Mark

It might be a generic or composite design, to avoid licensing issues.

Not surprising, really...the Jeep was created in anticipation of something like it being needed for the war. From all accounts I have read, it did everything expected of it, and then some. The kids at home wanted models representing the planes, ships, tanks, and wheeled vehicles that they were hearing and reading about...and there were more Jeeps than anything else. More soldiers came into contact with them than any other vehicle, so they were the most talked about and written about.

That doesn't look like any '39 Chevy I've ever seen. I smell a rat...

I'd look at Jimmy Flintstone Studios, he might have the pickup cab. I doubt that anyone has done a chopped Woody wagon; those weren't really a thing back in the day, and the modern ones aren't merely chopped but usually just hint at the original design.

If there is one even slightly positive thing to say about prices rising on everything, it's this: the price gap between halfway decent quality food and absolute krap has narrowed considerably. I do try to avoid the cheap stuff, try to do my own cooking for lunches (usually the big meal of the day for me). I did spend a couple of hours yesterday on some Buffalo wing Mac and cheese that provided yesterday's dinner, and will also provide today's, as well as a half dozen or so lunches over the next few weeks. The narrowing price gap has affected dining out as well. I've been avoiding the fast food places in favor of a couple of local restaurants. Price difference is minimal (before the tip, at least). But if you become a regular, and leave a decent tip, every so often the waiter/waitress might "forget" to put the coffee on your tab. Friday afternoon's "soup and sandwich" special was cheaper than a burger and fries at the fast food joint. Same with beverages: for not much more than the watered down national brand beers, you can try something else, local if you've got that going in your area, that's a whole lot better. If I ever have any of the cheap stuff in the fridge anymore, it's usually set aside for when I'm doing the yard work. In short, we are pretty much where we are going to be...not famous, not multi-millionaires, and so on. May as well get whatever enjoyment we can, wherever we can find it. Life is short, don't drink cheap beer or eat cheap food. If something you like has changed for the worse (does it ever change for the better?) then find something else to like.

Not so surprising, really. The AMC V8 engine was about as good as any of the others (Ford had better cylinder heads), the AMC Trans-Am program had already gotten the engine ready for competition. The chassis was the same as what the Ford guys were using. NASCAR allowed the fabricated chassis (including the front stub) by then. As long as the suspension had the same configuration as the showroom car (coil springs all around) it was good to go. When Penske switched to Mercury around 1976, all of his Matadors were reskinned as Montegos. The Matadors that Bobby Allison ran were different cars built by him.

Of the annual kits, only the '77 had the grille on the plated tree. With the NASCAR version kits, only the earliest ones made by the original AMT company are actually NASCAR kits. Lesney made some changes to the kit to make the Bobby Allison Sportsman class racer around 1979. All Ertl and Racing Champions reissues are actually the Sportsman version. None I am aware of include a stock grille.

Well, this is the Model Cars magazine message board, so most would assume the conversation here to exclude non-automotive subject matter...

Backup lamps weren't required nationwide until 1967; possibly even cars produced as of 1/1/67. I have seen a number of 1966 cars without them.

You could apply, and trim, Bare-Metal Foil to mask around the opening, then use tape and paper to cover the rest of the body.

Never say "never" or "always" with this stuff, but every one of the multiple version '34 kits I have seen were all that color. Around 1965, most if not all of the multiple version kits were converted to "stock version only" with those probably being a different color. Some were used as slot car bodies in Monogram slot car kits. Those were probably yet another color, but don't worry about tripping over any of those in your travels! Then around 1973 these were changed over to the Early Iron street rod versions. Early production '34 Fords were molded in light green and included both coupe and cabriolet body parts. Later on the cabriolet was issued as a separate kit, in another color. I'm pretty sure those didn't include the coupe roof, and the coupe kit no longer included the cabriolet parts from then on. The "combined" coupe/cabriolet Early Iron kit came in a slightly bigger box than the individual version kits. I'm not sure if the '36 Ford was handled in the same way, as both of mine are in the smaller boxes and contain only the body parts for the version shown on the box.

