Mark

Just my opinion, but I don't think Okey got everything he was promised when he made the purchase. The police car kits he sold were not new production, they were assembled from parts molded previously. All he had was green tinted clear shots; he had the clear glass vacuformed for those kits. The Rambler wagons and snap Turbine cars were newly manufactured, but he may have used windows already on hand for the Rambler. I've heard rumors of one or two other complete tools that he did get, but supposedly he didn't get a lot of what was supposed to have been part of the deal. I'm not privy to any of that though, so perhaps it's best to let more involved parties speak if they wish to do so.

Not the one unclescott58 was referring to...

Picture from an eBay listing? The Impala here is a later issue, the one in this kit did not have an engine or a separate hood...

Not everyone recycles, even when provided with bins and presented with the idea that it's common sense to do so. I still pick up plastic bags, water bottles, and those plastic things that hold half a dozen cans together, from the street in front of my house. Someone I spoke to awhile back seemed impressed when I mentioned that I put my recycling bin out at the street more often than my trash bin. The recycling one is smaller, but since then I've glanced at what the neighbors are doing, and I seem to be the exception to the rule. A lot of these "taxes" or "fees" on things like this aren't aimed at "saving the environment"...they don't really care if anyone changes their behavior. They just want you to pay for permission to do what you are doing. It could be argued that they really don't want you to change, because if you did they'd take in less money as a result.

It only seems like more people are "irked", because most folks assume they're supposed to be "happy" most of the time. So when they are "irked". they're more likely to let everyone around them know it, because that's "not how it's supposed to be". When they are "happy", they're quiet...the "silent majority", maybe? There are those who "aren't happy unless they aren't happy", but they're in another category altogether.

We were once "those kids today"... -Don't these kids realize that model airplanes are supposed to fly, and model boats are supposed to float? They're building them just to sit on a shelf... -Don't these kids realize that being a "real" modeler requires working with wood? These newfangled "plastic kits" are nothing more than knocked-down toys...

The Revell T/A got "corrected" a while back, front license plate has been changed... That's but one of the problems. I'd like to graft the roof from one into an MPC body to get a wagon, but every time I look at it, less and less of the AMT body figures into it...

One store here only had a few kits (others are all cleared out). Revell '83 4-4-2, shelf tag read $17. 50% off = $8.50. I hadn't planned on getting one of those, but at that price...

Except the Vega, funny car only. Presumably that kit didn't include a CB radio. Had the body in that kit looked halfway accurate, AMT might have reworked it into a stock version, as they did with the Gremlin...

Buick is actually doing well (though I believe they sell more vehicles in China than here, now). Buick ranks pretty high in quality ratings here, last survey I saw they were fourth behind Lexus, Porsche, and Toyota. The Regal is a bit pricey, when I looked at one a few years ago you had to drop thirty grand to get one that didn't look like a broom-pusher special. The same money at the time would have bought a Toyota Avalon which was known to have solid resale value. The last Dodge Dart was a rebadged Alfa Romeo sedan. As for the original Neon, my mom had one and liked it. Anyone I knew who had a Neon or PT Cruiser (based on the Neon) liked them.

Is George still doing plating? I used to use Chrome-Tech, but they're out of the picture now. Does anyone have up-to-date contact info?

I don't believe Testors did much, if any, actual manufacturing of model kits. In most (if not all) cases, they purchased bagged kits in bulk, then packaged them in their own box with their own instruction and decal sheets. That's how they handled the Fujimi Enthusiast Series kits they sold. I've got a couple of the reboxed Jo-Han kits, I could swear one of them has "produced for Testors by SeVille Enterprises" on the box or instruction sheet. I don't think Okey got anywhere near all of the items that were supposed to have been included in the Jo-Han deal. It's too bad, Jo-Han did some fantastic work over the years and so little of it remains in any condition. The ex-IMC '48 Fords and VW Beetle were last sold by Union. Those tools may have been shipped overseas and then mislaid. Lindberg would probably have reissued those kits at some point, had they known where the tools were and retrieved them.

