Phirewriter

The only reason that kit will never be reissued has nothing to do with the original builder, Steve Scott. Yes he's a bit odd to say the least, but the molds simply no longer exist.

If you have Amazon prime there's a documentary about Von Franco's (a custom culture artist) recreation of the Lightning Bug version of Norm's car called "The Car That Ate My Brain" Definitely worth a look.

At one time Fred did have a catalog with small B&W photos for reference, about 24 or so photocopied pages. Probably have one in buried with my model magazines but haven't referenced it in years. If you asked nice the good folks at Model Empire they would procure one for you back in the day. When I got word he was pulling the plug I bought everything I thought I'd need that I already didn't have. Since Model Empire is in my backyard I've stocked up on a few more just in case. He had quite a few road racing, Indy and Can Am decals that no one else has produced as far as know. I know there's a number of guys making muscle car stripes too, but all seem to be solid colours. Fred had nice metallic silver and gold versions ('68/'69 Torino side stripes come to mind) that I haven't seen from some of the other makers. Keep in mind Fred silk screened his decals and therefore was able to produce colours not normally available unless you had an Alps printer.

Bill Mitchell's personal Firebird certainly shows the Italian influence with it's styling.

Interestingly the 6 spoke racing wheels in that kit appear to be the same as what's in my AMT Lola T70 static version of their slot car kit. Perhaps they were moved to the Opel tooling?

Interesting concept, looks good but it should have had Pontiac rear wheel openings/partial quarter panels integrated into the design for better continuity. Looks a little pieced together from my perspective. At least with this Grand Am version, even though they're standard Chevy quarters the shape is similar to the front, the design flows better.

Thanks for the information, the Buick wheels were unique to that model, not sure of the manufacturer. The Kelsey wheels seen on Chryslers and other makes have a larger center cap with the lug nuts underneath. Unfortunately I won't be getting to that project for a while, many others to finish before starting something new plus I'm starting to pack stuff for a possible move soon.

This is a nice replica of a somewhat overlooked car, I think the '61 is more recognised. I bought a few as I want to remove the roof for a convertible version since I used to own one. There are some inaccuracies, mostly on the chassis. The big one is the single exhaust, duels were standard on Starfire's for their entire production run through the 60's otherwise it's somewhat simplified. Under the hood the valve covers and air cleaner should be chrome, not black. The "Starfire 394" was Oldsmobile's performance motor for '62 (4bbl, higher compression, slightly different cam profile, duel exhaust, etc...) and could be ordered as an option on some other models, always had the dress up parts if you chose that motor option. One item I liked was the correct lower dash for the air-conditioning option, some diecast companies get this wrong on certain cars where there is a difference between interiors. I had to pick up a Motormax '53 Skylark to rob the wire wheels as that what I had on mine but they're not that nice unfortunately they're only one's I've found in 1/18.

Thanks to you and everyone else who posted photos of this event, truly wish I could have attended.

Thanks for posting your photos.

Thanks for your photo coverage and putting in names to identify all the builders. Must have been quite an effort! I really wanted to go as I attended a number of NNL's in the 90's but work and some health issues held me to home base.

Unless I missed something in cost breakdown theories, etc... one thing that's overlooked is the the number of kits produced just to make acceptable profit margins on the basic costs for running the kits. Remember in those good old days of $2.00 kits they (pick your model company) also ran many thousands (in some cases millions) of copies as it were. Now days two to five thousand is a big number in some cases so the price needs to be adjusted to make up the difference just to make it worthwhile to do a production run. Also that tooling that's "done and paid for" years ago by say AMT or any other old tooling was still purchased at a price by the current owners of said tooling regardless of when it was originally cut. Therefore there needs to be a baseline cost factored in running the mold for current production. Remember Round2 wasn't just gifted those molds by Ertl/RC2.

Our LHS carried DTR kits for a brief period but due to the very small print/disclaimer that the dirt version would have to be largely scratch built, stopped since they received lots of returns from customers thinking that the cars on the box could be assembled from the contents provided. Never gave it too much thought but of you're going to market a kit as they did, there is a bit of deception going on there.

If you have any interest in dinosaur or prehistoric models the old Aurora Prehistoric Scenes jungle swamp has a small version included perched on a tree.

Mr Baker was an incredible and highly influential drummer, unfortunately not so much an incredible human being. Still he will be missed.

No- "Your" expectations were pretty much "Their" expectations, too... Hey, at my age and the fact l do occasionally look in the mirror, well let's just say I'm a realist.

Or... could be used as a warmer for your very expensive pizza delivery vehicle.

Race cars at the 24hr Lemans were/are required to have provisions for luggage. Those were deemed big enough for a pair of suitcases, although placement dictated you probably didn't want to pack anything that would melt.?

Much of the tooling was changed and modified for the the Early Iron series in the the early 70's and as mentioned is irreversible.

I seem to remember someone posting on one of the boards I look at indicating he wanted NO negative input for anything they posted, interesting... That said between this hobby, my professional pursuits and some of my other interests I always remember something I learned/was told many many years ago, there will always be someone better, more skilled, etc... than myself and therefore I always try to take inspiration or something positive from that in hopes of improving my own skills. Hopefully the members who post here can have that attitude given some of the excellent quality work displayed on this forum. This hobby, at least for my purposes is for my personal enjoyment and as a creative outlet, not to be the best or better builder than my fellow modeller. (I don't enter contests either other than the occasional NNL)

The Pie Wagon show rod has a hopped up flathead too, the headers probably won't be of any use but it does have nice finned heads and a 3 carb manifold.

The kit has stock wheel covers and the custom wheels are Kelsey Hayes spoked mags the name of which escapes me. The original had Hurst mags.

Just about any '68-'72 spectaflame are my favourite ones. I've been photographing my collection recently, so here's the race team series "Heavyweights" with a hot pink 917. Although it looks red it's actually a candy fluorescent pink. I've got this casting in a number of colours and both US and Hong Kong castings. I've have at least one casting variation of all the sprectaflame era Hot Wheels and a number of cars in every colour available to shown the "rainbow" of available colours. The only exception is a reproduction rear board Beach Bomb since I don't have five figures to spend for an original.

Very impressive collection, nice to see that there's other slot car enthusiasts here!