Mark

No, that one was the Turbosonic Dragster. Copperhead shares chassis and engine with the reissued AMT wedge body dragsters, and the Tommy Ivo mid-engine dragsters.

The MPC dirt track cars (those with full bodies) all used that through-the-car exhaust setup. The chassis is set up for multiple wheelbases ala their Seventies NASCAR kits. I'm pretty certain there were two different rear suspension setups. Not sure what was in each one, or if the reissues are identical to the originals in that respect. The Model King reissues lacked the left front "floater" or "pony" tire, and I don't think the Round 2 versions issued so far have it either.

Wonder what his prices are on office furniture...

If it still exists (all three Monte Carlos still do), Round 2 will get to it. So far, two of the Montes (stock '70, and AMT Allison NASCAR) have been reissued, that leaves the MPC dirt track car.

For some reason, the BFG tires made by MPC (and later, Ertl) are plastic eaters. They damage any plastic they come into contact with, especially clear plastic. They're bad in that regard, on a level with early Sixties Revell tires. Hopefully Round 2's version will be different in that way.

All of the Wildcat and Riviera kits had the big engines. The AMT '66 Skylark GS had a 401 nailhead.

I can't recall any kit having a Buick 350 engine. The newest Buick V8 is probably the 455 in the Monogram (Revell) '70 GSX. It's 1/24 scale. The newest 1/25 scale engine would be in the AMT '69 Riviera. Their '69 Wildcat had one too, but you are unlikely to trip over one of those any time soon. The '70 Wildcat kit is curbside, no engine in that one. The GSX has an automaric, the Riviera a four-speed. All the modern V6 engines are turbos. The newest non-turbo Buick V6 is in the MPC Jeepster kit.

All of the Prestige Series kits I bought back then (duplicates in some cases) were good, except for the '65 Grand Prix. Ertl sent me a replacement body for that one.

In most cases I'll start with an unbuilt, or in Fred Sterns' terminology, "slightly started" one. Often one can be found with only the engine assembled, and maybe the body painted. A poor paint job often stalls the effort and it goes back in the box. Often any damaged engine or chassis parts can be replaced with identical ones from a later year or reissue kit. The damaged or glue bomb kits are useful when you want to cut the thing up, or build an out-of-box custom or drag version which most people wouldn't do with an older kit. Example: the AMT '63 Mercury kit had a lot of neat custom parts, enough for two radical custom versions. I found two started ones that were messed up to the point where they couldn't be assembled stock any more. Everyone else passed on them because of that, but I wanted the custom versions. Bonuses include being able to find replacement custom parts (few people used them), and for this particular car a lot of other replacement parts can be found in the (relatively) easy to find reissue '64 hardtop. No easily restorable kits get hacked into customs, leaving those for the guys who want a stock one. Win-win.

Finding a restorable built model car is no different from searching out a restorable 1:1 car...buy the best, most complete one you can afford. The cheapest one seldom turns out to be the least expensive one over the long haul. But there are certain ones that you don't trip over at every swap meet, and seldom turn up on eBay. If you really want one and nothing else will do, sometimes you have to take whatever comes along, and just deal with it.

Then the Jo-Han intake will be a perfect fit. A couple of years ago, I went to an AMC gathering where the SC was the featured car. I think there were about thirty of them there, one or two did have cross ram intakes.

Some of the Jo-Han AMC kits had them. Offhand, the Shirley Shahan AMX (and "pro street" reboxed versions from Jo-Han and Testors), '70 Javelin and Rebel Machine, and '71-'74 Javelin/AMX kits had one. If you are fitting to an AMT engine, you'll need to tweak the intake as the Jo-Han kits all use the 1966 Marlin engine block. Jo-Han never tooled a '66-'79 style block. The SC/Rambler kit does not include a cross-ram intake.

Backdating will largely center around drilling out the headlights (they were filled in for the '77) and cleaning up the forward part of the front fenders. The fenders were messed with to meet the '77 front end piece.