You'd be ready to throw into the hole, too...

I'd think about reworking the Charger parts. The '74 Plymouth has an old style "bucket" interior, door panel detail is unchanged from '71. On top of that, the issue pictured has the dashboard from the '78 Monaco cop car, totally wrong for the '74...

Another issue with the front bumper is that the areas that wrap around (and are seen from the side) are extremely rough. Either the tooling was rough to start with, or picked up a lot of wear after not too many kits were run. The parting lines on the sides are whoppers too, but the AMT kits had those too. Now that I know about the fit issue, I'll probably strip the plating from one bumper, get it to fit, fix the continuity issue with the grille trim, get rid of the huge parting lines and roughness on the sides, remove the grille detail to fit the MCG photoetch parts I bought for all three cars, then cast the thing...

I guess they didn't care to send the very best...

The Maverick tool inserts probably disappeared. Seville announced a "pro street" issue of the Maverick, but it was never released.

The Testors-boxed AMX and SC/Rambler include photoetch emblems in addition to the metal wheels. A small fret of parts, but still nice to have. Okey Spaulding's Johan company has offered a more elaborate PE set for the AMX kit; reasonably priced too. Quality is comparable to MCG's sets. I bought a couple of them from him at NNL East earlier this year. He mentioned doing some PE for the SC/Rambler kit; I hope he gets it done.

That last reissue was before Round 2 entered the picture. The body in that one is a mixed bag: hood opening was revised back to '74 spec but the grille is still the later one. If I remember right, the gas filler detail is still '75-'78 (gas cap above the styling crease, '74 has it below). Too, the rear wheel openings are rough as a cob.

A little more than that...there are lots of little subtleties that enter the picture. I've got a box full of AMT '25 bucket bodies, and have been looking at this. The touring body is wider at the back than the roadster of course, but the angle of the back panel is different as well. Also, the rear doors appear to be a couple of inches wider than the front ones. There are scale dimensional drawings of the touring bodies out there; I've got one, and intend to get into this...

Yes. This was in the short-lived mid-Seventies "budget series", in the narrow box. There was a stand-alone coupe issue too, the first time the coupe was issued without either the '32 Ford sedan or the pickup version. Round 2 did another stand-alone coupe, as the Three Stooges version.

Wheel/slick are from the Aurora Undertaker dragster. The hood is from an AMT Mustang II, looks like a '74 ('75-'78 hood is different, on both the model and 1:1 car).

AMT Pinto is a bit simpler than MPC...it is promo-based (no '77 promo, but there were ones for the first couple of years). It has an interior bucket and slab chassis with separate axle and exhaust, as opposed to MPC's kits where the interior builds up off of the top of the underbody. The four-cylinder engine in the '77 doesn't have a metal axle passing through it as the early kits did. AMT's kits have an automatic transmission (MPC's kits have a manual). I sold my AMT '77 awhile back, but if I remember right it had the "all-glass hatch" unlike MPC's kits which had the trunk lid.

They're all the same body. '68 annual, '69 annual, '69 Dickie Harrell funny car, then the dirt track car, then the black Camaro with the Pontiac engine, then the convertible. The only new body is the misshapen Fast & Furious hardtop that was done much later.

Last year, a couple of guys in the local IPMS chapter bought a huge collection that included a lot of cars. They offed all of the NASCAR kits for a buck apiece, to cut down on the amount of space needed to store everything during the sell-off period. Most of them moved at one show. I'd guess they counted the value of that stuff as near zero when appraising the collection for purchase. There is a small handful of NASCAR kits that I was/am actually looking for, when they are in that range. At that show last year, I picked up three cars including an early Eighties "box" Thunderbird. I found another kit I was looking for at the Three Rivers show last fall, had to pay $3 for that one but it was sealed. $3 is about the upper limit for me. I did pick up a few AMT 1/25 scale cars and trucks for $1-2 apiece over the years also...the Fords have Cleveland engines, not perfect for Seventies Pro Stock but still a vast improvement over what AMT and MPC were putting in the annuals and Pro Stockers back then.