Mark

They used to...not any more. They tried to reinvent everything...gimmicky working steering in the Novas (steering wheel actually turned the front wheels) but to do that they ran the exhaust down the wrong side of the chassis. Weird wheels and tires, where you had to stretch the tire over a huge wheel. Metal plating that is impossible to remove, and sometimes dull. Photoetch hood hinges that are difficult to assemble and seldom work. And, in the Pontiac kits, too-thin hood and trunk outer panels that were warped while still attached to the parts trees. There just aren't enough people out there willing to pay the premium for a premium" car kit (the Fujimi Enthusiast Series being a prime example).

Pick up a Trumpeter car kit, build it, and get back to us...

The AMT '69 Cougar underbody ought to work; after all, it originated with their '67/'68 kits. It's got incorrect inner front fenders, though. It's been a while since I checked, but I seem to remember the windows from the AMT '66 Mustang coupe fitting a resin early Cougar body pretty well. They have to be cut apart and fitted separately, but I usually do that anyway. If these bodies are as close as suggested, the Mustang windows might work in the MPC body too. It's worth a try if you have one of the Mustang kits sitting around (most everyone does).

The funny car kit was MPC, the '67-'68 annual kits were AMT. They were competing companies at the time those kits were originally made, so one is not converted from the other.

It still had the Ala Kart version included, decals and all. The late Sixties box art (two of them) just emphasized other versions that could be built using optional parts included in the kit. AMT owned the car from '61 or '62 through around 1970, so they didn't have to pay royalties to anyone.

It's still spelled "cheese"...should still have at least some cheese in it. When you see "cheez", "wyngz", or "choclaty chips", then you are definitely getting Soylent Green as opposed to any semblance of the real thing. When I was in the mood for that stuff, I'd go for the store brand anyway. The more yellow, the better. Same goes for cheese twists (or puffs). I'm behaving lately though (lost ten or twelve pounds recently, fifteen or twenty more to go), job search coming later this year or early next year. So a lot of that stuff is out the window now (actually, haven't had the cheap mac/cheese in some time anyway...)

They haven't had a "kit area" on the shelves for many years. Around fifteen years ago, they had an "end cap display" (freestanding temporary cardboard display) of pre-Round 2 AMT car kits around Christmastime, but that was pretty much a one-shot deal. Last year I spotted a couple of AMT Ecto-1A kits among the 1/24 scale diecast, again no "permanent" kit selection. Even when they did have them, the selection was middle--of-the-road bland, like Walmart used to have. No toy store around here has had a go-to kit selection since Child World, and they're long gone.

It wouldn't take four years to settle an estate in many cases. I went through that with my mom's estate a couple of years ago, it took little more than one year. If I were on Facebook, I'd dump it.

Not the exact same kit, but you could build the funny car off of those instructions. You wouldn't have all of the parts though. The funny car is pretty much the annual's drag version. The body was altered with radiused/flared rear wheel openings, and the funny car chassis had the molded-in exhaust detail removed.

I've got two of those: one MIB, one builder. I didn't know about it back in the day, learned of it when I found the builder some years ago. AMT got their use out of that Falcon tool...

There was a '69 Falcon funny car kit, after the annual but before the Modified Stocker. Basically the annual kit with radiused/flared rear wheel openings, and the exhaust removed from the chassis. It came in a narrow box like the AWB kits. The Falcon and Fairlane were on the same basic body for '66. The sedans used the same roof and doors, and the wagons were the same except for the front clip. The Mustang stole sales from both the Falcon and Fairlane (so much for Iacocca's "marketing genius") so both cars were consolidated onto one basic body. The Falcon coupe and sedan were on a shorter wheelbase though. Ford Australia tied the two cars more closely together; they did build Fairlanes with Falcon front sheet metal because some of the body (Fairlane quarter panels) was imported, so the rest needed to be locally made.

The chrome one with the rectangular lamps? AMT '69 Torino fastback, as is the piece above it (for the rear of the car)...

I think Ertl tackled the two most likely candidates (GTO and Torino). The Torino wasn't altered anywhere near as much as the others; it didn't even have the windshield wiper detail removed from the body. The '64 Galaxie isn't really worth re-converting, except as maybe a circa '64 NASCAR. The Craftsman/snap kit would be the way to go here. Likewise the '66 Impala; just get the Revell equivalent. The Chevelle and Falcon are too far gone to try and convert back. Both were issued as funny car kits prior to the MS issues. The Falcon wasn't an altered wheelbase car, but the rear wheel openings were reworked for the funny car issue. That leaves the Olds, Buick, and '65 Fairlane. I'd say if you want 100% stock, look for early issue kits. There are two pre-MS issues of the Fairlane and Olds, three of the Skylark. The MS bodies could, with enough work, be brought to a point where they could be used to build custom versions using leftovers from an annual kit.

