Mark

The Model Car Garage set is designed to fit the original AMT '57 kit. I bought the kit to use other items on an old Revell kit, and the MCG quarter panel trim wouldn't fit that kit so I didn't use it. It should fit the AMT kit just fine though. I'd avoid putting any paint on that area if you intend to use the P/E trim.

'99 Mustang kits have been mentioned (I have seen those too), no '90/'91 LX kits though. If I were to see those, I'd pick up a couple of them to "unchop" the top on one...

A lot of the parts on the cheaper die-cast cars look heavy-handed, and I haven't seen any damaged/shopworn "mint" quality ones for sale around here, so I haven't bothered with die-casts for the most part. Some of them have decent looking wheels and tires though. A few years ago, one company was selling a line of partially-assembled cars with two sets of wheels included. I've run across people selling "leftover" wheel/tire sets after assembling the cars, and bought them, including two of one particular set.

Around here, I'll be seeing them at the 1:1 automotive swap meets. There's one this coming Sunday; I'll bet that some will turn up there.

Stopped today at the same store I was in last Saturday...someone scarfed all of the L-700/LRW combo kits, but they did have Revell kits today. Stock version '62 Corvette, Surfite, Showboat dragster, Fink Speedwagon, Matt Hay T-Bird, old-tool '41 Willys coupe, and Slingster dragster. I snagged two of the latter, will leave 'em sealed and set them in the attic...if I don't do anything with them in a couple of years, I'll throw them on the sale pile and get more than $8 apiece back on them to help pay for the show table.

I was in a store the other day, purely by chance...tons of pre-Round 2 Lindberg stuff, mostly large items like the submarines and stagecoach. No other brands at all. The cars were pretty much the ones pictured in the flyer, plus they had the Dodge L-700/flatbed trailer/Little Red Wagon combo (those were $20). They had a couple of versions of the '64 Dodge (Maverick and Ramchargers). Nothing I "needed", so I passed...

You're extremely limited as far as who you can sell it to. Often the potential buyer is looking for the same parts you took out of it. When I buy a partial kit (usually one missing the body and related parts, bought from a slot car guy) I haven't paid more than $5-7. If I'd have to pay more, I'd instead look for a complete kit (as cheaply as possible) and then sell off what I didn't want, usually in that same price range. I did that a few years ago with a couple of Revell pro-street '41 Willys kits. Found complete kits at automotive swap meets for $5-8, swiped the chassis and engines, then sold the bodies to slot car guys and ended up with the parts I kept, for free.

I don't think anyone except Modelhaus ever made that wheel. Were I to try to make one, I'd start with a slotted wheel from an MPC '60 Corvette kit. Smooth off the raised area around the center (hub) hole, and reshape the slots with a small triangular file. The oval slots already in the wheel might be just a bit wider than the triangular ones needed, in which case I'd cut pieces of sheet plastic to fit tightly into the old slots before cutting the new ones. I'd put the effort into making one wheel as perfect as possible, and use that one as a master for casting copies.

I think GM was going to bring back Pontiac once they took control of themselves again, but they have since decided they can live without it. Pontiac was usually on the chopping block every few years anyway. GM really needed to axe a couple of divisions once they started sticking Chevy engines into everything. Even now, they are selling the same trucks with two brand names slapped on...

Two piece plastic? Those are probably from the AMT Munster Koach kit. AMT made them in (one-piece) vinyl in the larger size also, but those are hard to find because they didn't put them into very many kits.

Paint for graffiti "artists"...what next, will they package the gold paint for huffers?

They're the same basic kit, but the Hurst/Olds has some different parts from the W-30. Hurst/Olds has the scoop and rear spoiler, also an automatic transmission. W-30 has a four-speed and has the under-the-bumper air intake setup. The kit(s) were created by Ertl. The W-30 was the last all-new car kit released under the MPC brand (Ertl stopped using it not long afterward) while the Hurst/Olds version was always AMT-branded. I believe the W-30 was released first ('88 or so) with the Hurst/Olds coming out the following year.

