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Remember the B movie "Used Cars"?


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Back when it was a current kit, my sealed one had a funny car kit in it when I opened it. I was highly perturbed, to say the least. The 'point' was you don't know what you are getting when you purchase a 'used car', and you may get ripped off. Someanager's idea of a practical joke, I'm sure? It is a rare kit - it's reputation got around.

Edited by Von Don Koolkat
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I was thinking that the kit was more in the area of a hundred bucks, not five hundred. I don't care how rare they are, that's insane level prices. I would rather spend fifty dollars making up the box art, that's all that is really worth the money.

And Used Cars was not a B movie, its a great movie that is almost a classic. Any movie with an Edsel, Pinto and a 57 Chevy is a great movie.

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So two guys got Camaro's and another got a Funny car. I wonder how many different kits were used for this? (yes "used" was a pun :D ) Anyone get anything different?

I thought I read some years back in SAE.....before they became "that other forum" that these were promotional items sent out to reviewers, theaters, and such to push the movie. About the only thing the kits had in common was the lid, instructions, and that there was a car in the box.

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It's out on video?

I'll have to get that. I remember when CBS ran it when I was about ten or so. I thought it was one of the funniest movies I ever saw.

Now that I'm an adult, I'm sure it'll be even more funny and I'll get the jokes Dad didn't want to explain to me.

Charlie Larkin

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That Movie was filmed just west of downtown Mesa Arizona. The carlot across the street was Darner Chrysler, Plymouth, and Dodge. An Icon in mesa for probably better than fifty years. The dealership was taken away from the Darner family in about 2008 when Chrysler did the reorganiztion thing. The building has some old classic Chrysler cars in it but remains unused. The Wigwam trailer park, and the old carlot. used for the film were both torn down shortly after the movie was filmed. The trailer park, used to sit about 5 miles to the west of Mesa in nearby Tempe Arizona, close to the ASU campus.

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That Movie was filmed just west of downtown Mesa Arizona. The carlot across the street was Darner Chrysler, Plymouth, and Dodge. An Icon in mesa for probably better than fifty years. The dealership was taken away from the Darner family in about 2008 when Chrysler did the reorganiztion thing. The building has some old classic Chrysler cars in it but remains unused. The Wigwam trailer park, and the old carlot. used for the film were both torn down shortly after the movie was filmed. The trailer park, used to sit about 5 miles to the west of Mesa in nearby Tempe Arizona, close to the ASU campus.

Cool! Thanks for that bit of history Gabriel. B)

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  • 4 weeks later...

The car pictured on the box is a '67 Galaxie, but that's not what is inside the box. The USED CARS kit was a giveaway item made to promote the movie. Inside the box was a bag of plastic parts from a late-Seventies MPC kit. Some of these contained Dodge pickup kit parts, most contained a Camaro kit. One I saw had the bag of parts from the Camaro but the plated tree from the Dodge pickup. The instruction sheet was a joke item with "tips" on prepping a used car. The kit wasn't meant to be assembled, and probably couldn't be assembled with what was in the box. I don't think all of these kits had plated trees, clear parts, or tires.

As an aside, in the mid-Eighties a pilot episode was filmed for a potential USED CARS series. Nobody picked it up, and I'm not sure it aired on network TV. The pilot is available if you know where to look for it (I've seen it; it's not worth bothering with). At the time, I had heard that if the series had aired, AMT had (or was going to get) licensing to produce a series of three or four USED CARS kits. Supposedly, one would have been the '66 Buick Wildcat (this was before that kit appeared in the AMT/Ertl Customizing series). No idea if any of this is true, but the series was never picked up anyway...

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