Richard Bartrop

I love this quote from the article: “Granted that American car design now ranges from acceptable to handsome, still, one of the ways our cars aren’t better than they used to be is that they all tend to look alike…anyone familiar with the individuality of so many of the great American cars of the past does notice – and cares.” This was written in 1963

I'm good with a reissue of the Double T, however they choose to box it.

Some of the minivans already look an awful lot like what people in the 1930s thought the car of the future would look. And this 1970 Syd Mead concept for electric rental cars does look a lot like a Smart Car. You even see the rental models everywhere.

I could live with that.

In some ways, we've gone back to the 1920s with the tall and boxy look. Give it another generation, and maybe we'll back to chrome plated rocket ships.

Interesting that he says the Peerless diecast is selling well. Looks like there might be a demand for the classics after all.

Those MPC classic kits can be a journey into madness, but they do reward your patience. Great colour choice.

Making injection moulds is a labour intensive process requiring skilled i.e. expensive labour. Just to give you some idea of what's involved, back in '95 I got involved with a friend's project to make and market a science fiction themed boardgame. The idea was that the game pieces would be cards that clip into a little plastic stand. Cutting a set of moulds for that little clip ended up costing about 12 grand in 1995 dollars, so I have no doubt that the moulds for something like a model kit will run into some serious coin.

No kidding. I look at something like the coil springs on the Turbine Car, and I'm boggled at how they did that. They were like the Stradivarius of injection moulding.

Okay, it looks like the 25 T coupe does come with a roadster body and stock T parts, so it might be worth getting. I will say the recently reissued '23 T has a nicer looking chassis, even if it is a little more fiddly, and the Frontenac head from the '27 T Touring fits the engine on this one. That he kept calling the Saturn V kit the Saturn "Vee" doesn't say good things about how knowlegable he is about his products.

This Syd Mead concept is almost identical to Gene Baker's Stiletto custom. It would be interesting to know the story on that.

And thanks for Peter for pointing me to Inkscape.

Without a doubt, it's Syd Mead. He has a talent for making concepts that manage to look both otherworldly yet plausible. His work is what got me drawing more science fiction.

Nice to hear I'm not the only one who remembers that one.

As far as two vs. four doors go, I'm good either way.

And for all the griping about the Imperial, people still bought them.

Yes you do, but you can partly compensate by cranking the DPI way up, and you can export the paths to an Illustrator file. And you'll get no argument from me. Vector graphics are the ideal way to go with this.

A good Idea, though the path and lettering tools in Photoshop will do the job if you don't have access to a full vector graphics program.

I'd like a Lancer (or first gen Valiant) kit precisely because they're not like everything like everything else. In fact, I'm far more likely to buy one of those than the '63 Impala that was recently reissued. On one of the automotive websites, the running joke is that the readers' ideal car is a brown diesel station wagon with a stick shift. I guess the ideal MCM model would be a '63 Impala. AMT promo based kit, of course, because what's underneath is not important. No reissues, first issue purchased off eBay only, and finished like the one their father owned, or like the one they had in high school. Seriously, it's your time, you build whatever makes you happy, even if it is a '63 Impala. Sometimes, though, you just want something different.

Oh, they do look like fun, and some of the parts, llke the Spyder wheels look like they might have kitbashing potential. I am balking at the price, though. $30 US roughly translates to "you have got to be kIdding" Canadian.

Have you seen what passes for sanity out there? I vote for lunacy.

I'd buy a Lancer kit. Of course, some people would say that building models when you're an adult already puts you in the lunatic fringe.

Something to remember when print resolution is not always the same as screen resolution. That pixel on the screen can be any shade you want, but to simulate different levels of intensity in print, the printer uses a group of dots to simulate the desired effect, so the resolution is actually lower than it you just printed straight black and white without any greyscale. I hear you about the angles and lighting. Sometimes you're better off just using the photo as a reference to make your own gauges from scratch.

No argument there. Use the biggest, best one you can find.

That looks like a need project. It deserves a properly '60s show car paint job.