Mark

The dropped spindles would be better on a 1:1 car; they wouldn't limit the up/down movement as shorter springs would.

I'm seeing another problem. With the outer end of the A-arm (pivot point for the spindles) so close to the frame rail, there won't be much room for the wheels to turn, which will create one heck of a huge turning radius. Looks like you want really wide front wheels with a really deep offset. The thing to do here is to find 1:1 cars of similar size with a similar setup, and copy the setup on those.

A lot of the magazines that ran his articles all fall under the same ownership now, after so much consolidation. If they were only smart enough to hire an archivist, they might be able to turn a buck or two doing a few special issues a year, like Life or Rolling Stone. Between Bradley, Tom Daniel, and William Moore, there's a bunch of Sketchpad issues right there. Cutaway drawings, compiled series articles...tons of stuff out there.

The '67 Galaxie is pretty much in the same column as the Jo-Han '66 Fury being talked about lately. Probably not enough potential sales to justify tooling a new one, yet popular enough that a resin caster or 3D printer could crank out a bunch of them. Even limiting the conversation to big Fords, there are others that would sell better ('61 Starliner for one, the NASCAR guys would be all over it).

'36-'39 had the "wide five" bolt pattern with rims resembling those of a VW Beetle. I believe the '40 and later wheels would work. A lot of early Fords, including nearly all hot nodded ones and many otherwise stock ones, were converted to hydraulic brakes using '40 and up parts. So the wheels would just be part of the conversion for those.

For the front, it's probably easiest to just shift the wheel mounting stubs to relocate them in a lower position relative to where they are now. For the back, it's either trim the shackles at the ends of the leaf springs, flatten the springs a bit, or cut the axle from the spring and insert material in between to relocate the axle relative to the springs. I'd first look at photos of 1:1 Mustangs to see how much of the leaf spring is visible, then see if the kit is similar in that respect. If you can see more of the spring below the car on the model, then you'd want to alter that in order to make it look more like the actual car.

Looks like the chassis from one of the MPC early modified kits ('34 Ford, '36 Chevy, Pinto, Vega). Basic frame is a '55-'57 Chevy unit as was used by many racers in the Sixties and Seventies.

Revell '66 Chevelle wagon. I believe some of the '66 El Camino kits had them too.

The phaeton and stock sedan kits are both based on the Victoria. Differences are confined to bodies and related parts (glass, interior bucket, windshield frame). The sedan did use the phaeton interior bucket with the rear door lines smoothed over. Phaeton kits produced after that also lack that rear door detail on the interior. The stock sedan did use a different three-piece hood. I don't know if the sedan and Victoria used the same windshield frame.

The Lincoln won't be much bigger than the Mustang. Its body is slightly shortened, cheated to fit a chassis designed for a T-Bird kit.

All of the Revell '57 Fords have a manual transmission, as do the AMT '56 and '57. The only one I'm aware of with an automatic is the old Revell Ranchero (and the wagon it was converted from).

Unlike some of the other artists doing car restyling sketchpads back then, he actually measured the cars and parts being used. The pieces would work together as illustrated. Some other guys would have the components sized or proportioned incorrectly relative to one another.

Too, the area wholesaler (they supplied toy departments in several area stores, but NOT K-Mart) operated a surplus store in the Sixties. I remember my big brother taking me there in 1966 (I was six, his turn to watch me). They had piles of AMT 1962 Styline Comet and Falcon kits, the ones with the cellophane window boxes. I got a Falcon that day, don't remember what it cost as I didn't pay for it! I do remember my brother telling me he pretty regularly bought the $1.49 AMT Trophy Series kits at a local toy store for about 90 cents apiece. That would have been in the 1960-66 time frame.

For many years, K-Mart sold AMT, MPC, Revell, and Monogram $2.00 retail price kits for $1.44. Every day. When retail inched up to $2.25 in the early Seventies, their price went to $1.64 or $1.66 (can't remember which). Woolworth's and a couple of regional store chains in the Northeast (Two Guys, and Twin Fair) used to blow out "last year's" annual kits for 99 cents after the new ones were out. On top of that, one local junk store located in a small theater used to have couple of years' old kits (returns bought from a wholesale buyer) for as little as half a buck. That ended in the early Seventies when that place caught fire. But the wholesaler had weekend sales between Thanksgiving and Christmas into the mid-Eighties where they sold return kits as well as overstock items. With those discount places and last years' annual kits, you didn't see the really popular stuff but there were still good items to be had.

For an engine, I'd look at 3D print items...lots of choices out there. Chassis...think about starting with a NASCAR truck chassis (wide enough for an older full-size car), cut away all of the floor, and swap in a tubbed rear section from the biggest Pro Street chassis out there, like the '70 Coronet or '67 Chevelle. The NASCAR truck front end uses tubular A-arms and will be beefy enough to look right under a big car.

Not unlike some people I have worked with, and for, in the past. Who says AI isn't becoming more human?

The craft beads are available in hex shapes too, but you will be looking for those online as the craft stores don't stock them.

YouTube is chock full of videos where modelers do just that. From name brand hobby acrylics (Tamiya, etc) to those cheap craft store paints, with various clearcoats.

It's like that selling something in a lot of places. The tire kickers will show up wearing a hat and jacket from the local casino (how much did they lose to get those?), pull up in a new/leased truck they don't really need, then try to cut you in half on the price of anything including your time and labor. Then they'll cry and whine like you are asking them to sacrifice their first born.

A couple of things I haven't seen, or maybe have missed: -Front tire/wheel width -Wheel offset The Superbee is a fairly big car in the real world. It would seem to take a lot of tire, with maybe some unrealistic offset thrown in, to require the front suspension and steering to be radically changed in their width. If you are going for a really wide wheel/tire combo with really deep offset, that will probably require a redesign that (on an actual car) might not work particularly well but will allow the look that is being sought.

People here were talking about it, but none of them make the decisions.

They got the creative upper hand in early 1967, and made one LP (Headquarters) with more of their own tunes. They then realized they weren't quite ready to take over completely, and reverted to letting others have more control. The Monkees never were a complete self-contained band, they never had a bass player in the studio. The instruments they were shown to be playing in the show weren't always the ones they actually were able to play competently. Headquarters is my favorite of their albums, precisely because it had more of their "hand" in it. The Beatles they weren't, but then again nobody else was either. Well into the Seventies you still had groups that didn't write or produce their own records yet were still making it big.

I'm pretty sure the original Turnpike tires were included in only one kit, the first issue '58 Impala (and probably not all of them). They were also sold in a parts pack with two equally soft Firestone slicks. Later production Impala kits probably had the same vinyl tires as other AMT kits once the Turnpike units ran out. The Impala ran in that first version box until 1967, maybe late '66, before getting a rebox. Tires were probably surplus from the Turnpike production which, sales-wise, was a dismal failure.

Atlantis is apparently adding the parts pack wheels and tires they have been using in their other kits like the dragster, Fiat coupe, and T-bucket altered. I'd bet that the stock wheels and wheel covers will still be in the kit. If that is the case, you'll need to scrounge a set of Revell tires as was included in their issues of the '55 in order to get a stock version.

The Willys installation copies the orientation of the pump as used in the Rayson-Craft boat kit. A few comments: -The boat kit does not include hose detail. -The Willys installation need not use the pump in the best way. The car needed to have a water pump and radiator to meet Gas class rules, but the car didn't run for more than two or three minutes at a time. Start, pull into staging lanes, ten-second pass, shut off, push car gets you back to the pits to cool down.