unclescott58

Fireball 500 was not an Elvis movie. It stared Frankie Avalon.

Another good review Adam. I have only one minor disagreement. Your timeline on popularity of mini trucks. They were popular way before the first gas shortage in the fall of '73. Because of the popularity of both the Datsun and Toyota pickup trucks, both Chevrolet (the Isuzu built LUV) and Ford (the Mazda built Courier) had their captive import mini trucks in their lineups over a year before that first shortage. It turned out to be great timing on both their parts.

Let's see some of this stuff closer up. Individually.

That works. Lots of real cars and trucks were converted to other things like that, back in the day.

These all appeared in DC (National) Comics in the mid-to-late 60's. I can not vouch or take responsibility for following any of the above tips. The glue in the straw one is questionable to me too. There was another one I wish I could find, about using an old tooth brush, pulling out several rows of bristles, and then using it painting stripes on your model. I question validity of that one too. There were others on improving slot cars performance, and other non model car hobby tips in the series too. Most of them seemed pretty good overall.

And yet another '40 Ford.

Any body remember these?

By the way, the above box art reminds me, and can't see in any of my above photos of the kit. But, the kit also includes a driver. Shown in the photo below.

My actual box for the above kit is buried away some place. But, I found this photo on web.

From a time when I wasn't reading comic books. And from a TV series I never cared for. But, I know there are fans out there. So here you go.

The second ad I posted, is above one. Jim and Eddie are always welcome to my birthday party. Though in my case I want the '40 Willys Coupe and '32 Ford Sedan kit.

Tulio, your build confirms something that I was wondering about on these kits. And that is whether the in box custom dual dual exhaust system would work with the in box "stock" rear end set up. Did you have to do any modifications to make it work?

Oh! And Surfite model has a fairly accurate depiction of the Mini's suspension. Revell did a good job on that.

I heard about the original Minis having rubber springs, but I just couldn't grasp on to that concept until I saw the drawing above. And then again, I never really researched into it until I was building Roth's Surfite. Quite ingenious.

Very cool. A nice model and a fun subject. I like it.

Looks very nice. Some of those 1/32 Pyro classic and brass era car models could be quite nice.

Wow! Very nicely done. Beautiful.

Tough to see anything once the car is together. It's not too bad of a build. A lot less "fiddly" and easier to build than Roth's Mysterion. The starter fell out after the kit was completed. I haven't looked too close. But at casual glance, I'll not sure if I can reinstall it, or if anybody would really notice that it's missing. After bringing it to one MCCM (Model Car Club of Minnesota) meeting, I decided to glue the hood in place. It kept falling into the body, and really did let you see much anyway. This was before the starter fell out. Beyond that, it's pretty good. Fun to learn about how the original Mini suspension worked. Which this kit got me curious to learn more about.

Interesting how similar these two ads are. I hadn't noticed it until I posted them above.

Not the best kits in the world. But, I do love the box art.

And two more from Monogram.

Sorry to ignored Revell up to this point. But, they didn't seem to run a lot of ads for their models cars in the comic books. And sorry, even though they deal directly with car models. I do have to include a promotion that Revell ran in the late 60's to win a full size Gemini space capsule. That's the one contest that was done when I was a kid, that I really wanted to win. Sadly I never even got a chance to enter. ?

Okay we need some more Monogram. Mainly Tom Daniel's stuff.

Naturally I should not forget this one.

Here is a cool Monogram ad thrown in for good measure.