Mark

It's probably traceable to its promo model origins. To make the seats one piece, they would have been engineered to have hollow seat backs. The core part of the tooling that forms the seat probably had to be a certain thickness, which added to the thickness of the seat. Had they tried to mold it solid, the seat back would have been relatively thick, possibly the hot plastic injected into the mold would have taken too long to cool enough to allow removal from the mold. This also happens when an interior is re-engraved over last year's upholstery patterns. The area is smoothed off and the new pattern engraved further into the tool. That would make the seat thicker too. This didn't happen with the Wildcat though, as it was new for 1965 and was not reworked or updated for '66.

The wedge bodies came off as soon as it was figured out that the airfoil over the rear wheels accomplished the same purpose...downforce on the rear wheels. The airfoil was cheaper, lighter, and didn't have to be taken off to get at the engine between rounds.

As long as the parts have cooled (thicker/larger ones generate heat during the curing process) and are fully cured, prep and paint any time you like. If you use mold release on your molds, you have to make sure no trace of it remains on your parts. Once that is cleaned off, the parts are ready to work with.

The information seen most often would indeed indicate that the lacquers and Model Master lines will be going away, the "plain old Testors" sprays and bottles will be sticking around. A lot of local hobby shop guys will sometimes spread bad information because they don't want to add or continue a product line. They'll take the gamble that you'll find a "close enough" product or item that they already have on the shelves, a gamble they often lose with me.

Much of the chassis and engine from the annual kit were recycled into the '71-'73 annual kits. The '73 ended up as the Warren Tope Trans-Am racing version, which was reissued a few years ago.

I might be wrong, but I'm under the impression that Chrome-Tech did the plating for Modelhaus, and Bob decided to quit the business after losing them, by far his biggest customer.

They're the same kit. The grille filler and other parts to smooth off the body were in the 1970 annual kit, which is where the body and related parts came from. Both are numbered T-341. The red one came first, it is in the 1970 catalog. The box art changed in 1971, the white/blue stripe scheme on the box tied the car in with the stripe decals in the Ford Louisville LNT-8000 race car hauler. Not sure if the decals in the kit needed a change to match the new box art. The Mach Won (with the white/blue color scheme box art) stayed in the catalog through 1973. Some of these kits had bodies molded in yellow (chassis and related parts molded in white). I've got two of these, one all white and the other with a yellow body.

The green of the built Cobra looks like metallic. It might be sprayed over molded green, but the kit green is solid. It's pretty much the same green as the Barris Cruisin' USA '66 Mustang. The Reggie Jackson Cobra was molded in that green, there is also a Lesney issue in that green. It and the Reggie Jackson issue may have been produced together for a while...same plastic parts and tires, dropped into different boxes with different paper (instructions/decals). Lesney did that with several kits during their ownership of AMT. Heck, even the original AMT did that every so often.

One book I have on Canadian automobiles states that, for a good part of the Sixties, Pontiac actually outsold Chevrolet there. It's credible...the price difference was less there than here, and the buyer did get the differences that were visible, if not those under the skin.

Those kits were selling higher prior to the reissue announcement, so I'd suspect there is a market for it. Someone who no longer posts here (won't get into that) did state that proportions and dimensions of the Brougham kit are generally accurate for 1/25 scale, the big exception being the area ahead of the front wheels. The fenders aren't long enough, so he said, the overall length was made up by lengthening the bumper bullets. Remember, this is the Brougham which shares absolutely no body panels with other Cadillacs. The couple of 1:1 Broughams that I have seen close up would indicate to me that the kit is generally accurate, more so than many other car kits from that era. The (by today's standards) unorthodox assembly procedure is a turn-off for many builders today.

Same reason they used the Chevy engine. GM didn't want to set up to produce two different frames in Canada. And they wanted to produce them there, for the cars sold there. So they used the same chassis and engine in both Chevrolet and Pontiac there.

