Mark

It does look like the VW body is on a Jeep chassis. At first I thought the engine might be a 289 Ford stuck into the IMC drag version chassis, but the front suspension looks like parallel leaf springs. The engine is probably a Buick/Kaiser Jeep V6. I've probably got my Jeep kits mixed up. The one with the swamp tires probably had "swamp" in the name. I remember that one having an alligator decal on the sides, with the gator's tail looping over the rear wheel opening. The built one I have must be the Universal; I'm pretty sure it has the hollow Goodyear tires on it.

They are from one of the MPC Jeep kits. I'm pretty certain the Universal Dune Buggy (Jeep) had them; that's the one that had plastic "swamp" tires with wraparound tread pieces made of molded vinyl. I think there was another MPC Jeep kit with them too; I've got a built stock-looking one with those wheels as well as a set I got on a plated tree in a "parts box" deal.

The red/yellow car is an IMC Cougar II. The tilt-up-body '32 Ford looks like an AMT Victoria, at least as the starting point. The C-cab T is notan out-of-the-box build; the cab looks like it is modified from the roadster body with sheet plastic.

lose the punctuation and you can claim to be a relative of e e cummings

The Willys pickup is built from a VERY early production Ohio George coupe kit; it still has the plastic slicks and front tires, which were taken out of the kit and replaced with vinyl very early on...

That Anglia body looks like it is scratchbuilt as opposed to being taken from the Revell kit. The windshield/cowl/side window frames look like he started with a Fiat body. I can't figure out the origin of the other body panels though...

I was going to say that. I stopped selling on eBay a few years ago, but when I did receive a payment via PayPal, I, as the seller, did not receive any credit card info from the buyer.

I used to resell those on eBay, when they were current production items. Some of them had flaws in the paint (dust, hair, fingerprints) that were visible though the window in the box. Is the body still attached to the cardboard holder with wire? If the guy couldn't handle the body without screwing it up, I'd doubt his capability to put the thing back in the box. Those kits are pretty hard to re-pack...

The first issue came in a much larger box. When I saw the new issue, I was wondering how they were going to fit everything into the regular size box. I guess we've got the answer now...

Tom Daniel did some design work for Barris, including the Surf Woody and some elements of the Munster Koach. He also worked on the Druid Princess for Ed Roth, though Ed Newton did the main elements of that one.

The crew cabs were converted by an outside supplier; not done on the assembly line. They were authorized by GM and sold by dealers however.

But someone could poke their eye out with the key...

There are three or four vendors listing these on eBay; all are in the Ukraine. Did you order from one of them? If so, how long did it take for it to arrive?

A few years back, someone who had recently moved into the neighborhood was going door to door with a petition to start a HOA. I seriously doubt that she was going to all that trouble in order to hand the reins over to someone (anyone) else once it was in place. After asking a few questions ("how long have you lived here", things like that) I politely declined to sign the petition, then informed her that I'd sue her or anyone else who tried to implement such a thing. When I was house shopping, number one item that I brought up with the real estate agent was "no HOA". I saw her walk over to a couple more houses, then apparently give up on the idea. I never saw them canvassing houses again, and I don't think they stayed too long after that. I've always thought that life is too short to spend so much of it sticking your nose into other peoples' business.

The Budweiser version was the second issue. The first one had different decals. There is also a third issue that is molded in black, with Bell Telephone decals.

I think William Moore also did some of the early Rod & Custom Sketchpads also. Moore also did some cutaway drawings, probably for both titles also. Both he and Tom Daniel probably did the "breakdown sketches" for those articles where they showed you how to build a model of one of the feature cars in a particular R&C issue. Between all of it, there are tons of model building possibilities for not only the reissued kits and parts packs, but a lot of the kits brought out in recent years.

I've been thumbing through some of those '65-'68 Rod & Custom issues lately; I think some of them do include Tom Daniel's name on the cover. He wasn't well-known before the connection with Monogram, but he did do quite a bit of work for R&C. It might have been the Sketchpad work that brought him to the attention of someone at Monogram. If you look at some of the wilder Sketchpad stuff he did (like the T-bucket article), you can see traces of ideas he would work into the Monogram show rods later on. I didn't care for the Monogram stuff when I was a kid, but I've got a few of them now. Some of Daniel's Sketchpad articles involved model kits. In one of the early articles, he reworked the L'il Coffin. I'm pretty sure he did a few cutaway drawings too.

The wheel covers illustrated aren't in the kit; only one set of wheels are mentioned in the instructions. The wire wheel covers are the only ones included. Not complaining about that (the wires look great, as does the rest of the kit) but buyers should know that so they don't look for a second set of wheels that aren't there.

But the Toyoda chassis has parallel leaf springs front and rear. Ford never used a setup like that on its cars. Chevrolet used solid front axles on their lower-line cars well into the Thirties.

Grab a few old magazines, check the ads, and scratch your own. Those companies often had full-page ads with nice big color pictures, so you can get the colors right too. A lot of the AMT Street Rods series kits had header mufflers, but those were usually generic looking.

At least it's not an HHR with pinstriping and peel-and-stick portholes...

I've got a first-issue roof, it's a bit warped but easily fixed. It looks like, if it is used, the windshield area won't look good unless you are really careful. Another thing about that Nomad kit: none of them I have seen have vent window panes. Just yesterday, I lucked into a huge box of stuff at an automotive swap meet...in there are parts from what I believe to be a first-issue Nomad, judging by the time frame of everything else in there. No pickup roof, but there is a windshield...no vent panes. The parts kit I got the early pickup roof from hasn't got vent panes either. If I ever get to doing one of those as a pickup, I'd do it the way I think AMT should have done it...I'd cut the roof even with the back of the "B" pillar, then rework the opening to fit a rear glass from something like an early Mercury Comet.

Both of those Type K wagon kit use the same body, with rounded wheel openings and Firebird fenders and doors.

The Airfix/Lindberg Kammback body/Monogram chassis was done as an article years ago, in the "other" magazine. Probably long out of print. If you throw pickups into this, there's the AMT '65-'66 Imperial convertible, and the MPC '69-'70 Bonneville convertible. Look closely at that '55 Nomad instruction sheet...it's a first issue. At some point the pickup roof was reworked. The first issue roof was smooth and replaced the entire wagon roof except for the vent frames. Later issues have a roof that splices into the wagon roof midway over the doors.

The original Blue Beetle was one version only. The reissue leaves the Early Iron version (more or less) as an alternate building version.