I wouldn't doubt that more than one each of the 1:1 versions were built, to ease shipping them around from show to show. They weren't runners, and they didn't take up a lot of space. Once molds were made for the bodies, it wouldn't be tough to make a second or third body off of the same mold. Whatever they had for a "chassis" wasn't much more than an engine stand. The engines themselves could have been used-up racing equipment (cracked blocks, damaged heads, etc); they likely didn't have internal parts anyway. They could have even used those plastic mockup engine blocks, had those existed back then.

MPC's King Cobra is somewhat beyond stock...

For taillight lenses, several conversion kits have been offered over the years to convert the '69 to '68 trim, to build any of the Super Stock cars. Some of those include separate lenses.

Lucked out! The AMT '66 is a totally different kit, so it probably won't be of much help for replacement parts. The missing tie rod/suspension piece is probably in the MPC/Model King LA Dart kit. Even though the design of that car is way different from the Hemi Under Glass, MPC reused the chassis and interior from the Hemi Under Glass to make the Dart kit. The Dart won't have the headers you need though. Maybe the AMT '66 Hemi Under Glass parts could be made to fit.

In all but a handful of cases back then, one basic body tool was used to produce all of the variations (promo model bodies, kit bodies, and funny car bodies) of each car. They'd have individual sections that would be swapped into the tool to produce a convertible as opposed to a hardtop, or a closed-hood promo model as opposed to a separate-hood kit. Body tooling is more expensive than that used for other parts of the kit, so every effort was made to use the body tooling as often as possible. That's why there were '68-'70 Coronet (and '70-'71 Cyclone) funny car kits when nobody ever ran those bodies on 1:1 cars, also why the funny car kit bodies usually had windshield wipers, door handles, and other stock trim. Back then, MPC had a habit of dropping various kit/promo bodies onto one of several funny car chassis they had. As time went on, the chassis sometimes got shortened (or had redundant mounting points added) to change the wheelbase to fit another body that didn't exist when that chassis was first used.

MPC Ford Pinto annual kits (coupe '74-'78, wagon '77-'79, '79 is currently available) all include a small-block Ford V8 as an option. The valve covers have the larger stylized "Ford" lettering which is centered on the covers (as opposed to being biased to the right on the 1:1 items pictured). They do NOT have the smaller "Power By" above/to the left of the "Ford" lettering. I believe these are the closest thing available in 1/25 scale to what is pictured. The Jo-Han '70 Maverick and '71 Comet annual kits each include one six-cylinder valve cover with the full "Power By Ford" logo, with fantastic engraving as only Jo-Han seemed to do it. Only those two kits came with the straight six engine. Someone with determination, skill, and a lot of time could graft that section into a good small-block V8 valve cover, and use it as a master to make resin castings. I don't remember if the left and right pieces for the V8 are the same except for maybe the filler cap/breather on the drivers' side. If there are other differences, mastering left and right covers might be necessary. MPC's 1/20 scale Econoline van kits have valve covers with the complete "Power By Ford" logo, but again the whole thing is centered left-to-right on each piece.

The new issue is unchanged, windshield trimming is still needed.

The body and interior are MPC annual kit, the hood is new tooling, the chassis and engine are late Eighties ERTL (shared with the '68 Roadrunner/'69 GTX kits).

The Monogram and Revell choppers are different tools. Each was created while Monogram and Revell were competing companies under different ownership.

The Sunny "427" kit is mostly a crib of the AMT roadster.

JF is at the lower end of the price range in most cases. The lower the price, the more cleanup you should expect to do, particularly if the mold is towards the end of its useful life.

MPC went back and forth between the stock and flip-front versions many times. In fact, the second issue (after the '75 annual, which was first) was a flip-front drag version. There are two different cabs, a couple of beds (stock and step-side), and many other parts that have appeared in almost every possible combination at one time or another.

The Nineties seats are still in there based on the box-bottom parts layout. The original Sixties show car bucket seats appear to be retooled, they are on a tree by themselves except for the custom rear pan.