Mark

Just do a decent curbside chassis (one that is better than the flat slab included in the original kit), and an interior that is full-depth (unlike the shallow one with no driveline tunnel that the original kit had). It'll sell in decent numbers because of the accurate-looking Jo-Han body and trim. The trick here would be to not spend so much money on the new parts so as to make the kit unprofitable. Keeping things simple would go a long way in that direction.

It was the last Mopar to have a flathead, but AMC offered one in the American as late as 1965.

Lots of "I feel that"s and "could it be"s in there. Sounds like someone constructing a story for when it crosses the auction block.

The Mustang II was first issued as the "Champ", a fictitious car. That issue wasn't around long before the Trojan Horse appeared. Apparently AMT lined up a deal to put Larry Fullerton's name on the kit after the Champ was issued. The "name" funny car and Pro Stock kits seemed to be more popular than the fictitious ones back then. AMT issued the same few kits (Mustang II, Monza, Pinto, and the stretched Vega panel) with the beer decals later on; maybe they were trying to wring more sales out of them by doing that.

It was a '66 Chevy pickup, produced from the original SMP/AMT tool. Someone else produced 500 or so assembled promo models from that tool, but the kit never appeared.

I apply it and let it thicken a bit before putting the pieces together. When I'm applying temporary glue, I don't do it with the intention of handling those parts again until the next day so drying time isn't an issue.

I've always used Elmer's. Cheap, it holds, and it's easy to remove. Works for me.

If it's the one molded in dark red, it's the most recent issue. RC2 announced a reissue not long before they folded their tent, but it never appeared. The body was used in a couple of NASCAR kits (with that generic chassis) and some restoration was done to get it back to stock. A couple of areas aren't as crisp as in the annuals, but it's a serviceable kit. The reissue didn't have the station wagon conversion parts included, and it didn't have any stock wheels, but other than that it was pretty close to the '74 annual. Just the other day, I was looking at a built '73 annual that I've had for a while. When I got it, it had been converted to the wagon but the wagon roof and glass weren't part of the deal, and the hood was missing. I've since found a couple of hoods as well as the (used) wagon pieces. It's assembled fairly cleanly, should rebuild easily. I should get on that one.

The multiple-belt setup had to be molded with the "steps" in it. If it were molded with grooves between the belts, it couldn't be pulled out of the tool. You could scribe the grooves using the molded-in steps as a guide and then file away the steps, or just file away the steps and end up with a single wide belt. Other more recent kits have stepped areas instead of grooves on certain parts; if you have a Revell Deuce three-window kit, check the trunk lines on the body...

Revell-Monogram did, but that one is 1/24 scale and the engine is noticeably larger. The AMT Duster kit includes a six-pack setup, but the builder here wants a single four-barrel intake.

I'd wager that you couldn't find a person in that factory that has ever seen a picture of a '57 Chevy, let alone an actual one...

Those wheel covers are from a Monogram '58 Thunderbird kit. But, I have seen a review or two of that kit saying that they are closer to being accurate for '57 than '58.

#1 AMT '55 Nomad, #2 AMT '57 Ford.

The Model King issue Cyclone includes stock Cyclone Spoiler decals for 1970 and 1971, and also has the stock wheels on the plated tree. I don't have the Round 2 Allison issue, but I understand the stock wheels aren't in that one.

If you want a showroom stock Cyclone, get one of the Revell '70 Torino kits. The Torino and Cyclone are based on the same unit body, the Torino has the correct engine, and a lot of it fits very well considering the kits were engineered thirty years apart by different companies. The Torinos have separate door handles and side markers, the engine compartment is a good fit too. You'll have to do a bunch of work to convert the interior though. I'm working on one myself (using an original Cyclone interior) but I have seen another one done using a converted Torino interior.

Don't they say six more weeks of winter most of the time anyway? Chances are, there will be six more weeks of winter (which makes the prediction right), and if there aren't six more weeks of winter then you'll be happy about it and forget the "prediction" anyway...

