Mark

The new-old-stock front fenders on my '62 Fairlane are in red oxide primer, as is a NOS front bumper splash pan I have. I think I have a spare NOS fuel filler door also, again in red oxide. The used hood I unbolted from a junkyard car about fifteen years ago also has red oxide primer on the topside. Most of the metallic blue paint on it was burned away, apparently by the Arizona sun. (Though the car was in New York, it had Arizona plates on it.) The part number was stenciled on the underside of the hood, most of which is also red oxide primer. I suspect the hood was not original to the car I removed it from, as it was minimally painted on the underside unlike the original hood on my car (which was swapped out due to some rust at the front). The replacement was probably NOS prior to its being installed on the Arizona car.

Those wheels aren't from the Revell '55 Chevy.

That Comet wagon would have to be a 90% new kit, as the wagons were pretty much Falcon wagons with Comet front sheet metal. Comet wagons share the Falcon wheelbase, shorter than that of the Comet and Cyclone hardtops and sedans...

What it is depends on who just bought it, who had it restored, or who just put it into an auction...

Why not get the altered wheelbase hardtop and move the wheel openings?

The engine and chassis from the MPC Coronet got recycled into their '66-'67 Charger. The body tooling probably got scrapped, had Ertl found it they'd probably have utilized it at some point, as they did with the '70 body.

That's three times as many kits as I saw at one store the other day...

Do you have pictures and dimensions for these tires? Someone might recognize them from (possibly) some other application, or someone with a lathe might be able to make another set.

Is the bottom one 100% stock, or is it along the lines of the stock-looking '65 Belvedere? I'll be getting all three nonetheless, but would like to know...

Kalmbach sold off all of their assets except a couple, to Firecrown Media. They already have a couple of railroad magazines but supposedly plan to keep everything going and hire all of the Kalmbach staff that want to stay. I'm guessing that they'll let things keep going for awhile before axing any magazines. The article I saw (many are hidden by paywalls) said that, after the remaining assets are sold, Kalmbach will be dissolved.

Kalmbach just sold all of their remaining titles to another publisher; one known mainly for model railroad magazines. If you thought the automotive content took a dive when SA was shut down, it's probably headed straight off the cliff now...

I have all of the kits in that series (none of them from any of the other 1/32 scale series). A couple of them are in that style box. There were a few different decal sheets. The hot rod kits (Texan, Rebel, etc) had the markings shown on the box while other kits had a more generic sheet. I'm thinking the decal sheet was eliminated from most (if not all) kits that had them, to keep the costs down. I don't think any of my kits that are in that style box have a decal sheet.

SMP waffled on the "separate roof for hardtops" thing. The '59 Impala annual also used a separate roof for the hardtop, as did the '61 Corvair (which lacked door frames/pillars as it should have been a coupe). I can't recall any AMT annual kit of that period having a separate hardtop roof.

'61 Imperials were SMP. SMP was a separate company (albeit with investment by AMT) though they were joined at the hip marketing-wise. I believe they had at least some separate engineering staff, as there are differences in design. SMP kit bodies tend to not be as thick as AMT in panel thickness, and most also seem to be roughly finished on the inside compared to AMT. SMP was bought out by AMT in August 1961. A handful of '62 Imperial convertible kits came in SMP branded boxes (identical to AMT but for the similar logo). About half of the Styline '62 Valiant kits are in SMP boxes, with the rest AMT. If you have a '62 Impala annual kit (either hardtop or convertible), check the little custom license plate on the plated tree...it still has "SMP" on it.

AMT/SMP did some goofy stuff back then. Since the 1959 kit has been reissued, it would seem that the '60 was an entirely new tool which was then altered to produce '61, '62, and so on. I do believe the '61 has a separate roof for the hardtop. It's amazing that Chrysler actually ordered Imperial convertible promos in those years, because they sold so few 1:1 convertibles. Then again, Ford ordered '60 Edsel promos when they knew they were pulling the plug on the car even before the '59 came out.

The one available now is a newer tool, and 1/24 scale. The older one has been reissued in a bunch of different versions, but not lately. The Barris issue (only issued once) is the only one with the custom pseudo-Rolls parts however, and it's one of the toughest ones to find as it wasn't available long.

Modelhaus sold a copy of the Modified Stocker piece. Not sure if theirs was changed from the original in any way.

Don't think so. If someone did, they'd probably have done the cab too (with the one-piece curved windshield).

The Modified Stocker Galaxie bucket still has the doglegs for the convertible boot.

Sure did. The Sizzler package (looked sort of like a 340 Demon) could be had with the six, as could the base model.

They may have been copies of the '64 Galaxie Modified Stocker unit. The stock kit is entirely different and does not have that interior.

That's a later kit. To keep the price in check, they went to the one-piece box with the printing directly on the cardboard. Does it still include a decal sheet? Considering the low price, which dictated the simple tooling design which in turn forced the use of multiple piece bodies, most of those kits are actually quite well executed.

RustOleum is too busy manufacturing a half dozen different "chrome" spray paints in different brands, all with vacuum metalized caps on the cans that don't come close to resembling what is actually in the cans...

I'd bet that the passenger car versions built in the Soviet Union back in the day all used the same (commercial version) running boards. They do interchange on the 1:1 cars and light trucks. Occasionally you'll see over-restored trucks with the rubber covered car running boards.

Paint, being one of the last things you do on a model (besides final assembly), isn't the place to experiment, at least on the model itself. Better to test first on something expendable. Like Ed Roth once said, "don't mutilate unless its cheap!" Not that you can't use cheap paint...you just have to test first. There are videos all over YouTube dealing with airbrushing cheap craft paints, and every so often you can turn up automotive touch-up spray cans at the closeout stores. You only need to experiment beforehand to see what works with what. Every so often though, you'll still hear about someone who took two or three steps backward on a project after just grabbing the first spray can within reach and blasting away...