Richard Bartrop

Oh yes. The '60s produced some great styling, and GM produced some of the best of the bunch.

Heller's kit builds up very nice right out of the box, and you've turned it into a real masterpiece.

I have the retooled '66, and it is indeed a very nice kit. I'd love to see something like the '65 Riviera, or a '63 Pontiac Gran Prix get a similar treatment.

Both Revell and AMT's recent offerings had a stock height roof

Nothing at all wrong with liking some things, and not liking other things, and certainly nothing wrong with wanting to form a group with a particular focus. You can definitely see a major shift in what we call hot rodding round about the early/mid '60s, so it does seen a natural cutoff point, Personally, I've found the HAMB to be a great source of reference material, especially on the early days of hot roddiing, and on period construction techniques, When it starts to get irritating is when the definition of "traditional" becomes increasingly arbitrary, and worse, things can be disqualified even if you follow all the rules for period correctness, but it still doesn't meet half imagined notion of "traditional". Worse, when the people laying down the law show that they have no understanding of the thing they're laying down the law on. This was why I ended up leaving TRaK

And NASCAR teams have a long tradition of "creative rules interpretation"

Someone was a VERY good boy that year!

As far as durability goes, we are talking about a product designed to stay shiny after people walk all over it for a week or so, which is more than can be said for your typical model.

I liked Model Master German Silver for that, because it had some depth. You might still be able to hunt down some jars.

Whatever the guy's deficits as a human being, you have to admit that beating out Barris before you're old enough to vote is a pretty impressive feat.

Oh, I'm sure they're trying to improve their image, but if it works, great. Personally, I think NASCAR's biggest problem has better that they're still trying to pretend it's still 1973, and if this leads to better electric cars, even better.

I'd have to say, it's the building part I like. There are any number of prebuilt models out there where the subject is right, and so is the price, and they probably did a better job of putting it together than I would, but the urge to buy isn't there. Just buying it and putting it on a shelf seems to unsatisfying. However, as it becomes increasingly clear that this is the only way I'm going to get models of certain subjects, I may have to rethink this.

Nice to see that it's still intact, and it's going to a good home.

Yes, an admin should probably consolidate these two threads with the Steve Scott thread

This stuff goes in cycles. We already had one two tone revival in the late '70s/early '80s, but you can be sure that if the '50s colour palette comes back, people will be griping about how much they hate it.

Probably derived from this.

How it was done before electronics.

Even a few late model DB4s had the covered lights.

I saw one of the Easy Click tractors in the flesh, and they do go together really nice, so the snap thing isn't a deal breaker. I'm guessing they're trying to cater to the plastic robot fans? There are some nice details, though on something like an Aston Martin, the lack of a full engine is kind of a disappointment. It sounds like it's going to be over three figures here in Canada, and at that price, you have a right to be picky.

Here are the passages I'm thinking of, courtesy of Project Gutenberg Barlow and Tinny-Peete arrived at the concrete highway where the psychist's car was parked in a safety bay. "What—a—boat!" gasped the man from the past. "Boat? No, that's my car." Barlow surveyed it with awe. Swept-back lines, deep-drawn compound curves, kilograms of chrome. He ran his hands futilely over the door—or was it the door?—in a futile search for a handle, and asked respectfully, "How fast does it go?" The psychist gave him a keen look and said slowly, "Two hundred and fifty. You can tell by the speedometer." "Wow! My old Chevvy could hit a hundred on a straightaway, but you're out of my class, mister!" Tinny-Peete somehow got a huge, low door open and Barlow descended three steps into immense cushions, floundering over to the right. He was too fascinated to pay serious attention to his flayed dermis. The dashboard was a lovely wilderness of dials, plugs, indicators, lights, scales and switches. The psychist climbed down into the driver's seat and did something with his feet. The motor started like lighting a blowtorch as big as a silo. Wallowing around in the cushions, Barlow saw through a rear-view mirror a tremendous exhaust filled with brilliant white sparkles. "Do you like it?" yelled the psychist. "It's terrific!" Barlow yelled back. "It's—" He was shut up as the car pulled out from the bay into the road with a great voo-ooo-ooom! A gale roared past Barlow's head, though the windows seemed to be closed; the impression of speed was terrific. He located the speedometer on the dashboard and saw it climb past 90, 100, 150, 200. -------------------------------- "Coming into Chicago!" bawled Tinny-Peete. Other cars were showing up, all of them dreamboats. Watching them, Barlow began to wonder if he knew what a kilometer was, exactly. They seemed to be traveling so slowly, if you ignored the roaring air past your ears and didn't let the speedy lines of the dreamboats fool you. He would have sworn they were really crawling along at twenty-five, with occasional spurts up to thirty. How much was a kilometer, anyway? --------------------------------- Screamingly sweet blasts of sound surrounded them as they stopped for a red light. "What the hell is going on here?" said Barlow in a shrill, frightened voice, because the braking time was just about zero, he wasn't hurled against the dashboard. "Who's kidding who?" "Why, what's the matter?" demanded the driver. The light changed to green and he started the pickup. Barlow stiffened as he realized that the rush of air past his ears began just a brief, unreal split-second before the car was actually moving. He grabbed for the door handle on his side. The city grew on them slowly: scattered buildings, denser buildings, taller buildings, and a red light ahead. The car rolled to a stop in zero braking time, the rush of air cut off an instant after it stopped, and Barlow was out of the car and running frenziedly down a sidewalk one instant after that. --------------------------------- Hopefully you get the idea. To cater to the feeble minded, they engineered cars so there was a whole lot more drama than was actually happening.

Any else here ever read the science fiction story "The Marching Morons"? Because this particular item is giving me really strong flashbacks to it.

Monogram also released a 1931 Packard in metal, as well as a Duesenberg.

If you ever looked at Picasso's early work, there is no doubt the man knew how to paint. By any standard, Gerald Wingrove was an amazing craftsman.

Oh, I'm not holding my breath. I see it as an interesting thought experiment. Me, I'm hoping ICM survives long enough for their Model A to hit the shelves here, and that we see other vintage Ford products from them. As for 1/24 kits, it's already been covered multiple times that the actual kit scales can vary from 1/22 to 1/27, and in practice the variations blur out any actual distinctions between labeling a kit as 1/24 or 1/25.

In the aircraft and military side of the hobby, it seems there's no such thing as too much redundancy. It just makes sense to go for a popular subject, especially if you can do a better version, or a variation nobody else has done. One big gap in the '32 Ford kit offerings is a decent stock version. Right now, our only option is the AMT version, and at the risk of starting another holy war, by modern standards, it's pretty horrible, On the hot rod side, as nice as Revell's '32 Fords are, a great deal of test has been generated about all things they should have. Instead of the high tech example posted at the beginning of this topic, how about a roadster that goes the full traditional route? Imagine an exhaustively researched roadster kit with leaf springs all around, and a detailed flathead V-8 with period correct speed equipment. All the details are there, with photoetch detail parts. Neopreme bif & little tires that actually look like rubber tires. Wheels with trim rings that actually look real, or a set of photoetch Kelsey-Hayes wheels. Best of all, everything fits, so you don't have to fight it into submission. Of course, a kit like that would probably end up in the three figure range, but people are always moaning that we're too cheap. Would there be enough demand to justify something like that?