Mark

I am seeing a 60% off anything coupon. The stores in my area have the Revell '83 4-4-2 kits at $18 every day...60% off that would be a screaming deal if you want (another) one of those...

Those windows were retooled at some point, probably in the Eighties. They aren't as good as the original ones. Fortunately all of the windows in the 1:1 are flat glass. Replacements made from clear styrene or acrylic plastic will be better optically anyway.

I believe Brookfield Collectors Guild made a Chrysler Sebring convertible promo with an operational top. That might be worth a look.

The first AMT issue is the one being discussed here, the one with the blue car on the box. It was originally a Lindberg kit that first appeared in the mid-Nineties. The original SMP kit was an annual, issued concurrently with the debut of the actual car. It would have first appeared in late 1960. These kits were never reissued because portions of them were incorporated into the following year's promotional models and kits.

Jo-Han made Hornet kits for each year '70-'74, but they could only be built as funny cars (though nobody ever ran one in 1:1). No stock kits, only promo models. There was a '72 funny car kit with correct for '72 taillights and trim revisions, even though there was no '72 promo as I remember.

I'm not sure whether they were available here or not. I do remember watching the news on a Canadian TV station, and seeing a story about some gas stations there refusing to gas up Ladas.

There was a cartoon in MAD magazine years ago, where a guy on a construction site swatted a fly that landed on a blueprint. When you flipped the page, there was a full-page picture of the completed skyscraper, with a huge fly splattered across it...

There's no accounting for taste. As an accountant, I know that to be true.

No fender vents in the Dart kits. It never had any.

I'd bet the kit was designed before MPC and Roth crossed paths. That was the only MPC kit that bore his name, it could be the only non-Revell kit associated with him.

The MPC Chevy Monza kits had similar pieces that attach to the fenders, but those are only the outer piece, no "vent" insert or detail in the center. It shouldn't be tough to file those out of a scrap of sheet plastic (use a T/A vent as a pattern), attach them, then trim out the insert area to create the vent.

And the Revell 1/16 kit was a '34. I never had either of the 1/16 kits, but they looked really good. I'm surprised neither has ever been reissued (the tub would look good with the sedan's fenders and less trendy looking wheels and running gear). The AMT body, with some tweaks, would look okay on its original fenders and chassis. I'm surprised nobody has done a more accurate one in resin to fit the newer Revell '32 though.

The AMT and MPC phaeton bodies are pretty much the same width at the back. Both seem a bit narrow back there. There's a decent photo spread in the December '72 issue of Rod & Custom that seems to confirm this. So neither body would be completely satisfactory as-is.

I've got an MPC body adapted to the "1996" Revell fenders/chassis. I too was looking at joining it to a Revell highboy roadster front half, but might set the MPC tub aside and start over with an AMT phaeton body. None of the manufacturers seem to agree on cowl shapes and contours, which makes fitting a hood problematic. The Revell highboy roadster cowl would solve all of that.

MPC did do a phaeton, in the Switchers series. It was a combo kit with their two-door sedan. The MPC body is a bit taller at the cowl (not "sectioned on a slant" like the old AMT bodies). It does fit the Revell "1996 kit" fenders and chassis with some work. The MPC interior is weird however, it is very shallow because it is designed to be used in both the channeled and full-fender versions. The currently available Round 2 sedan delivery kit does NOT include the phaeton body. It was in a reissue of the Switchers kit about fifteen years ago.

The Tyrell F1 car used the four front wheels to get more contact between the front tires and the track surface, for better handling. The four smaller tires probably gave a better contact patch than two larger tires. Kenny Youngblood sketched several four-front-wheel cars, I believe they were in HOT ROD. As I recall, he drew up a '34 Ford coupe that looked pretty cool...

The front clip swap has certainly been done with these trucks. When that is done though, the engine is mounted a bit further back in the clip versus where it was in the donor car. My older brother put a small-block Chevy in a '51 pickup over the course of two or three days during a work week, and drove it from Buffalo to Detroit and back that weekend. The only failure was a manufactured part, the voltage regulator in the alternator (he switched from 6 to 12 volts along with the engine swap). He cooked the battery on the return trip. New alternator and battery, and he drove the wheels off of that truck over the next few years, year round. He left the steering box in its stock location, as I recall he said one spark plug was tough to get at. The choice of exhaust manifolds might be slim in order to get everything to fit. Depending on the level of detail and accuracy in the kit, that might not matter so much in scale. One of my cousins had one of these trucks too. First swap was a 348 Chevy, followed by a '60 Cadillac engine and transmission out of my grandfather's car. With those bigger engines, the steering column and box get moved to the left a bit, no small thing in that relatively cramped cab. If I remember right, the Cad powered truck was a rough riding, ill-handling beast, but he drove it that way for a number of years. It might still be sitting in his yard, I saw it there about twenty years ago.

Hair Club for the dead...

I was with Allstate the first couple of years that I was driving, mainly because my mom was insured through them, mainly because she hadn't changed since my parents first had a car. Switched away in 1982, never going back. As for the other two, I figure all those commercials and billboards have to be paid for somehow, it's either being tacked onto my bill or deducted from a potential payout...

I don't know if they still do it, but GEICO used to give out grants to small-town speed trap police departments so they could upgrade their radar equipment. More tickets written, higher rates, more money for GEICO. The big three for me to avoid would be GEICO, Progressive, and Allstate...

I can't stand Walgreens. If you don't have their special card, you may as well walk in there backwards and bent over...

That looks like a Round 2 product number. ALL of their issues of the '25 T (two with the chopped coupe body, two with the stock height coupe, the Fruitwagon, and the Paddy Wagon) contain parts to build two cars. NO Ertl issue, or any AMT issue from the Seventies, contain two bodies. Some have both the stock and rod chassis, but all had only one body.

How do you get two cars with one body?

That's just it...it hadn't been a double kit since the late Sixties. The stock height coupe was issued in the mid-Seventies, the roadster a few times, but none had all of the parts for two cars.

Those classic car kits don't get much love. A couple of weekends ago, I bought a Seventies issue Monogram '41 Continental for $6. I know the guy I bought it from, he described it as a parts kit because he hadn't bothered to check it. I did check it, it's complete, all plated parts on the trees, and the windshield frame on the body is unbroken. On Saturday, I snagged a Seventies issue MPC '32 Chrysler roadster kit for $5. The parts bag is still sealed, though the hood was apparently packed separately and is outside the bag.