Mark

Also, briefly, editor of CAR MODEL Magazine ('67 or so)

Unless the carb(s) are in plain view on the finished model, generally the manufacturer is going to put the effort into other parts more easily seen. That said, a number of recent (last twenty years) kits do have two-piece carburetors (or units of multiple carbs) with decent detail.

It'll throw the proportions off. Too, the Merc has a vee'd windshield and a hood that's rounded in the front. If you cut one car down the middle and add in a strip cut from the middle of a second car, the windshield and hood will extend forward a bit more, unless you alter the angles. I can't see the need to widen the car more than a couple of inches on each side, even to fit the body onto a newer chassis. You can probably widen the fenders a couple of inches on each side without getting into too much work. If you need more width for wider suspension, you could flare the wheel openings. Some guys do that now when they stick a subframe under an early Fifties car, to try to hide the width difference.

Regulator/water trap turns any compressor into an air brush compressor. Even better, you're not listening to the thing running all of the time while you are spraying.

The original annual kits had the wide stock car tires pictured above. They look cool on the model, but don't give you a lot of movement in turning the front wheels. The GT Radials will allow for a "tighter turning radius" and still give that funky late Seventies vibe. I had a set of those on my 1:1 car in 1980...absolute krap tires (lasted only one summer) but looked great...

I've got a Riviera but haven't checked it; it'll get built stock anyway. The annual has a vinyl roof while the reissues don't...wonder what happened there? The leftover custom stuff could go on a reissue anyway.

Actually, a lot of kits with photo box art have "prototypes" pictured on the boxes. The original MPC '69 4-4-2 box shows a Jo-Han Olds with an AMT Chevelle chassis stuck under it. (Look at the front bumper on the stock version.) The original '62 Bel Air (dark blue car on the box) shows a Modelhaus Bel Air. The first issue '62 Impala convertible box has a built test shot that didn't have the door handle detail added yet. Revell was in on it too: a lot of their 1/25 scale Seventies funny car kits have built 1/16 scale cars with the wiring left off. The front wheels and tires are the giveaway: they're way too good...

I never just bought the pre-wound spools, as some of those weren't wound correctly anyway. But those things do wear out and the occasional replacement is needed. And everyone has their own special design, so you are stuck buying replacements from them. I showed the guy at Sears the difference between the tool batteries: one contact was moved only slightly, just enough that the new battery would not work in the older tool. Even he agreed that there was no real reason to do that other than to make the old tools obsolete. He didn't design the thing, so it's not his fault. But then again, with a straight face he was still expecting me to replace everything and buy the new stuff at Sears again! I was looking through some stuff the other day, and came across a Sears gift card I got last Christmas, so I'm stuck going in there at least one more time. I'll probably buy a decent torque wrench and a six-point socket for when I put the winter tires on the new car.

Sears does that too...buy a Craftsman weed whacker, and less than two years later you can't get a spool for it. Same for battery-operated portable tools...buy one and soon afterwards they change the design so the new batteries won't fit the old, still-good tools. That's when I quit going there.

Not really...when was the last time you saw a Toyota Camry kit? Nobody is doing a current F-series Ford either. For much of the Seventies, the Olds Cutlass was the big seller. Jo-Han only issued the '75 as a snap kit, and then only because GM paid for the tooling...

Now that I think of it, oddly enough the '69 Buick Wildcat probably had them.

Thankfully...

The Manx had two of the hollow tires, for the rear. I'm not positive, but those tires may have "for racing use only" sidewall markings. AMT didn't put them into a lot of kits at first. I don't think the '69 Chevelle or El Camino had them, but the '69 Corvettes probably did. The '70/'71 Camaro (same kit for both years) definitely had them.

I'm thinking '66-'69 Continental, not sure of the year though. AMT probably stopped doing interior updates after the last promotional models, so it could be more than one year.

My annual hardtop kit has the blue/red stripe Firestones, while my El Camino annual has blackwalls. AMT put the red/blue stripe Supremes into some of the reissues of earlier annual kits in '69 also. I had a couple of the "Havana Banana" '65 Olds kits with them. AMT only had one hollow Goodyear tire back then, it was a NASCAR tire. They used it in a few other kits like the Meyers Manx, and used it in a few street rod kits in the Seventies.

The Skyliner isn't what you could call a rare kit. It might be easier to search one out to use for parts, particularly a started one or one with a few parts missing...

Looks good, but then again it'll be a high-end car...in a price range where there will be no excuse for it to not look good. Less expensive/more utilitarian vehicles have other considerations than pure style, and will by necessity have different proportions that wouldn't look good with this styling applied to them. It'll pick up some clutter in the process of making it production-ready: door handles, usable mirrors, and license plates.

The Stevens issue included stock wheel covers, as well as plain (no hub cap) rims and the wheel backs that go with them. A smaller set of tires was included too.

Disposable gloves, sanding sponges (nice for roughing in filler), smaller drill bits, and those diamond-grit files (though you can get smaller ones on eBay). The airbrushes do work provided you clean them first...one of the guys in the club tells us that one of them is a knockoff of (I can't remember) a Paasche or an Iwata, most of the parts interchange. Another guy bought one of the touch-up guns to spray larger scale stuff.

Around here, we call it "Snap-On East"

You're probably thinking of the Revell Mickey Thompson Attempt I, which had two Pontiac Tempest "half a V8" fours.

An airbrush will never rotate at high speed, nor will you need it to support a substantial amount of weight. So, as HF products go, the risk of bodily harm is considerably lower with this than in other cases. The airbrushes DO work, but you do have to clean them right out of the box (I'd do that with any brand) and test them with thinner or water (which you'd do anyway). Just personal taste, but I never could stand those tankless compressors that run all of the time.

Franklin Mint made one. For what you'd spend on a warped promotional model, you should be able to scare one of them up on eBay or at an automotive swap meet. Mine is in black, I'm not sure if other colors were offered. If you want to customize or do a color change, look for a dusty or damaged one...those sell for much less than a "mint condition" one.

The inner wheels are unchanged, as are the stock outers. Those early Polyglas tires can be swapped back and forth with the Firestone Supremes that came in the annual kits; they're about the same size. The optional wheels in the Polyglas Gasser are chromed rims similar to those in the '63 Galaxie kit. They're different from the Moon discs in the original annual kits (convertible has plain ones; hardtop annual has six trim pieces on each one).

Other factors will enter into it: -Aluminum sheet, tubing, or structural shapes? -Is the aluminum going to be purely decorative (like thin sheet applied over an interior to get the look of aluminum) or will it be structural? -What are you attaching to...sheet plastic, other metals, or ?