Mark

It might boil down to personal preference. I have had a few 1/8 scale kits but sold off all but enough parts for one Deuce roadster, and I haven't done anything with that. 1/16 is about as large as I care to go for the most part.

When the MPC 1/16 scale '63 was first released in the early Seventies, the initial review of it suggested that it was patterned on the Monogram 1/8 scale kit. Having had the Monogram kit many years ago, and having one of the MPC 1/16 scale kits now, the two do seem very similar in their parts breakdown. Between the two, I'd go with the MPC kit as it is smaller (though still quite big) and its level of detail is pretty much on a par with the larger kit. And it has optional parts also. I have never had the Monogram 1/12 scale '67 kit, but I wouldn't be surprised if it too had a similar level of detail, and parts breakdown, with the other two kits.

The Jo-Han 98 cent stock-only kits were offered in 1963, 1964, and 1965. All Jo-Han car kits had engines starting with the 1963 kits, the 98 cent series included. Not everything was offered in the 98 cent series. For '63, there were only four convertibles (Cadillac, Chrysler, Olds Starfire, and Plymouth Fury). Not sure which ones were offered in the other years, as I don't have any of them. '64 and (especially) '65 kits are hard to find compared to '63.

Yes, the Motor City Stocker 1970 kits were $1.00 retail. No optional parts, no decals, no engines, no whitewall tires kept the price down. I believe Dennis Doty mentioned in Model Car Journal that the two 1969 series (Wild Flower, and the cartoon racing series) were supposed to have retailed for $1.00 also, but with decals and whitewall tires AMT couldn't keep the cost down. So those ended up at $1.50. I'm pretty sure the Craftsman series kits (earliest ones were called Jr. Trophy Series) retailed for a buck, but those were a couple of years earlier.

I'd say, and I think the average judge would say, that if you are holding a gun while making a demand from someone, that you are threatening said person.

The clear parts are from an AMT '71 Duster.

Maybe try printing on white decal paper, making a black area with the signature left in white? The black decal could be applied where you want the signature, with the surrounding area painted to match.

The Hawaiian's new tires and wheels were molded in China. Atlantis didn't get any tooling located there. The new tires and wheels are okay but not fantastic. I bought a built Hawaiian to snag the front wheels for another car, as I recall the new wheels do not fit the old tires which is the combination that I would have liked to have.

This kit is 1/24 scale, it is a Monogram kit. It is the better of the two Pace Car kits (the other being the MPC 1/25 scale kit). In general it is a Monogram kit. The engine/transmission is molded in two halves, split down the center with a seam down the center of the oil pan. Suspension parts and exhaust are separate but simplified. Not a lot of parts but easy to assemble and looks good for a shelf model. The interior has the correct seats for the pace car version. I'm not sure if those could be had on other Corvettes that year. Rear spoiler and other add-ons are molded as separate pieces, as are both bumpers and the T-roof inserts.

The tires are molded separately from the rest of the kit, naturally. The plastic whitewall inserts are probably in each kit's tool. Not having them in front of me, the lettering is different between the Boot Hill Express and Li'l Coffin pieces. The Hairy Olds kit has entirely different inserts. Those Monogram slicks are nice for 1/25 scale applications where you want a "little bit bigger" slick. The insert piece from the Hairy Olds kit can be altered to take 1/25 scale wheels, then cast to get as many as wanted.

Electric is cheaper than gasoline only because those using electricity to power their cars aren't paying their share of highway taxes. You know, the ones that used to be listed on a sign next to the gas pump, but no longer are...

Yet another example of what happens when eBay dishes out free listings...

The little stuff isn't discounted anywhere, probably similar to grocery stores not discounting necessities (except milk or eggs, but those are often loss leaders designed to pull you into the store to buy other stuff). People who need a package of styrene strip or a bottle of cement are mostly buying when they need it, and unless the price is way out of whack they will buy it when they have it in their hands.

There is no way anyone can sell any new item for one-fifth of what others sell it for. Sounds too good to be true, it is too good to be true.

We got pretty much the same amount of snow overnight. Those pics look like they could have been taken here. My snow brush wasn't put away yet, but was close...but it was still in the hallway near the door. The branches on the backyard trees loaded up a lot more, seeing as they had leaves starting to grow on them. They're drooping closer to the house than ever before, I think they might get a trim over the summer...

