Mark

I haven't seen the spray cans anywhere, either locally (only one hobby shop in the area) or with any show vendors. Their brush enamels are light years ahead of Testors, they cover very well and also flow out well leaving no brush marks provided you don't drag the brush through it once applied. I haven't had any luck airbrushing them, but am well satisfied with them in brush applications.

The MPC flip-front '57 Chevy has a set. The flip-front '53 Ford pickup kit uses the same chassis and engine, and has the same headers also.

The Rally wheels were indeed added to the Pace Car kit. More trivia: the "for 1968" Camaro was altered into the "for 1968" Firebird. Different hood and bumpers (custom only), Pontiac engine (actually a pretty good one for the time), some slight alterations to the body. Same custom only interior, same separate glue-on vinyl roof.

Just an opinion, but if the exact size can't be had, go undersize as opposed to oversize. Paint, especially if primer is part of the deal, will be thicker than correct for 1/25 scale, and will make up the difference (if not exceed it...)

That's from the AMT "for 1968" Camaro. Not 1968, but "for 1968", as in "MPC had the promo contract, and GM wouldn't tell us how the '68 differed from the '67, but we wanted to get something out there". It's a '67 with no scripts or emblems, custom upholstery pattern on the seats, and slightly altered grille. Still had '67 rally wheels and vent panes.

If anything, Jo-Han's Pro Stocker kits were the most accurate available until Monogram's early Eighties releases. MPC issued a couple with full interiors including rear seat and console, and a couple others had full stock exhaust system detail molded as part of the chassis! The original Bill Jenkins Vega kit had the stock exhaust detail, and the body had rear wheel openings that were radiused like an old Gasser. (The new Round 2 kit will not have either of those mistakes.)

The biggest problem with the sedan is the fender unit, it is narrower than that of a Model A or '32. I never tried the sedan body on the 5W coupe fenders, that may be an option. The sedan body is too "squared off" though.

The wrong time to ask is after it's sold. You might not like the answers you get!

Did the nose actually open, or was it removable to get access to the engine? My older brother spotted one of those Fiat nose sections sitting at the curb on trash day...he snagged it and put it on eBay. If I remember right, he got around $500 for it.

I remember the car, but not that it was his.

The '62 Dodge grille in the AMT parts pack is a pretty good fit on the Revell body. I never cared for the look of the Revellion funny car body, so I found a set of bumpers and tried the AMT grille.

They could make those with the GEICO gecko on them now...

Big tires don't fit those Novas unless they're tubbed, jacked up in back, or have the rear wheel openings cut out. "Rolling" the fender lip might buy you one tire size, but those cars won't fit anything like an L-60 in stock form.

Another alteration that can be done to "tub" interiors is to stand the side panels straight up. As molded, they have a slight taper, that is to ease removal from the tool during production. The simplified tooling is also why the detail on the side panels is on the sparse side. Standing the side panels up straight will make the interior look deeper. Material will need to be added to the floor at the outer edges, but it'll be worthwhile. Too, check the depth of the bucket. Some kits have too-shallow buckets that leave a gap between the floor and the top of the chassis. An extreme example would be the AMT late model Corvair...if you have one, stick the body/interior/chassis together, then look through the hole in the chassis under the rear seat...

MPC decals from that era will definitely need to be sealed!

There's an article on thrill shows in an early issue of the old Special Interest Autos magazine. The AMT illustration showing the '49 Ford jumping over the '50 duplicates one of the photos in that article. That particular show did use '49 and '50 Fords, but all of the cars would have been from the current year, whichever it was. They did use a convertible or two, but they used sedans and not coupes.

I've never heard that one...the Lesney created tooling would have been brand new, or nearly so, then. What some have said, including an ex-employee I once talked to, is that with the closure of the Troy, MI building (it had been sold) most of the existing AMT molds were shipped to Baltimore. Some of THAT stuff did sit outdoors and get damaged. What was lost, we'll never know.

Clean the parts before doing any sanding, otherwise you are grinding mold release into the sanded plastic.

Think of the pop-ups as virtual toilet paper. But don't try to use it... Around here, no problem getting TP. I even got some paper towels yesterday, haven't seen those in three weeks.

Pretty sure he, or his family, started the Schumacher battery charger company. He didn't drive or run the team for all of the Wonderwagon cars, but took the program over when the original guys weren't getting results.

If you want to use the custom front end parts, the more common '64 kit can be altered to take them. Make a pattern of the '63 front fender forward of the wheel opening, lay it on the '64 body, then hack away. The rear end parts fit as-is. I lucked into a couple of '63 kits that were started as custom versions and were too far gone to go back to stock, but I wanted customs anyway. The '63 is way better looking than the '64 IMHO.

The pro street '41 Willys has a great chassis, 392 Hemi with Torqueflite transmission plus a "street version" blower setup (with pulleys and water pump that older kits overlook when old drag cars take to the street), also a Mustang II front suspension with stock A-arms (it's narrowed but that's easy enough to fix). I've bought three or four of them for cheap, then peddled the bodies to slot car guys and recouped all of the money. Free chassis and engines! I've bought leftovers from the slot car guys too. A Revell '68 Dart had the full chassis, two engines, and the gutted interior parts, but the engine compartment was missing because Slot Car Guy got it with the body. Fortunately, I had a damaged body that came in a kit I bought when the Dart first came out. It was damaged, so I wrote Revell and got a replacement. Lucky I kept the damaged one! Other "parts mine" kits include the Revell 22 Jr. double kit, the AMT Double Dragster, and the AMT pro street kits (chassis and rear halves can be made to fit whatever you want them to fit).

Either Rod & Custom (or the short-lived model car magazine) had a couple of articles on building Model T speedsters. One had a body made entirely of paper, I believe the other had a tail section made from a Double Dragster streamlined nose piece. A bare bones floor/seat/gas tank setup might make a neat hill climb or Race of Gentlemen type of thing...

The Parnelli Jones/Bill Stroppe '63 Mercury, the one Don Emmons built a replica of in Rod & Custom when the kit was a "current" annual. I've got the kit (actually have five or six of them, including two started Advanced Custom versions that I found that way). One is a builtup that I stripped five or six paint jobs from. I created a vacuform floor pan for the project (sold a few hundred of them too), and have a pile of different engine and suspension parts for it. Every time a more detailed kit came out, I'd set aside more parts for this thing. I've even got decal sheets for it (Emmons had to paint the markings by hand). I've even got AMT Turnpike tires, same ones that were used on the original build. Just need to get on it...

No such thing as free money.