I've got to pull a stock Skylark out and have a look at it. From your description, a brushed-in coat of unthinned primer ought to do the job. When I do bodywork like this (like when I did the Olds body), I apply bottled lacquer thinner, unthinned, over the bodywork areas only. When I was doing resin castings, sometimes someone would bring me something to cast and it would have loads of primer on it, like they took three swipes with the sandpaper and then blasted on a half dozen coats of primer. Looks good, until the curing RTV mold material warms up a bit and raises all the sanding scratches and seams that weren't finished properly. My older brother had a '66 GS in the late Eighties. It was his daily driver in the summer; for winter he'd pick up a junker that ran good to drive in the slop. His had the dual-pitch converter...I remember putting my foot into it going up a hill near my mom's house, only to encounter a Sheriff's car coming in the other direction. I actually talked my way out of that one. The GS didn't stick out in any particular way, it was just a fast, roomy, nice-riding, decent handling car.

You can probably do the Skylark wheel openings with two thin pieces of sheet plastic: the inside one cut to the shape of the wheel opening, the outside one cut slightly larger to create the recess. I was thinking about doing that with one myself. I've got the wheel openings restored, flares and all, on an Olds body (one of those actually ran in NASCAR in '65) and have a '64 Galaxie body started, though I may replace that work with parts of a stock body I found awhile back.

The 'Vette must have been a theft recovery or a total, because it had a six-cylinder engine in it. It can be seen at the end of the movie after it flips over. The engine is never shown during the movie, as in showing the car with the hood open. The car didn't have to be that fast anyway, as the filming probably wasn't done at high speeds. The sound is dubbed in, seldom was it not done that way even back then.

I doubt the scrapbook cutter would work on anything but the thinnest plastic. For cutting long pieces for a trailer, I'd get one of those cutters with the "snap-off" blades (where the blade can be broken off in sections to expose a fresh/sharp cutting area). Some people call them carpet cutters, some call them box cutters, others refer to them as snap-off cutters. Then, get a good metal straightedge and a couple of clamps. For the long cuts, I'd clamp the work in place with the straightedge positioned so as to let you run the blade along it to make the cut. Don't cut all the way through, only about halfway, but make sure you're doing so at the corners too. The tendency is to put more pressure on the cut towards the middle and let up at the ends; try not to do that. You're not putting a lot of pressure to make the cut anyway; you're just scribing the piece until you break through. If you have to cut holes within a piece, I'd drill small holes at the corners and then use the straightedge/scribe method to connect the holes and knock out the piece.

The watcher might have a similar item that they are thinking about selling. If they see the eBay one listed over and over again with no takers, that may affect their decision...

If I were down to only one magazine subscription, it would be Rodders' Journal. Even if I hadn't gotten the lifetime subscription deal a while back...

AMT didn't make a four-door promo, but that's a decent counterfeit. Looks like someone took a wagon kit and reworked the roof and deck/taillight area.

The ugly version made a bunch of money for that guy...he bought a (then) outdated car, probably for cheap, gorped it up with bolt-on stuff, and got paid for displaying it for a few years. He probably held on to it so that nobody would change it back while he was still around...

Lately, it's been those "display brake drums" from early Sixties AMT kits. I had a bunch of them already when I noticed they are pretty close (in diameter) to the drums in the Revell Model A roadster and coupe kits. They're deeper than they need to be, but by trimming them on the back side you reduce both the depth and the outer diameter where they meet the backing plate. Sometimes the detail on the face of the drum differs a bit from one to the other, but you're smoothing that off anyway. The fins match up pretty well on most of them, and when they don't match, just sift through the pile and find two that do match. Of course, I could just cast the Revell parts, but where's the fun in that? Other than that, it's tires, tires, tires. I'll save big, thick sprue pieces (Seventies MPC kits sometimes have some real whoppers) and mess around filing them to create parts. I've got a really decent pair of header collectors for a '55 Chevy project that I made that way. Some of the newer kits have extremely straight, smooth, uniform diameter parts trees. I'll set aside a few of the longest sections, but I don't go crazy with those. Wheels, even damaged or one-offs. You only need one to make a mold for casting, and damaged ones can be modified or cut into pieces to make another wheel. Some 1/20 scale outer wheel rims fit certain 1/25 scale tires, so those get saved too.

I'm pretty certain the first-issue Fireball 500 kits had the smaller tires too. The short-run '63 Ford pickup reissue (the one with the goofy camper from the '69 Chevy pickup) had four of those tires too, not sure if they were the smaller or larger ones. It's probably a case of, having tooled the tires, AMT had to include them in a certain number of kits to use up the production and justify the tooling costs. When they cut a tire mold, they don't mold one tire at a time, or even four. I've never seen a tire tool, but my guess is that it has cavities for about two dozen of the same tire. The oversize drag slicks in the Modified Stocker kits was probably another such case. Those got used in some of the dragster kits, the early Seventies funny cars, the Boss Nova wagon, and the Modified Stockers.

Even though the Olds is numbered 2, the artist still managed to get a second 2 in there. Nine kits in the series, and they got two cars numbered 12 in...

There are only two different "restored" versions. The first (1984) had the really bad headlamp engraving and too large/too-high-on-the-quarter-panel GTO emblems. Those things were revised in the next reissue, along with the taillight panel. The poor windshield wiper engraving, lousy interior bucket, and crappy chassis (both tooled by Ertl) remained untouched.