Mark

One of the Chevy kits (I'm 99% certain it's the one pictured) does have the large-diameter steelies with "baby Moon" caps (molded as a unit with the wheels). I used them to "de-Fooseify" an FD-100 I built last year.

And as a bonus, you got the big letdown once you opened it...

Is that hood for the newer El Camino kit, or the AMT Chevelle kits? Unfortunately the two differ in width just a bit, I believe a hood made for one will not fit the other...

Monogram and Revell are brand names, both owned by the same company.

I'm not the most observant person, and the recent book about George Montgomery isn't the greatest. But I spotted at least three different styles of cam covers among the photos in that book.

Some of the original kits may have had that sheet, but most of the sedan kits had one that matched up with the box art. The sheet pictured was included in some of the AMT Gasser series kits that had the cartoon-style box art that didn't show any decals ('36 Ford, '57 Chevy, etc.)...

That's not even getting into the asymmetry...rear window is off-center, and some of the side "trim" jogs up and down. I wanted to combine one of the coupe bodies with the Early Iron issue of the roadster to create a "phantom" Early Iron coupe, but that hot mess of a coupe body won't hold my interest for any length of time...

The "mutt" kits were produced by Seville towards the end of their tenure. Apparently they thought the bumper change alone would backdate the kit, but they didn't know about the roof panel change, nor the fact that the taillight panel on the later cars was bigger, not to mention that putting in the earlier bumper resulted in a gap around the taillight gridwork. The front bumper had guards added to it too. I've got a Hot Wheels Javelin-AMX that was obviously mastered off of the "mutt" kit...earlier taillights, smooth roof, front bumper guards. I don't know if it's true or not, but I heard that Revell took Jo-Han to court in the mid-Seventies, to stop them from selling the Mickey Thompson and Gene Snow funny car kits because Revell had both men under contract by then. From what I heard, at first it was a case of "we're just using up the decals and boxes", but that went on for another year or so before they went to court again. The eBay seller who got the Jo-Han "archives" might still be selling new leftover decal sheets for those three kits, which would (sort of) back up this story...

The original Jo-Han company had things like boxes and decal sheets printed in huge numbers, then drew from the stockpile when the kit was next run. The Javelin-AMX kits from '72 to the end all came in that one box that had the illustration of the '72 on it, even though most of them actually have the '73-'74 inside (with the smoothed roof panel and different taillights). Decals were a crapshoot, though. I've had a bunch of those Javelin-AMX kits, and I don't think a single one ever had the stock hood stripe decal. And, I've never seen a "Rapid Randy" Mercury Comet sheet either; I'm thinking there never was one that matched the box art for that kit.

The MPC Firebird kit that gave up the OHC six engine will have a one-piece single exhaust included with it. The piece probably won't fit the Revell kit as-is, but it should give you a good idea of what the stock exhaust looks like.

'70 RR/GTX. The '69 annual kits had seats like the ones in the AMT '69 GTX. All of the reissue Jo-Han '69 RR kits include a '70 interior.

Those are pieced together from existing stock, not new manufacture. I don't believe Okey ever got the AMX tool.

The Jo-Han Mopar fenderwell headers aren't 100% right for the wedge engine, as the four ports on each side are equally spaced. They do look good though, other than that. They're wrong for the Hemi cars, because they didn't run those. The Hemi exhaust ports are perpendicular to the ground (or very nearly so), so the headers should go straight down and not go into such a turn right out of the cylinder head. Check pictures of the 1:1 '63 and '64 cars; the '63 and some (but not all) wedge-head '64 cars have the fenderwell pipes while the Hemi cars definitely do not. Jo-Han did do some of the best headers though. The pipes are nearly always round in cross-section unlike some other companies' parts which are flat or misshapen. Jo-Han's Comet and Maverick pro stockers, AMX super stock, the Sox & Martin Barracuda, and a couple of early Seventies Olds 442 kits have the "good" headers.

Depends on which ownership you are talking about. The current owner of the Johan (not hyphenated) brand and tooling had two kits manufactured: Chrysler Turbine Car snap kit, and '59 Rambler wagon with accessories and interior. The '68 Plymouth police car and one or two other items were sold during this period, but those were pieced together from stockpiled parts included in his purchase of the remaining assets. The previous owner (SeVille Enterprises, who used another name also) manufactured a number of kits under the original/hyphenated name, Jo-Han). Among these were four kits (Sox & Martin '71 Barracuda, '69 AMX drag version, '69 SC/Rambler, and '71 Comet drag car) that got new box art and decals. The last one that was readily available seems to have been the S/C Rambler, so I'd guess that was the last one produced. That, or possibly the snap '75 Cutlass. Now, we're back to the original ownership...could be any of a number of kits, no way of knowing which. The USA Oldies kits aren't among the last ones produced, nor is the Cadillac hearse, and I'd throw the '70 Rebel Machine into that category too.

