Mark

The chassis with the exhaust system molded on, is from a Premier kit. I've got a Premier Falcon kit with a chassis like that (even though Falcons didn't have a frame). I've got a Premier Studebaker Lark kit too, haven't looked at that one in a while but I think it too has a chassis like that.

At the post office where I do mailings for my employer, when someone comes in and forgets to fill something out, the clerk will let them step to the side, finish the paperwork, then be first in line to go back to that clerk. Sometimes the line gets pretty long, but I've yet to see anyone in line complain about them handling it that way. Most people do fill out everything they think they need while waiting in line, so if they've got the wrong form or are short something, it's usually an honest mistake. And then there's the DMV...at most places where I have worked, I've had to go down there and register a vehicle or two for the business. At one location you'd usually spend an hour or more there before you got to the front of the line. Every time I went, when I got near the front of the line, some clown would walk in, stroll up to the front, and say he was being taken care of but had to go out to his car and get something. Of course, none of us saw this guy in the hour or more that we were in line. Uh...nope...get to the back, buddy. I went to another location last week to register two cars for my employer; now they use those little number tabs like at the supermarket deli counter.

Greg is interested in the original custom parts in addition to the stock parts that were in the kit. Truth be known, some of those parts (like the grille) were pretty horrible looking though the ribbed bumpers do look great. The custom wire wheel covers were well done but aren't the best choice for that truck. The trans kit included some parts that were never in the original kit; for example, the interior parts (kit always had the custom seat and door panels, no stock ones).

AMT '64 Grand Prix

The Force 440 didn't include the mini-bike, the annual kit did, probably going back to the '75 when it was a Plymouth Roadrunner. My '76 kit has it.

With those early Monogram kits, what's in the box now is probably all that there is. I've compared a couple of the newer issues to the originals (looked at the '40 pickup yesterday). If you check the original chrome parts trees against later issue ones, you'll see that the tree is smaller in the recent kit, and original parts still in the kit are in different places relative to one another now. That would indicate that the tooling inserts have been moved around, or the old mold cut apart and sections of it rearranged. The question then becomes "what happened to the missing pieces". It's not like some AMT or MPC kits where the old and new trees look the same, with huge empty spaces between parts in the newer one. With those kits, parts have been blocked off by welding little blockages into the tool, to stop plastic from reaching certain parts. In those cases, in recent issues the blockages have been removed putting the parts back in. The original parts in those old Monogram kits would probably have to be reconstructed from scratch, like Revell finally did with the Tweedy Pie kit a couple of years ago.

X2...you must have a part to make a mold. Every once in a while, someone would ask me to cast a part they needed...I'd ask them if they had one, and they'd say "I've got the one for the other side" or something like that. Unless the "other side" part was exactly the same, it's of no use. It's not like you can turn the mold inside out and use it to produce a mirror image part. Too, if you need only one of a particular item, in most cases it will cost less to simply locate another kit as opposed to making molds and casting parts.

The Jeep block is more accurate, but it's a typical Monogram late-Seventies "lump". The Revell J-20 (Honcho) pickup is about the same, unfortunately.

Should have used a Suzuki Samurai...

But the manufacturer didn't put a sticker on the dashboard saying that the car isn't submersible...

I remember seeing his products when he had a space at the Carlisle swap meets in the early Eighties. That was back when you could get decent promotionals there...of course they were only a few years old back then...

Seats/console are AMT '66 Fairlane (the original annual kit, not the new-in-1993 one).

Hobby Lobby resets their inventory twice a year, at least in the model kit section of stores in my area. One such reset takes place in mid-winter, another in June/July. The first phase (discounting kits that won't be stocked again after the reset) has started. Right now, it looks like the Revell Roth '57 Chevy, Revell '37 Ford coupe, Revell custom '50 Olds, AMT '58 Plymouth, AMT '60 Ranchero, AMT '69 Chevelle convertible, and '70-1/2 Baldwin-Motion Camaro (among others) are "out". Not necessarily discontinued by the manufacturers, but just won't be on the shelves there anymore. New data stickers yet to be added to the shelves will indicate what will be "in". I'd almost bet on the Revell Ford wagon and the MPC '79 Trans Am, probably the Revell Starsky and Hutch Torino whenever that one touches down...

Top one is from one of the Revell 1962 Mopar kits. I'd guess the '62 Plymouth Fury. The Valiant and Lancer chassis had single exhaust (as did, inexplicably, the Imperial). That knocks it down to the Chrysler Newport convertible, Dodge Dart, and Plymouth Fury. The stock Chrysler was molded in tan/light brown, the Dodge in red...that leaves the Plymouth. Lower chassis is from a Plymouth Barracuda kit, probably an early one ('65-'66).

The MPC Challenger body does exist...as a funny car, no panel lines or grille/taillight detail.

Wasn't the fuel pump inside the gas tank on a Vega? I've never owned one myself, but one of my brothers owned three of them...other than the quick-rust feature, he had pretty good luck with them. None of his had the "blue ghost" following them around. If not for the rust issues, and if they'd have been smart enough to stick the Chevy II four-banger in instead of that experimental aluminum engine, they might have had a decent car there. I remember the ride and handling being pretty decent.

