Mark

The newer issues are pretty much like the Ertl issue pictured. Few, if any more, unblocked parts.

Stage Ghost body looks way undersize for 1/16 scale. A Raiders' Coach body would probably be "close enough"...

Certain kits are just plain hard to find in unbuilt form. I've been hanging around toy shows since the early Seventies. Honestly, I can say that I have never seen very many unbuilt AMT/SMP 1958 or 1959 kits over the years, same goes for Jo-Han 1959-61. The occasional built ones still turn up from time to time, but few appear without some sort of personalization as was encouraged in the instructions. Trim removed, turned into stock car racers, and so on.

If you get the itch to build the Stage Ghost with a different body, just start with the Lindberg 1/16 scale T-bucket. They reissued the Bull Horn and (I think) a second version since Round 2 took over. Same chassis, Pyro scaled down the Monogram Big T for that one.

The '62 Galaxie hardtop was reissued once, minus most customizing parts, in 1969. I have heard that the AMT and SMP 1958 kits were still available through 1959, as most of the 1:1 cars were completely different for '59 leaving the tooling for the '58 versions unaltered. Supposedly the boxes for the "reissued" '58 kits have different stamping on the end panels, but with any unbuilt '58 kits being few and far between now that would be impossible to verify.

Correct, promo item handled by (some) dealers. A few dealers still handled them, others didn't want to bother. I bought a carton of '84 Corvette promos from a dealer, sold ten of them to pay for the two that I kept (which are still probably worth about as much as each of the ten that I sold in '84). When the Buick Reatta and Regal promos were current, I swung by a couple of Buick dealer parts departments looking for them. The counter men looked at me like I had three heads.

It's not a kit, it's a promo. Just sold in unassembled form. These started with the '74-'76 Formula Firebirds, and changed to Trans-Ams for '77-'81. Like the '70-'73 Formulas, these (except the '77-'81) could have been assembled as easily as other promos. I suspect they were done this way so the "kit size" box could be used, allowing photos of the 1:1 car unlike the normal promo boxes that were used then. The '77-'81 Trans-Ams had those diaplanes and rear spoiler that would have been tough to put on during promo assembly, and the '79-'81 ugly nose piece didn't fit very well even in the kits. If the '77-'78 was tough to assemble as a promo, the '79-'81 was impossible. Too, if these had been sold alongside kits, there would have been a bunch of people asking why they didn't have opening doors as shown on the box. Heck, the T-roofs weren't even cut out on these.

No MPC branding on that unassembled promo. Those weren't sold in stores like the regular kits.

That's an unassembled MPC promo. The Firebirds were sold unassembled from 1974-1981.

I did say MPC. All MPC Challenger kits had the dual scoop hood.

Left one is MPC '70-'71 Barracuda (their Challenger kits never had a shaker hood). Right one is the optional drag version hood from MPC '73-'74 Challenger annual kits.

If the plastic is brittle, the posts can snap. I have had it happen with AMT and Jo-Han bodies. The fix is to cement the broken off piece back in with liquid cement, then sleeve the post with a piece of styrene tubing.

Checker also made stampings for the Big Three, and they were also connected to the company that made Great Dane semi trailers. In the mid-Sixties, Newman and Altman approached Checker about taking over production of the Avanti. The guy running Checker turned it down, supposedly telling them the Avanti was an ugly car and that they wouldn't be able to sell it.

I believe only one or two of the prewar cars still exist. Only one or two of the more conventional looking early postwar ones exist. Checker only began offering cars for sale to the general public in the late Fifties, not that they ever sold many that way. The family that owned a company that I used to work for (in 1989) bought a 1982 (final year of production) Checker brand new, and still had it in '89. The woman who ran the company was then putting a lot of effort into short paying the shop that had just rebuilt the Checker's engine. I don't care what anyone says, that ugly front end prewar one would make a neat street rod...

I remember that car being in the Guinness Book of World Records for a few years, as the car with the largest displacement power plant(s). They probably yanked it upon discovering that it never moved under its own power. I do remember the disassembled car being for sale at either Carlisle or Hershey (probably the former). The engines became valuable; first to builders of pulling tractors, later to people restoring vintage aircraft. The reassembled car has engines that are damaged beyond repair.

I too bought a carton of the Rambler kits...as I remember the total came to under $40, on my doorstep. Sold three or four a couple of years later for about $20 apiece, leaving eight free Rambler kits.

The custom skirts would have been way outdated by 1966. Similar parts were deleted from other Trophy Series kits around that time. The piece that interests me is that "scoop" set towards the back of the hood; I recall a similar piece in the Styline kit that went further forward, ahead of the hood. The stock scoop, a separate piece in the Styline issue, would appear to still be separate in the 1966 issue. I believe it was engraved into the hood for the Elegance Series issue.

This was a long time ago, but one local hobby shop owner once told me he could never get as many of those '64 Impala kits as he wanted. He'd order twice as many as he really wanted, he'd still get half as many as he wanted. He'd put those out, and they'd be sold in two or three days. He knew some builders bought another one every year or two. Another guy who sets up at local toy and train shows used to buy a lot of collections. Pretty much every collection had at least one built Impala, as well as one of the Monogram flip-front '66 Chevelles.

Wasn't Okey selling police cars, 442s, and a handful of pro stock Comet kits around 2006? Those weren't new production, just pieced together from stock. All of those were in Jo-Han boxes.

I don't think Testors had any of those Jo-Han kits in 2006. That directory has a bunch of errors in it (not unexpected for such an ambitious project) and that's one of them. SeVille shut down Jo-Han around 1999. The building was even gone by 2006. I went through Detroit in '06, was going to check out the area but I kind of stuck out in that neighborhood...

One of the kits that I have, box side panel info includes "manufactured for Testors by SeVille Enterprises". Like the earlier AMT-boxed Jo-Han kits, the Testors ones were manufactured at the Jo-Han facility. Testors never manufactured kits, they bought bagged kits from other companies and added their own decals and instruction sheets.

Yes, that's the one. I have the box (can't recall how I got it) but not the contents or instruction sheet. There aren't many items I'm looking for anymore, but if a mint one of those were to turn up, I'd be all over it. It would be interesting to see if any other alterations were made.

The more recent issues if the Revell Seventies cars have a (then) newly tooled one-piece chassis (with separate roll cage) where the earlier ones had the roll cage as part of the chassis but the whole thing was split down the center. The newer one is easier to square up. The tires were changed also, from two-piece to one. The front axle in those kits is thin and weak, that has not been addressed.

Taillights are different, I believe the rear bumpers in the kits may be different (they aren't on the actual cars, but might be in the kits for some reason). Jo-Han did the promos back in the day, '71 and '72 interiors were the same in those so I'm guessing changes were minimal. The 1:1 '72 midsized GM cars were holdovers; what appeared for '73 were originally set to be the '72s but a strike at GM pushed them back.

Wouldn't be a stretch to swap parts between '71 coupe and '72 convertible kits, to end up with a '71 convertible and '72 coupe.