Mark

The '57 parts can of course be made to fit, they just likely won't drop into place. Depending on how much work you want to make for yourself, one option would be to cut the frame rails at the firewall and replace the forward section with scale rectangular "tubing". 2" x 4" would be about right. 1:1 cars would use tubing, you'd use solid rod. Replacing the forward section saves weight, gets rid of the spring pockets and suspension arm attachments. Not everyone did it that way (one well-known car in my area had a straight axle but kept the full stock frame) but it is an option even for a "street freak gasser" like the one pictured. One thing with the '56 kit chassis: plan ahead if you want to get rid of the molded in exhaust detail. Trimming away the pipes will open a lot of holes in the floorpan. I did one by first filling the pipe areas with epoxy putty on the TOP side of the chassis before shaving away the pipe detail. The muffler areas are hollow and will need to be filled with sheet plastic, but that's the case with every chassis with molded-in exhaust that I have ever seen. The Lindberg '53 Ford chassis might be another option, as it has separate exhaust system parts.

The MCG website includes magnified views of each of their offerings. You'd have to go one by one checking them to figure out what was used here. The grille pattern resembles a '60 Falcon or Ranchero to me, but I know MCG doesn't offer a set for that kit.

Iacocca was the first to get into demographics. Prior to that, the manufacturers would develop a car (Edsel, for example) and then figure out who to sell it to. Iacocca identified a group of potential buyers, and then created a car suited to their likes (the Mustang). IMO, the Mustang wasn't the roaring success so many people think it was. Sure, Ford sold 400,000 of them the first year, but the bulk of those sales came at the expense of the Falcon and Fairlane. Had all of those sales been "conquest" sales (at the expense of other manufacturers) Ford would have passed Chevrolet. The Mustang was inevitable, it was just a matter of who would come up with it first. The Plymouth Barracuda was actually first, but the styling wasn't unique enough compared to the Valiant.

The German companies like to think they "invented" everything; listen to a Mercedes-Benz ad for example. VW had a Rabbit ad with a "everybody's following the leader" theme, with a Rabbit in front and the Omni, Renault 5, and Chevette behind it. The Simca version of the Omni came out around the same time as the Rabbit, while the Chevette first appeared in England and Brazil before the Rabbit. I'm pretty certain the Renault 5 beat the Rabbit to market also.

Not sure what that grille is from, but it's not a Chevelle piece. MCG does make a set for the Revell '65 kit, most of the scripts should be the same. MCG doesn't really do anything for long out of production kits. I once suggested smaller "exterior only" sets (no grilles or interior stuff) for reissued Round 2 kits; Bob told me he'd consider it, but maybe it just wouldn't be worthwhile financially for him to do that. Aftermarket items designed for specific kits really fall off in sales when the base kit is not in current production.

The Mustang II wasn't a bad idea, given the times. The '71-'73 cars had definitely gotten "too fat". The only mistakes were that the wheels/tires should have been a bit bigger, the V8 should have been part of the plan ('74 didn't have it, '75 was redesigned pretty extensively to get it in), and the fuel tank and muffler should have been tucked up a bit further. Other than that rear view with that stuff hanging out below the bumper (and the undersize wheel openings) those were actually nicely styled cars.

Uh-uh. Chrysler did just that: remember the Plymouth Cricket? Underpowered POS that they stopped bringing in at the end of '72 because they couldn't get it to pass '73 emissions standards. GM didn't fare any better with the Opels either. Good cars in their home market, not so hot over here. The Pinto wasn't bad: the mistake Ford made was in letting it go through with the known gas tank fiasco. They had the fix available but chose not to implement it, thinking it would be cheaper to pay off the anticipated wrongful death claims than implement the fix. GM had the fix for the Vega engine problem at hand: dump the aluminium engine in favor of the Nova four-banger, which they were still making for Mercury Marine and AMC (for postal Jeeps). Fix the rust issues, problem solved. The Vega actually was a nice riding car, one of my brothers had three of them. GM went with the aluminium engine because they had invested in an aluminum foundry to make Corvair engines. With the Corvair gone, the investment was too great to ignore. So the Vega got an aluminium engine. Still, the Gremlin beat both of them hands down. If AMC had thought to offer a four-cylinder engine (six minus two, like they did later) they could have made it even better.

'71 was the only sedan (trunk lid) AMT kit. Ford released the hatchback mid-year, and the '72 promo and kit have the separate hatch lid. I've got the '71 Crazy Horse funny car that came out after the '71 annual but before the '72. Body is converted to the hatchback, but AMT tooled a deck lid for it! The funny car may have been issued before the 1:1 hatchback. There was a Crazy Horse II kit, not sure whether it had the deck lid piece or the hatch lid. I don't think any of the MPC Pinto kits ever had an optional hood. The "lump" hood was the tipoff for an AMT kit.

If the Pinto hood with the "lump" is cut out, then it's '71-'73. The early annuals had a Boss 429 engine with a blower, '75 (maybe '74 also) had a "street" setup with a carburetor and the "lump" was filled in. IDing the specific year would boil down to the bumpers and wheel covers. The only complete, not started AMT Pinto kit I have is a '71, but it's still sealed and will stay that way in my posession.