There was never any optional hood in the Ford kit.

Those Seventies cars are built from body panels as opposed to being gutted showroom cars. I heard somewhere that Bobby Allison's early Seventies Monte Carlo (the one AMT made the kit of) was the last car to win a race, that was built from an actual car as opposed to body panels. The templates used to check the cars' profile mostly went down the center of the car, so the builders would pull the roof down at the sides to chip away at the number of square feet the car pushed into the wind. That would explain why the side window shapes differ so much from stock. Years ago, I mastered and cast a couple of bodies. Before I got out of that, my "next" one was going to be a stock mid-Seventies Malibu fastback. I was going to start with the AMT body and splice in the Jo-Han Cutlass roof. That's the opposite of the '67 4-4-2 body I did, by cutting down a Monogram Hairy Olds body and splicing in a Revell '67 Chevelle roof. I sold off the Malibu body I had way back when, and hadn't started cutting on a Jo-Han Cutlass. Since then, I have found another AMT Malibu body as well as a Jo-Han Cutlass that someone hot-knifed an opening trunk into...so both of those are on the pile...

The frame is from the Jowett Jupiter; the front suspension is modified VW Beetle, the rear axle and suspension are likely changed too because of the engine swap. But the chassis/engine are pretty decent considering they were tooled in the mid-Sixties. The Cragar wheels are good as I recall (haven't looked at one of these in a while), and Round 2 is on a roll with the pad-printed tires. So even if you don't want to build the car as-is, there are a lot of possibilities here.

It's either '65 or '66 Galaxie. One has the rear glass molded as part of the top, the other has no rear glass and that area is molded open. Off the top of my head, I can't recall which is which. But it's definitely one of those, as AMT didn't do any other convertible kits with the top molded in clear (except the '37 Chevy, and that one would be obvious compared to this one).

I'm pretty certain NASCAR teams were "massaging" the roofs on these cars. I don't recall hearing or seeing any complaints about the AMT or MPC NASCAR Malibu kit bodies that use the same style roof...could be that those bodies are accurate for a racing version but not so much as a stock body. For a stock roof, what's wrong with the Jo-Han '75 Cutlass?

That transmission tunnel looks huge, as do those ejector pin marks on the chassis halves.

The "clearance" kits at Hobby Lobby don't mean they have been dropped from the lineup by Round 2. It only means HL has decided to replace them on their store shelves.

"Falling Water", better known as "Rising Mildew" by people who are familiar with it...

FLW tried designing a gas station. There's a replica of it in my area. The guy at the museum housing the station explained how it all worked. First thing FLW did was to put fuel storage tanks ON THE ROOF, so gravity would "pump" the gas into the cars. Of course, if the fill nozzle (which he also designed) failed, then the gas in the storage tank would just keep coming out, and onto the ground. How do you get the gas from the in-ground main tank into the roof tank(s)? Why, you use something heavier than gasoline to push the gas up there...in this case, water. Yeah, let's dump water into the tank on top of the gasoline. It's not enough to have the roof tanks made of copper, shining brightly in the sun to warm up all of that watered-down gasoline. So, what do we put inside the building itself? Not one, but TWO fireplaces. He then floated the idea to the oil company, and they were actually looking for a design to standardize their stations. Trouble was, he wanted them to convert all of their stations and pay a royalty per station. The royalty per station was more than the company intended to spend building each station. The museum also has a fuel truck painted with the new logo he designed for them. Even when the truck is standing still, you have to squint to read the logo. FLW designed a number of buildings in Buffalo...not many still stand, but a couple do. I went on a tour of one of them years ago...ugly, uncomfortable-looking furniture all around. I'm convinced FLW's "thing" was "how ugly and impractical can I make something, and still find some new-money sucker gullible enough to build it?"

That's a mix of parts. The valve covers don't go with the engine.

AMT made the Buick wagon as a kit in '61 and '62. Some time ago, I checked both the Jo-Han Olds and AMT Buick wagons against the '61 Tempest four-door body, and if I remember right the AMT kits matched up better than an AMT/Jo-Han combo. I'd like a Tempest wagon. but don't think I'll ever get around to doing one. Not sure how I would cut the two; whether to slice the Pontiac front clip onto the wagon body, or try to splice more of the Pontiac body into it.