Mark

Of any of those kits, the last one I would hold my breath waiting for would be the Dart. That's the one that got hacked and whacked into the "funny car" body. Hopefully they did get some halfway decent car stuff...

I've tried it, it's a good fit. I've already got a Craftsman '65, so I was looking at it the same way Snake is (as in, sliding the pro street chassis under an AWB body with the quarter panels returned to near-stock). I believe the '66 underbody fits the '63 wagon also. I've got a Boss Nova body with the wheel openings and hole in the roof fixed, now I need to get off my duff and scribe the panel lines back in...

That kit is not 1/24 or 1/25 scale...cars in that series vary in the 1/40-1/45 range...

Mint in box will always be good; partials, projects, and builtups will decline markedly. Watch eBay over the next six months or so, as owners of the latter will attempt to unload!

The chassis in these kits is from the original '65/'66 annual kits, though those all had single exhaust. The duals were added for the Mach I concept. All of this stuff has been shifted around between the annual kits and these custom fastbacks over the years. I'm sure that if enough of the fastback still exists, Round 2 will get it back out at some point.

Hold the phone...I'm seeing detail on the center hub of the Corvair wheel, that isn't on the '40 Ford wheel...

That's not the Corvair wheel. Those were smaller, to fit the compact car tires AMT used in the Corvair kits. As an aside, the Corvair wheels MAY have been used in the 1969 Crew Wagon reissue of the '63 Nova station wagon. I've got one of those, will check it later if I remember to do so. Not knowing exactly what these are from, I'd guess one of the AMT mid-Sixties Corvette kits had them as a custom option. Often the convertible and fastback had different optional parts in the same year, so there are several possibilities there.

Monogram had it nailed with the Tom Daniel kits. With the kit molded in the "main" color, they made perfect birthday or Christmas presents for the visiting aunt/uncle/grandparents. Pick up a kit, grab one of those Testors paint sets with the seven or eight bottles of paint, the cheap paint brush, and a tube of glue, and you're all set. The kid can paint the minor details with a brush, stick the kit together in one rainy/snowy afternoon, it looks pretty much like the one on the box, and it goes on the shelf next to the others. Everybody is happy...

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned that Sixties Canadian Pontiacs were built on Chevrolet chassis, which in '61 were way different from Pontiac's. You'll need to pick up a '61 or '62 Chevrolet kit for the chassis.

The '40 sedan is not a Pyro kit, or a knockoff of one. It's a knockoff of the AMT '40 sedan kit, with the body separated into three pieces (hood/cowl/roof/trunk, and two side panels). It's noticeably larger than the other Palmer '40 Ford (convertible), also larger than the Pyro '40 Fords (coupe and convertible).

Tim (somewhat) makes it sound as though lots of editing and corrections were necessary...not so. I never compared the copies of each chapter in "rough" form to the finished book, but I don't remember being surprised by anything in the latter. What I saw, and made extremely minor suggestions on, was pretty much what you see in the finished work. The photos (which I didn't really see in the same context as their final presentation) and sidebars make it even more of a must-have.

The designer ignored the fact that Packards were being built eight years before, only those were refried Studebakers...

Heller kits are pretty good, unfortunately they have one nasty habit with the body parts as others have mentioned. The body will be molded in color, but they usually get one body panel (often the hood) onto the same tree as the chassis parts, which will be molded in black. If they'd just shoot everything in one color, they'd take care of that.

The Fords and Chevies aren't on the same level as a Duesenberg, Pierce-Arrow, Packard, or Rolls-Royce. Two completely different groups of collectors/builders for the most part.

The first one pictured has stock parts, including a straight six engine. The Pro Stock kits share a lot of parts, but the yellow Schartman Maverick is quite a bit different from the others. Different hood and wheels, and still has the early grille. There's also a 1971 "funny car only" kit. No stock parts, and the hood is molded shut. I sold one of those at NNL East earlier this year.

The original (molded in red) Revell 'Vette has "1959" license plates, and stock wheel covers (with plastic tires). The body in that kit still stands up pretty well against newer kits. The SMP/AMT not so much. In the past, the differences in interpretation used to aggravate me, but now it's interesting to see how different companies approached the same subject.