That sheet would have been used in several kits because it has Ford, Chevrolet, and MoPar parts decals on it. 4/66 is too late for 1966 annual kits but too early for 1967, so it would have been used in Trophy Series or other non-annual kits. Sometimes kits were not produced with the same decal sheet over its entire length of production, especially if the box art was vague about markings. So it would be tough to pin down exactly which kit(s) included this very sheet.

Maybe the plan is to include this as an extra in another kit, as opposed to issuing it separately. The Mooneyes dragster is apparently being released as a single car kit instead of the original double kit, but with the Chrysler engine included as an extra. Possibly each car from the old double kits will be issued as a stand-alone with an extra or two, instead of in double kits. That way, they'd get twice as many releases and also make use of more of those parts pack tools. They probably have to run several of those together at one time anyway, to make better use of the capacity of the injection molding machines.

If (likely) that section was removed for use in the Chevy kit, it's doubtful that Revell would have had their engineering staff fabricate a piece to block off the (then) empty section. They'd have just left it alone, and just set it aside in case they wanted to use another section in something later on. Maybe Atlantis stuck that filler piece in, with the thought of issuing this pack at some point?

The display items pack is probably one of the original group that first appeared in 1962-63.

The gas can and fire extinguisher haven't turned up in another kit that I'm aware of, but those hand tools look a lot like the ones in the Revell '53/'54 Chevy kits...

1968, sounds like first issue. I had a couple of them back in the day, that's about when I remember first seeing them. Unassembled adds value, original boxes really add value.

The Tamiya spray primers aren't the best choice for scratch filler primer. Their bottled liquid surface primer is very good however. I apply it to bodywork areas only, with a brush, then sand it. As always, don't rely on the primer to fill deep scratches. Get everything as smooth as possible before putting on the primer.

If you are building a replica of your 1:1 truck, you've got the ultimate reference material at your fingertips. Take measurements of the 1:1 part, and break it down into simple shapes. You might have a spare part that could be reshaped to look like the booster, and a piece of square or rectangular strip styrene might work for the master cylinder itself.

I don't remember any feature articles, something like that would stick out in my mind. Maybe there was a picture of one in coverage of some contest?

I'd leave that Buick exactly the way it is.

I don't know the circumstances, but I think that guy in Kansas (Jerry Jeunemann-sp?) lost all of that stuff. He was (is?) into Mopars big time, as I recall his collection leaned heavily towards them. That Fireball seems to have been repainted several times...one repaint dispensed with the fade, the front clip was pearl white, rest of the car was candy red! Barris had nothing to do with the Zingers (unusual for him, I don't think he ever claimed any credit for those!), that's likely why the show passed them over. A guy I know was actually contacted by the producers of one of those shows. Their brief was to locate someone with a huge collection of model cars, whose wife wasn't crazy about it. That guy does have a lot of them, but the missus didn't have any issues with it. He referred them to another married guy...again, wife didn't have a problem. I don't watch any of that stuff, so I'm not aware of any such episode ever getting produced.

There actually was a '60 hardtop promo, even though Ford didn't build a Falcon hardtop until mid-'63. The roofline on the hardtop promo was different, it wasn't just a sedan with no B-pillars. Not many made, fewer of them slipped out, tough to find now. The sedan and Ranchero are different toolings, but parts like bumpers and taillights do interchange between them. If you wanted to patch in the radiused wheel openings, sections from a Ranchero body could be stubbed in.

Not sure what exactly the original poster wants a PG for, but keep in mind that the Fifties kits all have the early cast iron version, not the later aluminum one which would be better suited to a performance application. The cast iron version is strictly for stock versions or Stock class drag cars where the OE transmission would be required.

Robert Klein did a routine about those "Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom" shows..."set up the camera, in five minutes a certain snake comes along, eats a certain insect, right in focus, even smiles, then leaves!" Someone I knew used to bust on CSI all the time: "no matter what case they are involved in, they always launch a ten million dollar investigation with three or four guys working full time".