Richard Bartrop

The Olds is 1/16, and the Monroe Special is 1/30, according to Scalemates.

I went to an estate sale, and got a load of kits. A good chunk of my want list has been taken care of, and only went a little over budget. I managed to snag these resin kits for $16 Canadian each. I had been collecting parts for a Mercury Speadster, so the transkit will make things much easier. This was one of my grail kits. They hardly ever turn up on eBay, and I got this one for $24. The Olds was the priciest one at $40. These were $16 each. I bought a second Packard as a parts car for another project, though I found another partly completed one on a table of $4 kits. This as also on the $4 table, so I snapped it up.

There's a lot of good stuff coming out, especially considering all the pronouncements of doom we've seen.

The Deuce roadster has so much potential. The wheels and tires from the '29 roadster would make a nice option, but even if they don't do that, a trip to the parts box will yield so many possibilities.

Is that blue roadster a '26-27 T roadster, or that just the camera angle fooling me?

Nice to see the '37 Pickup is coming back, and the tractor looks interesting. I'm wondering if there'd be any demand for vintage American farm equipment?

Look at the Japanese kitmakers. Look at Italeri. Heck, even the most casual perusal of any kitmaker that isn't Round 2 or Atlantis will show you that not only do kits of supercars sell, they've been selling for years.

Yes, I know, I build slow. The interior is together. The rear instrument panel had some engraving that wasn't on the real car, so I filled that in. The front instrument cluster in the original car is finished in a black and chrome diamond pattern that would be microscopic at 1/25 scale, so I fudged a bit and painted it in Tamiya Metallic Grey with the bevels and knobs picked out with a Molotow pen. The glass over the instruments was accomplished with multiple coats of Pledge Floor Gloss.

I really like where this is going.

And I'm fine with that for purely selfish reasons. There are young people who are interested in older subjects, and that's great. That you should only be interested in the things that happened within, your lifetime is a dull and stunted worldview. When I was a kid, the prewar classics were the subjects that got me to spend my allowance. At the time, most of them were only 40-50 years old, so they were newer than most of the subjects we're clamouring for. Really, are the modern exotics more ridiculous than some of the things we were supposed to like as kids? From what I've seen, young people love sci fi, and Bandai seems to be doing a pretty healthy business selling their giant robot kits. The Japanese kitmakers put out a steady stream of foreign exotics, and people seem to keep buying them. It has been pointed out that is group is a little insular, so I'd say the interest is there, but it's happening outside our rather limited focus.

That name just drips irony.

Ferrari is already talking about going electric, so it wouldn't surprise me. And does it really matter? They aren't going to make any cool sports cars at all if they don't stay in business. So Lamborghini makes SUVs. They also made tractors, and that never bothered anyone. So did Porsche, and they can trace their heritage to a sizable chunk of the Nazi war machine to boot. Those cool Mercedes Gullwings share a name and a badge with buses and garbage trucks, and people seem to be just fine with that. The magic name of Mustang started out as a tarted up Ford Falcon, and if anyone had a problem with it sharing a blue oval with things like the Pinto, I've never heard it. A rose by any other name smells just as sweet, and whatever else they build isn't going to affect how fast those performance cars go, or how they look.

And yet your own numbers showed that you were still ahead of the game charging an electric car from a fossil fuel plant as opposed to just burning it in a IC engine. And since we're both in agreement that we should look at the big picture, since only two thirds of the electricity in the US is generated by fossil fuels, you get an ever greater environmental benefit.

Of course they do, and some people are a little too close too the problem. Otherwise smart, well-educated people can develop tunnel vision, and they need to be made aware of other arguments And a member of a group of Hydrogen advocate, backing his arguments with info from a person who himself is a hydrogen promoter doesn't in itself mean we shouldn't listen to him.

That list is telling. No plain vanilla contemporary cars in that list. I don't blame you for not getting enthused over a Ford Escape, but few people got enthused about building a model of a stock Pinto back then either. Exciting cars are still being built, and some are being modeled.

And of course, the critical ones are motivated by the purest altruism. Sure, they're going to put the best possible spin on things, but that in itself doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong. The fact is, everyone has an ax to grind, and it doesn't mean you can't check their assertions for yourself. I think it does suggest you're on the right track when sources that are critical to your position still end up proving you right.

Am I right in thinking the Deuce grill wasn't included this time around?

Am I right in thinking the Deuce grill wasn't included this time around?

It's not one of Harry Bradley's better efforts to be sure, but it does look like it has some kitbashing potential.

The secret to doing eyes is that the whites of the eyes aren't actually pure white. If you make then just slightly lighter than the surrounding skin, they won't pop quite so much.

The Californian has my interest, if only for a set of wheels to finish up my '67 Toronado

I know that movie.

Apparently Ford toyed with the idea of a 4 door Mustang.

Beats me. The cars have always been available here.

I finally saw a C8 Corvette in the wild. Red with black trim.