The superhero was the Green Hornet, but his car was called Black Beauty, thus the kit was molded in black.

Nope, it's a '60, has the '60 interior pattern. Early reissues were labeled '59. The original (SMP) '60 kit had an opening hood and an engine while their '59 had neither. On the other hand, for many years Revell called their multiple-piece body Corvette a '60, it has "1960" on the license plates, but it is a '59, with '59 interior detail.

The Bearcats TV show Stutz was the first issue, the Connoiseur Classics the second. There was also a third issue, molded in red. There are some kits out there with the Bearcats box art but no reference to the TV show. The show was very short-lived, maybe six episodes. It's on DVD, one guy brought it to a club meeting awhile back. Budd Anderson left AMT in mid-1964, long before the My Mother The Car kit came out. I don't remember him ever mentioning a Mercer kit either. It is odd though, AMT being pretty much all cars in subject matter in the mid-Sixties, didn't do any Thirties classics other than the large-scale Cord. That one probably laid an egg sales-wise, because AMT didn't follow it up with anything else.

The old, greasy feeling Revell two-piece tires can't be glued, but the more recent/softer ones can. Often the slick halves are distorted though, so you might need two sets of tires to mix/match the halves in order to get one good set. If the tires in question are the Revell dragster/funny car units, Revell did retool those as one-piece awhile back. I've purchased those separately, both in Stevens International packaging and from Spotlight Hobbies (ex-Hobby Heaven).

Check the eBay "break up a kit and sell the parts" vendors. I wanted a couple of engines from another recent Revell kit, and bought them there cheaper than it would cost to make copies of the parts myself. A complete resin engine will probably cost about the same as a complete kit if you do some shopping. Too, the custom version Olds engine differs from the stock one (custom has a Hydra-Matic, stock one has a stick among other things).

Those were only sold at Wal-Mart. One LHS guy here used to buy them and try to pass them off as "rare packaging variations" for several times the WM price. He's out of business now. Some of them might be future collectibles, because they aren't catalog items. Some weren't around long. The prepaints in particular might be good, as many weren't offered in the regular line and differed from the regular ones in color.

I've seen a couple of them, but removing the detail yourself isn't hard. The AMT '55 kits are good ones to start with, as the pipe detail isn't hollow on the opposite side of the chassis like most kits. The only area where you will be left with a hole to fill will be the muffler. I did a Nomad chassis awhile back, it's not tough at all. Single exhaust means 50% less work. X-Acto chisel blades and sandpaper can be used, or a rotary power tool provided you have one that can be slowed down enough. Most tools with built-in speed control are way too fast, even on the slowest setting. Smooth everything up, then put the floorpan detail back in those areas with strip styrene, as a mirror image of the other side. The sedan chassis has single exhaust because the front half of it is carried over from the Nomad. The Nomad didn't have duals because Chevrolet didn't offer them on wagons in '55.

If you read the fine print, Ollie's didn't buy the leftovers from Toys 'R Us. They bought inventory from manufactures who lost Toys 'R Us as a customer, probably stuff they were planning on selling to them over the summer. I was in TRU a couple of times over the last Christmas shopping season, the stores here didn't have a lot of things even then. What was left for the bankruptcy sale was probably just dreck and dross compared to even that...

The go-kart came up in the discussion, as something of an explanation of how those accessory items are often done. In the case of the kart, it was tooled as a separate item and pieced into the Ford pickup, so it would be more likely to survive as a separate tool insert. The El Camino's boat may (repeat, may) have been part of the original El Camino tooling, since it was in there the very first issue. IF that is the case, it would likely have been milled out of the tool to make room for the '65 optional parts, in which case it would no longer exist. Has anyone ever seen a 1:1 Westcraft boat? As for the '64 El Camino itself, the tool was modified to produce 1965 El Camino promotional models, and later, kits. It is what it is right now. The only way to make a '64 again would be to either backdate everything or cut another tool, which would be unlikely. Yes, some folks would like to see a '64 again, but Round 2 can sell enough '65 kits to justify keeping it as it is.