Those were built on Corvettes. The chassis was stretched a bit in front. Clean some of the junk off, change the grille a bit, lose that windshield divider, and it would look pretty good.

Atlantis has been adding molded clear parts to the Revell kits that did not include them originally. Revell didn't provide the sheet material in the 1/32 scale kits back then.

I watched that three times yesterday. Like all of this guy's videos that I have seen, it's packed with information yet concise, not sensationalized, interesting in terms of the human element, and the story never drags or veers off on tangents. Robinson worked with George Montgomery to develop parts to improve the OHC Ford engine, something barely touched on for lack of time. Had he lived longer, we might be seeing fuel cars running with engines derived from the OHC Ford today. That time frame was the most interesting in drag racing, when different approaches could be tried and made competitive, before things got scienced out to the point of there only being one way to do anything.

If it hasn't got enough oomph to spray an entire body and then go through the cleaning process, it might be better for things like chassis and interiors.

Paint is paint...acrylic, enamel, lacquer...if it's thinned properly, it should all spray the same. If you haven't tried that setup yet, I'd experiment with something easy to clean first.

After the Charger name was applied to a detrimmed Cordoba, and later to an Omni 024, putting it in a four-door wasn't so much of a problem...

With older cars, the four-doors aren't as popular or desirable. They are an alternative however. With some of the more popular collector cars like tri-Five Chevies, guys are picking up solid four-door cars and converting them with donor panels from lesser condition two-doors. The wheelbase is the same, sedan roofs are the same, but still it's a bunch of work. Station wagons are a different matter, those picked up in popularity a while back.

That one is a reissue from the late Nineties (some of the lettering on the box sticks out as being different from the original Seventies issue). Fifteen bucks is pretty good if you are looking for one.

Okey only bought tooling and already molded parts, maybe already printed decal sheets, boxes, and so on. He didn't buy the company or the name. As I understand (I may be wrong) SeVille kept the old Jo-Han company but changed its name, and used that company to continue in whatever business it had in mind, other than making model kits. The name of a company can be trademarked in a given area. In New York, when I had a business, by setting up a corporation I had my chosen business name locked up for the entire state. Someone could have started a business with the same name in any of the other 49 states however, provided there wasn't one in that state already. Had it not been a corporation, I'd have secured it only for the county in which I live. So, there can be a Johan in Kentucky (Okey) and a Jo-Han in Michigan (or wherever the Atomic City one is). When the two collide, they'll end up hashing it out in court, most likely. These laws likely differ from one state to another, creating some nice busy work for attorneys.

This might be why the kit never got built. I could see buying additional parts and packing them along with the kit. But, I'd never remove or dispose of anything that came with the kit until it was finished...

The constant tinkering and "improvements" are messing up everything. I'm waiting for some IT geek to explain how needing to be online in order to open a file is an "improvement". All improvements are changes, but not all changes are improvements. In fact, few of them are. I'd like to choke someone at eBay over being constantly hounded about the availability of their app. I've seen the pop-up hundreds of times. If I wanted your app, I'd have it by now.

I've only seen a couple of original kits; both were white. Based on just that, though, I wouldn't rule out the existence of one being molded in orange. All but the slowest selling kits got multiple production runs back then, and there were sometimes differences between early and later kits.

For a lot of guys, looks beat everything including driving comfort and practicality. Some of those design things seem to be fads that came and went. There was a period where some guys built them with the body raised up on the frame at the back, to make the car look as though it were bent in the middle. Then there's the "no front brakes" thing (which was apparently legal in a lot of places; a stock T actually had only one brake, on the transmission). As for the vertical steering column, I remember seeing one in a Rod & Custom feature car in the early Sixties. The guy shoved a Buick engine into an early Fifties Plymouth, apparently that was his way of making it all fit.

Annual kits are the car and truck kits issued each year, when the subject was brand new. Most, but not all, were based on the promotional models that were made for the auto manufacturers and their dealers. AMT, MPC, and Jo-Han made the vast majority of them over the years. There are dual carb flathead intakes in the AMT '50 Ford convertible and '29 Ford woody/roadster pickup kits. One could be made also, by removing the single carb from a stock intake and adding mounting pads for the dual carbs.