Mark

The Mustang and Chevelle were completed pre-Hobbico bankruptcy. Already tooled, ready to go, all the new company had to do was produce them. What '71 Mustang? One brief mention on FB, quickly deleted. Until there is an official announcement and release date...it doesn't exist.

Zocchi never built a car or even had a shop that I'm aware of, but he did have one or two cars done a year, going back to the early Sixties. He could be considered a patron of the customizing art.

I've got a name for it, sort of rhymes with "Gas Monkey"...

They're E&J (Edmund & Jones). Not trying to be picky on the name, but having the correct one can rope more information in during a search.

Looks like a savvy move to me...who will know more about putting kits together from the Parts Packs than one of the guys who helped create them?

...the Great Unloading has begun!

It's too bad Revell changed owners, maybe they'd have done something along the lines of the Foose kits with other designer/builders like Martin Brothers or Kindigit. A couple of all-new tools like the Ford pickup and Cadillac, then some wheels and other parts to add to existing kits.

Isn't the ex-Monogram Camaro kit a '78? There were some changes to that kit over the years (stock wheels, for one). The "new" kit might be an old Revell custom-only deal. The '69 Camaro might be interesting, maybe a new variation. The old Monogram kit was 1/24 scale, and every version I'm aware of had a small-block engine. The '66 flip-front kit should do well for them. I know a guy who bought a lot of collections, rarely did he ever get a collection that didn't have at least one of those among the haul.

I had one of the Charlie Allen Dart kits back in the day, and bought another, sealed, around 1984. Someone showed up at a toy show in the Cleveland area, he/they had several tables and had cartons of late Sixties MPC kits. A couple of years later, I thought about moving the front wheel openings back to the stock location and casting the body. I never got around to either, having chosen to do a '67 4-4-2 body instead. The Charlie Allen and Ramchargers Dart bodies have the front wheel openings moved forward from stock, while the L.A. Dart and subsequent reissues have the wheel openings a bit further back from stock, to fit the slightly shorter wheelbase of the castoff Hemi Under Glass floorpan.

There is a 1:1 wheel, but I don't know who made them. I haven't seen many of these, but all of them were wider than the Corvette wheels. All were used as rear wheels on dragsters or funny cars, and the spoke areas were gold. The gold would lead me to believe these are magnesium wheels, as many of those received treatments that resulted in the gold color. The AMT '71 Thunderbird kit has similar wheels also.

I never had an original Californian kit, but I don't think the Super Spider wheels were in it. Those wheels may have turned up in an MPC early Eighties Firebird reissue, but I'm not positive about that.

The Charlie Allen '69 Dart has Saddleback Dodge sponsorship. The body from that kit was then converted to '70 spec for the phantom Ramchargers car. In '71 the body was altered again (trunk lid removed, rear wheel openings enlarged, front wheel openings moved back) and combined with parts of the Hemi Under Glass (chassis, interior) to create the LA Dart kit. Those are the only three versions of the MPC Dart, the Hemi Hunter is a straight reissue of the LA Dart.

The original Ramchargers Challenger funny car kit was all wrong. The Ramchargers were one of the first teams to adopt the Mickey Thompson (Pat Foster) narrow "digger" chassis. MPC's kit had the old Logghe chassis. It also had a stock promo style body, but I doubt any of us would mind seeing that now. The kit will likely have the digger style chassis and smoothed over body, same as the Soapy Sales and Model King issues. The MPC '70 Dart funny was just another chance to use the '69 Charlie Allen kit tooling. I believe the chassis was newly tooled for that kit, something MPC seldom did. They often chopped and reworked existing chassis to fit bodies they wanted to use. The Ramchargers never had a '70 Dart, only the '67. The body didn't tilt up on the '67, it was narrowed several inches to ease maintenance.

Too, some of the Foose kits are getting hard to find. I wanted a '68 Firebird a while back, couldn't find one to save my life.

It's a matter of personal opinion and taste. I'm not familiar with the shop you mentioned, but I'd let Foose rework my car over most of the other "flames and skulls" guys out there.

Two things to look at: -the separate piece for the grille surround. If you choose to mold it in to the body (at the top: the sides should show a join between it and the fenders) count on a little bit of careful work. -on the finished model, when you turn it over you can see all the way up the sides of the interior, on either side of the chassis. It is possible to cut thin pieces of sheet plastic and fit them between interior and chassis to block that view. The assembled car does look good when assembled with patience, though.

Looks like there will be a separate trailer (with decals)...

All of the variations (camper, original wedge hauler) were MPC so they were all based on the MPC pickup. The rework/consolidation of the two pickup tools was probably done to piece together the best remaining parts of both. The MPC cab tooling was probably worn out. I built an original Racer's Wedge a few years ago, the 1971 annual kit cab was pretty sloppy in places even then.

The difference in price between curbside and full detail kits won't ever again be as pronounced as in years past. It costs the same to tie up a molding machine for both, costs the same to print boxes and instruction sheets, and so on. Sure, there is less plastic, but that was never the biggest cost in the production of a kit. I read somewhere that it costs more to print a kit box than the cost of the materials in the box.

That Californian will be interesting. You won't be able to make it look like any design study that GM ever did, the body side alterations don't seem to match up with their work from that period. But lose the spoilers and scoops, and replace that grille with something flatter to match up with the cut line at the front of the hood, and you'd be off to a good start in cleaning up the design.

MPC released the Coronet (body) on a slot car. The chassis and engine got recycled into the '66 Charger right away, leaving MPC no opportunity to do anything else with the Coronet. It's a shame they didn't set that body aside, they could have pulled it out later for a reissue. Then again, they'd probably have hacked it up into a dirt track car or something.

The '67 Barracuda was AMT, as was the '67 Chevy pickup kit. For some never explained reason, both went to MPC for '68. The AMT-boxed MPC kits ('65 Coronet, Wild Dream/King T, Dream Rod, etc) had MPC tires, decals, and even box and instruction sheet artwork (except for AMT branding). The two '67 kits had AMT tires, box art, and decal sheets which would separate them from the 1965 offerings. The 1968 versions of both had all MPC parts and decal sheets.

The MPC Toronado chassis and engine look a lot like the Jo-Han pieces, except MPC's inner front fenders are all one piece while Jo-Han's are separate. MPC used a plain old wire axle in front while Jo-Han used a two-piece plastic axle setup with CV joint detail. The two halves of the axle overlapped inside the front differential, someone at Jo-Han did some brain work on that kit. I've got all of the stock Toronado kits (MPC and Jo-Han) but never tried parts from one on the other, but I'd bet they fit with little work.

The truck is the same one that has been issued in the last 20 years or so. AMT cab (converted from GMC trim to Chevrolet), MPC interior, then newly tooled grille/bumper, engine, and rear half of chassis. Ertl created the "new" kit by combining parts of the "old" AMT and MPC tools.

I have never had cable, but my mom did, so I'd see the changes in channels offered every year or so. Did you ever fill out their surveys and tell them which programs you watched most often? You can thank the idiots who actually filled those out and sent them in, as by doing that you're giving the cable company a blueprint for which channels to move over to the extra-cost packages next time around...