potato sack look good.

------------------------------------------------------------------

There was a recent thread about R2 (I think) scanning and reverse-engineering an ancient kit for which the original tooling is lost or unusable.

Sure would be cool if somebody could put together a similar deal to repop these beautiful old Johan kits.

And no need to enhance the details or upgrade the blobular chassis. There are plenty of donors around should anyone really want to get the undersides more "modern". Save that development money. And of course, going from accurate scans of existing kits would save a ton of $$ as opposed to having to measure, divide, and "creatively interpret and adjust" the actual numbers taken from a real vehicle. Johan kits were known for really looking like their full-scale cousins...unlike some recent offerings from other manufacturers.

Control costs well enough and I'd think there'd be a ready market for them as long as we have a bunch of graybeards who pine for the originals still building and collecting...but the target demographic shrinks every day.   

Bill....i think you are probably remembering this from one of the Roudn 2 '63 Nova wagon threads or maybe the '64 Cutlass convertible thread.  

And I know there are a lot of model kit buyers out there in hobbyland who agree exactly with your thoughts on this....   TIM 

[tim boyd]

15 hours ago, smellyfatdude said:

Beautiful color, and it looks great on both those ' 61's. The deep scribing does work, for darkening. That's all I did on this Hudson.

 

 

Wow D.W., that is one sharp Hudson model!   TB 

[Classicgas]

Wow, beautiful.

[GarryR]

On 5/5/2022 at 3:31 PM, Ace-Garageguy said:

Sure would be cool if somebody could put together a similar deal to repop these beautiful old Johan kits.

Absolutely! This gray beard would love to see some of those Chrysler Corp, AMC, Cadillac, and Oldsmobile kits back in circulation before he passed over.

[mustang1989]

What a cool looking and clean build. Paint and finish are as smooth as I've ever seen. 

[Butter 1]

On 5/5/2022 at 12:17 PM, tim boyd said:

Thanks everyone for all the positive comments, and especially Steven for showing your own '61 NY.  

I did want to comment on Peter's suggestion above.  I intentionally do not use use panel line accent, and I realize that this runs against the views of many of you as to what constitutes a fully detailed and completed model.  

Ever since I was a kid I felt that the panel lines of a car - those that distract from the overall flow of the car, are something you would like to visually eliminate in a real car, and that feeling continued to scale replicas.  Later in my career in the auto industry, I saw various manufacturers actually emphasizing the panel line separations with their design languages (late 1990's-2010 Bangle era BMW trunk/tailamp treatments as an example), which further intensified my dislike, as did learning more about car design while working (in a business management/chief of staff type role) alongside some of the industry's best car designers during the last 1/3rd of my career, and then still later on while having overall leadership responsibility for my then-employer's three global advanced design studios. 

All of which means that I personally do not like the emphasis panel lines add to scale model cars, particularly those that use black ink on a light colored car.  I put it in the same camp (in my own view) as military modelers who go way overboard on the aging and patina effects they use on their armor models.   Of course, this is all a matter of degrees, and some could just as righly  and accurately point out that the lack of panel accents (such as on my models) unduly draws visual attention to the unduly "lighter"/lack of realistic appearance of those body panel separations.    

All of which is to say, isn't it great that we all get to make our own decisions and choices as we build and display our models? 

Thanks very much Peter for bringing this up as it a gave me the entree to address this as I've been wanting to comment on it for some time now.

Now back to our regularly scheduled program   

Best all....TIM 

I agree with your comment about panel lines. Less is better and more realistic in 1/25 scale.  BTW once again you took a very basic model and turned it into something any one would be proud to call their own.

[ATHU]

Looks amazing, love the color!!