Around here, this reset is nearing its end. I grabbed three more kits today (bringing the total to 11). Last things left seem to be the Prowler snap kit, 1/16 Honda cycle, ex-Palmer Owens boat kit, and Revell ex-Monogram 1/32 scale snap Mack fire truck.

I'd hardly call the Pinto a "loser", if you take into consideration the sales figures. As far as the gas tank deal went, the Vega wasn't much better in that regard, and the '78-up downsized GM intermediate cars were bad too. The frames on those would rot out behind the rear wheels, leaving the rear of the frame disconnected from the rest. The station wagons in particular were bad in that regard. That said, of the three US subcompacts, the Gremlin had the other two beat by a mile. It was basically a sawed-off Hornet: Hornet suspension, brakes, engines, and transmissions. The Gremlin was a bit bigger and heavier, but it was overbuilt compared to the Pinto and Vega. I had an AMC Spirit (Gremlin with a hatchback body) and put over 200,000 miles on it...great car, if the right one came along I'd buy it.

Check out the stories on the Allpar.com site: a lot of us would be surprised to hear that a lot of the early Nineties Chrysler products like the "cab forward" cars were actually AMC designs. One guy said that if you'd walked into Chrysler's engineering or styling departments in the years following the AMC buyout, you'd have thought AMC took over Chrysler.

Nothing specific, just compare the individual parts and cut the Monogram parts down to fit as needed. I bought one of the updated Revell Roadrunners awhile back to get the "cop car" wheels and some other parts, never thought to check the interior bits against a Jo-Han kit though. The conversion might involve less alteration than expected.

Chevrolet even sold the conversion parts over the counter, as soon as the cars were available. Don Nicholson ran a two-door sedan and a station wagon as Factory Experimental cars, both with Corvette fuel-injected small-blocks. But the factory-installed V8 wasn't available until '64, the result being that Chevrolet never built a Nova convertible with a V8.

I got rid of both Novas: already have the AMT versions, and didn't want to deal with all of the issues in the Trumpeter kits. Too tall convertible windshield, exhaust running down the wrong side of the chassis (due to the working steering feature), goofy plating, wacky tire/wheel design, paper thin deck lid, and so on. Had they just done a conventional car kit and not tried to reinvent everything, they might still be doing car kits now. Those contemplating a Stock class drag car build are going to be limited to the bottom classes...no V8 engine in '63! Fours and sixes only until '64. The AMT '63 hardtop and convertible are off in that respect, but that's easy to fix.

Best advice is to check the shelf tags at the empty spaces, usually each space is marked with what will occupy that space. The tags often appear before the product does.

I've never seen model kits there, but I haven't been there recently.

I'll agree with before, and I apply primer with a brush (a cheap one will do) ONLY on the worked areas. No blasting the primer on with a rattle can until those areas are right. That minimizes buildup on other areas, particularly those with fine detail like scripts or exposed hinges.

The rear axle in the pro street Nova kit is a narrowed GM unit. The NASCAR kits have 9" Ford pieces, but they are not the cleaner looking housings typically used under street machines. So count on spending some time reworking one of those. The Revell pro street '41 Willys has a nice narrowed 9" Ford setup.

ALDI stores here sometimes sell some offbeat items. Like Hobby Lobby, when they close out those items they cut the price drastically. I bought a bench top drill press for twenty dollars a few years ago. They do that with food items too; I've bought half gallons of milk or loaves of bread for 25 or 50 cents because they were within a day or two of the sell-by date. I don't go in looking for those things, but when they are there I'll give them a look.

The stores in my area cleared out the '68 El Camino kits awhile back. I don't remember if I bought one (probably not) but I do remember seeing them at the reduced price, and not seeing them there since.

The El Camino kits were cleared out last time around, maybe even before that.

All of the Sixties issues of the original Ala Kart could be built as the Ala Kart. But optional parts for both the Kart and the '29 roadster were included. The later Sixties issues like the Mod Rod merely emphasized the optional version over the Kart. The later issues had fewer Kart decals; the scallops for the underside of the fenders were ommitted. The Kart body and fenders were altered for the Street Rod series double kit from 1973. That was the last double kit issue from the original AMT company. They no longer owned the 1:1 Ala Kart, so they likely modified the kit to make it different enough to avoid licensing or royalties. Lesney later reworked the kit to make use of some of the Ala Kart parts as optional parts for the '29 roadster. The Round 2 Mod Rod isn't exactly like the Sixties Mod Rod in that you can't build the Ala Kart from it. The Street Rod series alterations to the body and fenders remain, and a few strategic Kart parts aren't included. But you can build the Mod Rod as shown on the box.

Not 100% positive, but I believe that the Bell helmets were first produced by Roy Richter's company in the mid-Fifties. One magazine (not sure if it was even a car magazine) published a test on helmets available then, and found all of them to be pretty much worthless. Richter had one designed that was much better. Check period photographs, it wouldn't surprise me to see that belts and roll bars were "optional" back then.

I got a Suburban kit there on closeout last year, haven't seen any there since.