Richard Bartrop

That Cameo has my attention.

i've always had a yen for the Lamborghini Espada. Wild looks combined with some concession to practicality A close second would be an old Lincoln or Riviera upgraded with modern mechanicals. But i would have to say, my ultimate dream car would be, an actual dream car; Take a rendering of one of those finned bubble top visions of future past to a specialty builder and say, "Build this" On a bit of a tangent, the Hemmings Blog has an item on someone who is doing just that with their dream car. https://www.hemmings.com/blog/2018/05/02/the-sentinel-280-syd-meads-most-influential-design-revived-as-one-off-full-scale-project/

Getting back to the original topic, trucks in the US don't have to meet the safety, emissions, or economy standards that cars do, so it's no wonder that making them is more profitable. Of course, if nobody buys cars, and everyone buys trucks, how long before that little oversight is corrected?

Oh yes, if ever there was a place where this idea would work, it would be low density suburban sprawl, where every household has a lot of surface area with which to collect sunlight. As for the attractiveness of solar panels, this leads to the latest installment of Why Elon Musk is a Genius: https://www.tesla.com/en_CA/solarroof?redirect=no Where most eco-warriors are content to just harangue you about how stupid you are for not listening, and we all know how much we love being harangued, Musk is making solar panels that will actually look attractive, and function like roof tiles.

Or the flap over AMT before Round 2 picked them up. I'm trying to think of a time when the model companies weren't having some sort of financial crisis.

My other love is science fiction, and one thing that's popular in the fan community is portraits of their characters. It does cut into my modeling time, but it pays the bills. I'm sharing this one because of its relevance to the group. One gentleman wanted his biker dragon character posed with a Chevy C-10 pickup. The truck was drawn in Photoshop using the path tool mostly, and the dragon was drawn freehand in Clip Studio because its drawing functions are so much nicer than those of Photoshop.

Very nicely done, and I know all too well what it's like trying to use Photoshop with a mouse. My hat is off to you

And I totally agree that his children are idiots for turning their noses up at it.

Good for you. I work out of my apartment, which is close to downtown. What I can't walk to, I can get to by public transit, and that works just fine for me. I also realize that this is not something everybody can do, or even wants to do. "Everybody should just do what I do" is not a viable option. See the people who think we should get rid of cars completely, and just ride everywhere on bicycles. People have already made the decision to live close to work. A lot, in fact. This is why we have the densely packed hives of humanity we call "cities". Now this doesn't mean you can't run a city off solar, but there won't be enough surface area in the city itself to do it.

i suppose we could argue whether there are nicer cars, but you have to admit, that one is really nice.

I'd like to see more Maseratis, but the Aurora Maserati and Aston Martin will do nicely in the meantime. However there are far better E-type and GTO kits out there.

the last time we had this chat, i did come calcualtions, and it turned out the sunlight falling on 1000 square feet over an average day would yield the energy equivalent of not quite 6 gallons of gasoline. Solar cells currently have about 20%, so that goes down to 1.2 gallons. Since I couldn't get a straight answer about the efficiency of electrolysis last time, I did a little digging, and according to Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolysis_of_water#Efficiency industrial plants can get abut 70-80% efficiency, so assuming none of that electricity is used for anything else in the household, you should have about the equivalent of a gallon's worth of gasoline per day to fuel your vehicle. If you have a really short commute, and a really efficient car, it should just work. However, if you live in a city where you may be sharing that roof with a dozen other households, you can see that you start running out of energy pretty quick. This in no way means that rooftop solar cells are a bad idea, but it's pretty clear that it's not going to work for everyone.

But that 1951 Hoffmann kit will be worth it.

I know it does, and I'm all too familiar with the questionable lumps of plastic that have been sold because of a fancy box. As a consumer, I want to know what I'm getting into. I'm not buying a box, I'm buying a model kit.

Nice. Are those the wheels that came with the kit? Kit wire wheels that nice are so rare at that scale.

That, I can't disagree with, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't think this was a trend that can't die fast enough.

Models are a little different, in that the whole point is fakery. We're trying to fool the brain into thinking a few ounces of plastic is actually two tons of metal.

It makes just as much sense as the trend many years ago for pre faded and pre-distressed jeans, i. e. none. I'm starting to really hate the term "autheniticity" , because almost without fail it's used to describe something that's contrived and artificial, but without the virtue of being attractive. It's not unlike when Marie Antionette would play farmer.

I can think of any number of things that bug me, but trying to give advice to people to people who don't want it is a waste of time and energy.

A company that makes plastic model kits, buying up moulds for plastic model kits just so they can make more plastic model kits? I know, too simple, too obvious. I'm sure the real reason has to do with some nefarious plan to undermine American society. No doubt plans are already afoot to melt down those Model A moulds in order to make that hotly anticipated Borgward Isabella kit.

Some sports and racing models, like the one the Heller kit is based on, had a lightweight body made of fabric over a wood frame, and the best they could manage is a semigloss finish. A light spray of Dullcoat over gloss paint will give the desired effect

They're the same kit, but the Revell kit has some extra decals for the instrument panel.

I remember that '32. One of the earliest kits I ever built, and I found cars of this vintage way more interesting than most contemporary cars then. Near as I could tell, that, and similar 1/32 kits int he Palmer line were just reboxed Pyro kits, and weren't that bad. Not the greatest kits, but unlike Palmer's larger offerings, at least you got something that looked like what it was supposed to be.

That Insight, like the Aztek before it, should be a reminder to all that "distinctive" is not necessarily the same thing as "beautiful"

Truth be told, I prefer the looks of the Ford and Chrysler products for those years, and for '57, Chrysler had the best looking of the bunch by far.