Around here, one store had the MPC NASCAR '71 Cyclone, Jawbreaker, and Cosmic Charger, AMT '70 Impala, and a couple of newer Revell kits (I think they were the Foose Challenger and Camaro). They might add a couple more at some point, generally about eight or ten kits get broomed out every time they reset the stock.

One has the three-speed, the other a four-speed. A number of parts are identical but the block/transmission halves are different.

They'd give you a set (or a choice of a couple of other items) when you had to reorder something that was out of stock (which was pretty much every time you placed an order). A couple of the early catalogs had a set folded in half and inserted between the pages. Those sets were printed on slick paper without any adhesive.

Some Jo-Han kits had that air cleaner also. The '65 reissue '64 Dodge hardtop (same as the annual except with the Wedge swapped out for the Hemi) has it, as did the '65 and '66 Plymouth annual kits. I'm not sure about the '67-'68 Plymouths (don't have any of those other than already built) but they probably had it too. All of the Jo-Han units that I have seen are plated. Other MPC kits would include the AMT-boxed '65 Coronet (underbody and engine from it were reused in the '66-'67 Charger) and '65 Custom 880 convertible. The '65 Monaco hardtop, and '66 big Dodge kits, did not include the Hemi as an option so those do not have that air cleaner.

A lot of them were built like that. I'll bet the kid who built it had a blast back in the day. I couldn't bring myself to stick one together exactly like that, but I do have a couple of started Advanced Custom kits (including a '63 Merc hardtop) that I intend to finish using the kit's prescribed custom parts. In the case of my Mercury, I had to fix some overzealous trim removal and realign a few already-glued-on parts. But it's too far gone to save as a stocker, I've got a stock one already, and the butchered/customized one was cheap...

Did the words "screw bottom" appear anywhere in the listing?

The hot glue peels off. I don't think it leaves a residue, but you will pull it all off before doing the rest of the trimming/fitting work, so you're going to be cleaning the body at least once or twice anyway.

NOS, maybe left there by previous owner of the shop? Those may have been around in certain areas in the Eighties. I went to a couple of Cleveland area toy shows in the early Eighties; one vendor there had cartons of sealed, untouched late Sixties MPC kits. There was no massive selection, but there were several cartons each of what were presumably slow sellers. I don't remember what many of them were, but I think I bought a few including a first-issue '69 Trans-Am which came out in late '69 after the normal annual kits. That one wouldn't have gone for much more than a new current kit at the time, because MPC had a reissue of that same kit out not long before then. He had a pile of those MPC 1/20 scale snowmobile/dragster kits too; I passed on that one. I'd imagine some kits sold better in one area than another, especially if the store doing the selling was in an out-of-the-way place, or charged full retail. I put together most of my collection of Revell parts packs in the mid/late Seventies. That whole thing started when some guy had a booth at one of the local flea markets (which folded a few years ago after a long decline). All he had was Revell parts packs. No kits, no other stuff. If you bought enough of them, they were ten for a buck. He didn't differentiate on them either, to him a parts pack was a parts pack. Who knows, maybe he found them in the trash or cleaned out an old hobby shop and got them for free. I went through that stand pack by pack over a couple of Sundays (should have packed a lunch) and dug out all the different ones I could find, including most of the engines and all but one of the motorcycles. (I didn't find a Harley-Davidson, not one, in all that stuff. My older brother told me I'd never find that one anywhere...it was about ten more years before I did find an original one.) At the time, I didn't have a listing or any other information to determine how many I had or didn't have. I eventually figured that out (some item numbers went unused), I'd found all but four or five of them. The guy with the parts packs only set up there for a few weeks...never brought any other stuff there that I can recall.

What a breath of fresh air...Eighties-style billet is nowhere to be seen (it had its place but enough is enough), not one of those "let's pile all of the rare parts onto one car" monstrosities in sight, and you can recognize what all of these started out as. You might want to say one car should have smaller front tires or another should have a different color interior, but that's just personal preference. Every one of these cars looks like someone had a vision, and followed through on it.