I found my GG kit (in a different box; at first I thought I had the original box). The roll bar is not shown in the instructions. The 1:1 bar would have been tight to the inside of the body, maybe the Ramchargers kit piece was oversize and wouldn't have fit within the GG body. With the clear canopy in place, it wouldn't be seen anyway. MPC's show rod and drag car kits usually approximated the look of the 1:1 cars, but were often "off" in many ways. Sometimes they doctored the box art photos, to change the wheels on a funny car or add windshield wipers to a Pro Stocker. When they used an illustration instead of a photo, you could count on the kit to be WAY off.

The metallic plastic does seem to be more brittle to start with. I've got an MPC '65 Dodge 880 convertible kit, the gold body is broken into three or four pieces. The Revell mid-Seventies metallic plastic is really bad...the bronze '56 Ford pickup in particular. That stuff doesn't take cement very well either...

The "stock" colors on most promos are probably a fair amount off from the actual car colors. Other details often differed too. I've never heard of anyone claiming the 1:1 car was misrepresented.

These kits are easy to mess with, putting a Ford mill (or anything else) in won't be too tough. The Y-block from one of the '57 Ford kits would be a good choice...just need to scrounge a neat set of headers (or rework the SBC pieces from the roadster kit)...

The company that did that windshield wasn't around long. They first opened up selling windshield wipers in ex-Fotomat kiosks (remember Fotomat?) and branched out into insurance jobs doing windshield replacements. They also had kiosks in a couple of shopping malls, and there they'd always have someone glad-handing and handing out flyers. The couple of times that poor unfortunate person managed to corner me, I'd make sure he/she, and a few others, heard about what they'd done to my truck, and how I made sure everyone I knew heard about it. Between the overpriced windshield wipers, (probably) pretty high overhead on their locations in spite of not paying employees too much, and all the screw-ups, they didn't last long. Someone else put a windshield in my next pickup, they did a great job that time.

Hey, if they only crank out one of these a year, and it's as good as reported by those who have seen it, then that's okay. I'd rather buy one chock-full issue than get six semi-mediocre ones in the mail.

With some parts (and some kits) you have to measure what you intend to use, and see exactly what scale it is. Some "1/24 scale" engines have parts that fit 1/25 scale versions of the same engine. Jo-Han used to promote their car kits as all being 1/25 scale. Their promotional model boxes for AMC items say 1/24, and the couple of Jo-Han AMC car bodies I measured work out to 1/24. Their Studebaker Lark kit body is more like 1/23. The IMC (later Lindberg) Dodge A-100 (Little Red Wagon) kit scales out to about 1/25.7. So everything is all over the place, the only way to know for sure is to measure...

That's because no real development had been done in the meantime. GM experimented with a steam powered car in 1970, they couldn't even build one as good as the handful of Stanleys and Dobles that were still in use, their owners tweaking them over the years. If, when the first automobiles went on the market, eveyone's home was electrified and homes were all on one standard system for electricity, we'd probably have had electric cars all along. But we were pumping oil out of the ground to refine it for kerosene, for lamps. Gasoline was a by-product to the point of being a nuisance. Some was sold as cleaning fluid, the rest was burned off or even dumped. Automobiles burning it off was the logical thing to do at the time. Who knows, if we'd have had electric all along, someone might have figured out how to process nuke waste, and getting more electricity for everything wouldn't be a problem...

Gee, did he want his tools back or not? If I had pulled that bonehead play, I'd be grateful that: (1) whoever had them contacted me, and (2) they weren't asking for anything. I can see your trying to be helpful, but that should be within reason. One of those installers put a windshield in my first pickup a bunch of years back, they proceeded to gouge the paint on the A-pillar down to the primer. They then put blue tape over the scratch (and in a few other places) and told me the tape was necessary to hold the windshield in position until the goop cured. I then got the runaround from them when I called about the damage...

Is it a promo (detailed chassis) or a friction model? People (especially sellers) blur the line separating them but they are two different things. Friction models were sold as toys, and were often made in non-stock colors. That said, metallic finishes will be oversprayed. I looked at my friction Imperial, it is a solid color and does not appear to be clearcoated. The tooling was probably highly polished as Monogram did with many of their kits, particularly the classic cars. If you intend to paint it, a soak wouldn't be a bad idea.