Back when retail price on car kits was $2, K-Mart sold them for $1.44. $2.25 retail translated to $1.66 as I recall. But there were other places that carried model car kits, like the auction house (ex-theater) that had them as cheap as half a buck. The choices usually included some of the previous couple of years' annual kits (mostly MPC; seldom AMT, never Jo-Han), and a few odd Trophy Series and some of AMT's (often) poor-selling TV items like the Hero Imperial and My Mother the Car. The annual kits that wound up there weren't always what you'd think. I picked up a '71 Racer's Wedge Chevy after the '72 kits came out, I think I had to lay out a buck and a quarter for it, still sealed. There were a few places like that. They were getting slow sellers and returns from the local wholesaler. They'd have weekend sales on Saturdays between Thanksgiving and Christmas every year. I picked stuff up even cheaper there. The wholesaler gradually lost the area department stores as they folded one by one. They didn't have K-Mart (they bought their own stuff) and Wal-Mart was unknown here until around 1990. They became a retail store, stopped selling returns because they no longer had any, and themselves closed up about four years ago.

That system worked well for K-Mart for many years, until some genius decided that they needed to go "upmarket"...

I once looked at that AMT Vega wagon body with the thought of piecing the wagon roof into an MPC hatchback body. After pondering the possibilities for a few minutes, I decided that mowing the lawn might be more productive...

The Buick wagon probably got scrapped after the last bunch of kits were run. The trailer and display engine from it were reused in the Nova wagon. Engine parts are rearranged, some not plated in the Buick kits (long block) are on the plated tree in the original Nova. Nobody is saying that the Buick body and chassis were altered into the Nova, just that some of its extras were reused in the Nova wagon. The Buick's mold base may have been reused for the Nova also. No parts are shared between the Nova wagon and the hardtop/convertible, except it looks like the six-cylinder engine moved over to the wagon for '63. If the Buick wagon still existed, we'd have seen it later as a Craftsman or Flower series kit. I'd bet a paycheck that it is long gone.

Not sure, I do know both engines have manual transmissions and they are not the same. And I don't recall seeing a floor shifter in the kit.

AMT '60 Starliner. Get one of the Round 2 reissues (there were two) as those have two building versions and two complete engines. You can take the stock version 352 for your '57 project, and still build the '60.

The '75 Nova was a clever facelift on the '68-'74 generation...looked all new, and consolidated chassis design with the Camaro/Firebird. That's back when GM worked smart more often than not. Then they got stupid, and replaced it with the designed-on-the-cheap X-cars...

All of the AMT Toronados ('67, '68, '70) were re-boxed Jo-Hans. Produced by Jo-Han in their plant, put into AMT boxes with AMT instruction sheets and decals. (AMT kits had bagged unplated parts starting with '69 annuals.) MPC had the promo contract for '67 only. But they issued a '68 kit in addition to the '67. For '67 and '68, whoever did the promo did the more accurate kit. Jo-Han made kits every year '66 through '72, but did not sell a '67 or '68 in its own packaging. Right now I'm not sure if they sold a '70 annual kit alongside the AMT boxing of same. Both companies did sell '70 4-4-2 annual kits.

As misshapen as that Vega wagon body is, I'd look for something close enough (coil spring front and rear) and let it go at that.

Correct.

One other thing: for the chassis detail, you want an AMT Monza, not MPC. The MPC underbody detail is pretty much equal to their Vega kits. On the other hand, if you want a Monza body, MPC's is the way to go.

AMT made four Monza kits: '75 (called just "Monza 2+2" on the box), '76, '77, and a custom only "Monza SS". The Round 2 reissue is a '77 but the box art is copied from the 1975 issue kit. All have stock underbody and suspension detail. Jenkins' Toys IX ('72) and X ('73) were built with stock front suspension but with R&P steering. X was later converted to a strut front end and '74 exterior trim. There were no subframe connectors on those two cars, the front ends were stock. The rear suspension and roll cage were tied in to the rocker panels. Toy XI ('74 Vega) had a full tube chassis and strut front end as built. The Monza kits would work for the engine compartment and floor detail. For XI (and the revised X) you'll need to start from scratch. I would build the "new" chassis onto the interior. A separate chassis looks cool while it's in the works, but pulling everything together into a complete package will be a pain. I'm looking forward to getting one of these things standing on four wheels, on a shelf.