Hi. I'm new to the forum but not new to model cars. I've been building for over 55 years, and still learning new things with every kit I finish. (Or even start.) I don't really specialize in any one type of car, but rather if I see an interesting vehicle at a car show, in a magazine, or online, I'll attempt to duplicate it in scale. I don't do a lot of customs or race cars, and would rather build something that I might have seen in my lower-middle class neighborhood growing up. That usually means something with a six cylinder instead of an eight, and something at the base level of the model types. E.g., a Biscayne rather than an Impala, a 150 rather than a Bel Air. I do have a soft spot in my heart for Ramblers, as my first car was a 4 door, 1961 Rambler Classic, in black with a grey interior. (And yes, those wonderful reclining front bench seats.) I have also been known to buy a lot of "basket case models" over the years and have usually been successful at restoring them, or at least giving them a second life as a " plain jane," or a beater. I guess that's a bit like recycling, but I have another type of recycling I'd like to mention. When I'm done with a new model, there is quite a lot of plastic sprue leftover. Sometimes it seems that there is just as much plastic leftover in the box as there is in the finished product. I hate filling up landfills with BLAH_BLAH_BLAH_BLAH that could be reused - especially when so many types of plastics seem to have a 50,000 year shelf life. Has the idea of recycling the leftover plastic trees back to the manufacturers ever been brought up? If so, has it ever gone further than a mere mention? Or maybe there's some chemical reason why styrene can't be recycled? Just thought I'd bring it up. As a wrapup, I just finished (today, in fact) Revell's '57 Ford Custom and it's quite a good kit. Everything fit (although the small caps don't seem to seat correctly on the rim) and I'm very happy with the results. Thanks for listening, and I look forward to hearing anyone's reaction to the recycling question. (Brian O'Leary)