I'm pretty sure that the "Spee Demon" sheet was also used in AMT's issue of the Jo-Han '70 4-4-2 kit. I've seen that generic numbers/sponsors sheet in several kits, including the late Sixties issue '40 Ford sedan. But I've got one of those kits with the "correct" sheet; that is, one with markings that match up with the box art. The Super Street '64 Impala kits usually have the decal sheet that was also included in the '65 Chevy II funny car. AMT sometimes stuck the same sheet in more than one kit, but most of them had alternate markings. They'd highlight one set of markings on one kit's box art, and the alternate markings on the other kit's. Then there's that 1969 issue '58 Chevy, which ran through the mid-Seventies...I've seen at least three different sheets in that one...

Years ago (1991-2000) I did payroll for a roofing company, including (for a time) some pre-hire work like checking job applications and references. I used to think that company was scraping the barrel for employees because the owner didn't ask enough questions before hiring. Well, he didn't...but still, you wouldn't believe how hard it was to find someone who: had a valid drivers' license (so they could drive company trucks), could pass a drug test, and had transportation. I stopped keeping count of how many times I asked to see a drivers' license, and got the reply "I don't have it on me" (which, when translated, means "I haven't got one"). There were times when I knew he was putting a two-man crew in a truck with neither man able to legally drive. Nearly all of the time, crews were being juggled in order to get one driver into each truck. Seldom was the instance where either guy in a truck could legally drive it. Everyone had the same, stock answers. When these guys came in to borrow money from the boss (to lawyer up after a DWI arrest), he'd ask how much they were drinking when they got pulled over. He got the same, stock answer you'd see in most episodes of "Cops": "a couple of beers". It's like there's a Cliff's Notes book out there full of these answers for arrests, DWI stops, job interviews, and so on. I don't do HR in my current position (which is far removed from the construction world), but still I end up paying invoices for drug tests on people who didn't pass/weren't hired. And these people are usually the ones most likely to be wanting more money. If they haven't got enough money now, how can they afford to get toasted on the weekend? I'm not debating the legality (it's coming folks, and what you do in your off time should be your own business anyway, as long as it doesn't create potential liability for an employer), but even a "conventional" smoking habit isn't cheap.

I can believe that more of certain low-production body styles (like roadsters) now exist than were built originally.

The Ford production figures are world-wide; wherever those Victorias were built, they were probably the '33-'34 style, just built in '35 and '36. The current issue of Hemmings Classic Car mentions a change in AACA's rules regarding what constiutes a "classic" car. Previous rules included only cars produced between 1925 and 1948, bit now they are rolling that back to about 1915. The HCC article mentions one car from that period, an early-Twenties car called the Richelieu...and also mentions that none of them are known to still exist. So there's one...

I remember those ads in the back pages of Popular Mechanics and a couple of car magazines in the mid-Sixties, where they'd advertise current-year cars for $1,095, last years' cars for $995. I asked my dad why those cars were so cheap, and he said those were ex-taxicabs and were probably all beat to death. All of the cars pictured were four-door sedans, so that made sense. One step removed from those $40 surplus jeeps! The political palm greasing is on the mark...in the late Sixties, Checker tried to sew up the NYC taxi business by getting certain interior dimensions into the specs that only their car fit. It was something like floor-to-roof height. Dodge snuck in on it though, by having the rear footwells altered in a bunch of '68 Coronets. If I remember right, it was actually Hurst that did the alterations (they were working with Chrysler on the '68 Hemi Dart/Barracuda conversions at the time too). Years ago, in my area the city fire commissioner got the specs for new fire trucks rewritten, to specify that the truck's engine and body had to be made by the same company, or something along those lines. Whatever it was, only one make of fire engine met the spec, and his brother or cousin was the sales rep for the area. Another town tried something like that a few years ago, but the competing companies took them to court and got that part of the spec tossed out. As for hybrids, they make perfect sense for vehicles like taxis, school buses, and UPS or mail delivery trucks that work primarily in the city or make lots of stops. There was a story awhile back on a Prius taxi in (I think) Montreal, that racked up about half a million miles on the original batteries. If I remember right, once or twice a year they washed the plates inside the battery pack and replaced the acid, which extended the life of the batteries.

My '40 Ford coupe is also missing the decals (I knew the record and decals weren't there, going in). Based on years of poking through kits and parts boxes, I'll stick my neck out and say that whatever decal sheet that was in that kit did not include the "RN Automotive" door markings. The Round 2 reissue decal sheet has them, but omits the "Burbank California" lettering below it.

With the exercise bike, at least you can hook a few clothes hangers on the handlebars...

There's an issue of the AMT '40 Ford coupe that came with a record. I've got the kit, but the record wasn't with it when I got it. When they ran out of records, they changed the box art a bit. The Round 2 reissue box art resembles that of the "no record" version of that box.

The V-Rod had a Corvair engine...making it a bit less of a V-Rod. Still a neat kit though. The Kyote (official name: "Mantaray II Kyote") was the best looking one of them all IMO. Dean Jeffries designed it as a possible replacement for the Monkeemobile, but the show ended. Tom Cotter's excellent Dean Jeffries book includes a couple of photos of the Kyote on the Columbia Pictures studio lot. The kit depicts Kyote #1 (Jeffries' own car, the pilot model) with the headlamps in the fenders. Production bodies had them relocated between the fenders because the front tires rubbed if the suspension was in compression during a turn. Jeffries held onto the #1 Kyote for the rest of his life. The MPC kit is great. MPC also produced a "Dean Jeffries Station Wagon Buggy" kit. For a long time I thought it was just a revised Kyote, but when I got one I found it to be way different. The body has the production inboard headlamps, wheelbase is longer than the Kyote, and it has a Corvair engine (Kyote has a VW mill).