Richard Bartrop

And thankfully, not everyone restricts their interests to the span of their own lives. Revell also seems to be doing their share of contemporary cars, so it looks like there's something for everyone.

Looking forward to seeing how this one turns out. I have a USA Oldies edition of the Marlin, and that one has poseable steering and no hole in the engine.

That's a good question. Bandai has doneTV ads for Gundam, but they also sell enough to be able to afford it. It's already been mentioned many times that the model companies just aren't doing the same amount of business they were, so can someone like Round 2 even afford an ad in Popular Mechanics these days? Comic books are going through the same thing car kits are, with a readership that is both shrinking, and growing older. and the whole idea of getting your information on collected sheets of compressed wood pulp seems to be slowly going the way of clay tablets. I guess it's kind of a Catch 22. You need to ads to generate sales, but if you don't have the sales, you can't afford the ads. Generally, this is where I get my news about new car kits.

In a sense the already did that. The Bentleys shared the same mechanicals as the Pheaton, but in a body that didn't look so much like a plain vanilla VW. A modern day Royale is a fun idea to speculate about, but seeing how VW already has an ultra luxury brand with Bentley, would another one make sense?

Got it.

I never had a problem using on Humbrol paint, provided you let the paint cure. As far as reacting with paint, we are talking about something that was intended to be put in your mouth, so chemically, it's probably the most benign thing you could put on a model.

That's pretty neat. and certainly fits in with dioramas.

I've used tooth paste to polish up both paint and bare plastic. Pearl Drops worKs especially well

Just another Chevy powered hot rod.

The Capri connection faked me out as well. I was trying to hunt down Capri variants/

It looks pretty much exactly like what you said. You opine that we're done with new car kit releases for a while, you're presented with a load of releases coming from foreign companies, and then decide that those really don't count.

There's some cars I'd like to see in kit form too, but just because they aren't making them, that doesn't mean that nobody's making car models.

Revell is seems to be cranking out new kits, and the foreign kitmakers are still at it.

Always nice to see someone doing the antiques. Thanks for sharing!

The gray definitely works.

They're will aware of the value of advertising to the young, which is why they used to pour money into this hobby, and why they now direct their efforts to things like video games. The problem is that the average of your typical car modeler has shifted dramatically since the '60s, and they went to build the same sort of cars they did when they were young. They have close to zero interest in the new models, which of course are the ones the car companies want to promote. So the value of any promotion they get from model kits is pretty much zero.

That is a sweet collection. The point was more aimed at John that as far as authenticity goes, both ways are perfectly acceptable.

Like Eric said, it's a 1930 Cadillac, and it looks like the art was based on a car Cadillac sent to Europe as part of a promotional tour in the summer of 1930. More info on the tour here. https://www.newcadillacdatabase.org/static/CDB/Dbas_txt/v16eurotx.htm. It looks like some of the cars in the tour had whitewalls, and some didn't. I'm in total agreement on both points.

No, you should do whatever you think looks best.

Not everyone wanted whitewalls back then, and it wasn't always about economics. Here's an ad for a Cadillac V-16, and this body was the most expensive one you could get for that year. Clearly the folks at GM thought it looked just fine without them.

The original idea back in the 1920s was to encourage race cars that had some relevance to production cars, but of course, things kind of mutated. Interesting to compare this with what's been happening with NASCAR.

I definitely was. I'd devour anything I could find on vintage and classic cars, I was a weird kid.

That Elvis Costello video was shot in Stanley park in Vancouver. I used to live in the area, and I recognized the totem poles.

The Gundams also highlight that sticky issue of licensing, and how that has changed.. Bandai owns all the rights to Gundam, whether it's models or the TV show. So they sell the TV show to the broadcasters, and then sell model kits in response to the demand created by that show. A nice setup, if you can make it work. It used to be, the car makers saw car models as advertising, and would actually assist the kitmakers. Now the car companies view models as another source of revenue. That's certainly going to make things tougher for anyone wanting to make any new car kits. Now the car companies still believe in selling to the young, but their focus is now on video games. Advertising to old cranks is largely seen as a waste of money, so maybe there is a reason to try and encourage more young people to get into car modeling.

It's their intellectual property, and they can charge what they want, but that still doesn't mean it doesn't stink.