Mark

Modelhaus offered a resin four-door, but good luck finding one now. Model Car Journal once ran an article on converting one yourself (before the Modelhaus body appeared). I believe the conversion used a '66 Mustang coupe roof as the starting point.

How are these steps covered in the instruction sheet?

I can't think of an instance where someone sold out and outright gave a bad kit a good review. What has sometimes happened is that they will try to find something, anything, positive to say. The good point(s) won't be enough to make it worth getting, but anyone reading the review should be able to figure that out.

You want as smooth a finish as possible. Applying over a sanded finish will likely cause "silvering" or highlighting of the decal film, as it does with decals applied to flat finishes. You could always experiment with a scrap piece finished as intended, and an otherwise not used decal, preferably from the same sheet you intend to use for the project.

I've already got a couple of earlier issue kits, and also don't know much about the subject matter, so I can't add anything of value to the discussion. I'd suspect Round 2 can sell out one production run of this, or pretty much any, car kit they can run. With little to no repair and maintenance on the tooling, that translates to "one run can turn a profit".

Slight sanding with relatively coarse paper in a couple of spots might crack the outer coating and let the paint removal agent seep in and start to work. That is, if other methods fail. You would of course steer clear of detail areas and work on open areas with less potential for loss of detail.

You can only keep trying with different solutions. Clean the part(s) thoroughly when switching from one to another, as some unknown combination of two or more paint removers may affect the plastic (soften it, make it brittle, and so on).

That's going to be tough. Was it applied over lacquer or enamel primer? If so, you could scratch the epoxy somewhere down to the primer, then let the paint remover work away at the primer, which would lift the top coat along with it.

I'd bet it's closer to 1/32 scale, with the 1/25 scale description being an error (or done deliberately to get people to buy one).

Have you got any specs on the actual car (length, width, wheelbase)? If you can find any of that information, checking the scale of the kit will be cake.

To stray off topic just a bit, another idea might be to take the Ford, stretch the hood and move the driving position same as for the Cadillac conversion, then drop in a Lincoln V12. I'd still go with the early (OHV) Cad V16 though.

Revell might eventually have gotten around to a series of '34 kits, but I doubt it now. They got a lot of mileage out of the '32s, and there are still more body styles that could be done for that year. For whatever reason, it seems that the '33-'34 shape is tough to capture in scale. I've thought about stubbing a 3W roof from the MPC Slammer dirt track body onto an AMT 5W coupe. Or are the two bodies different widths, as in '32?

Round 2, in particular, is in the nostalgia business. The aura and mystique surrounding the original kit will occasionally be overlooked to get better detail here and there, but overall when they do a new/scanned kit they are going to keep it much the same as the original. Atlantis is in the nostalgia business too, but they are a smaller company. They'll probably have to scan parts in order to restore a kit, but it's probably less likely they will attempt an all-new kit anytime soon. But their people have expressed interest in doing so, so maybe they will...

Studellacs were '53-'54. Demand dropped to near nil with the '55 restyle. I've heard the Studebaker club guys don't get too riled with other powerplants, driving the cars is their thing. The early Cad engine wasn't that much heavier than the Stude mill. The latter was on the heavy side, especially for its displacement capability. None of the 304 engines were sold to the public, 289 was about as big as it would easily go. Studebaker planned for higher compression ratios in the future, not more cubic inches. Supposedly they had a second generation V8 under development in the early Sixties, but I tend to doubt that. What they really could have used was a better straight six; the cobbed together OHV conversion wasn't very good. I've got a '66 Studebaker brochure; the illustrations of the engined (very small with little detail) are still Studebaker engines! I'm thinking the sixes had intake/exhaust on opposite sides from one another.

What really kills the sedan is the fenders. Way too narrow, narrower even than all of the Model A kits out there. The sedan got a huge backlash when it was released, Ertl probably created the 5W coupe in order to recycle the chassis tooling. One of the kit designers at Ertl owned a '34 coupe, probably still does. But, a new sedan, based on the 5W coupe fenders...now you're talking...

Also, the Pro Stock Chevy Vega bodies are new tooling, matched up with the remaining parts from the original kit.

The entire kit, in both cases. Both are all new tooling, the original Nova wagon still exists but has been extensively altered. The Coronet underbody was later altered and reused in another kit, and the body was updated through 1970. So no tooling from the original kits exists intact to be reused. Don't forget too, the bodies in the '64 Olds Cutlass and 4-4-2 kits are new, scanned and cleaned up from original bodies, and packaged with the remaining parts from the original kit tooling.

Both the coupe and sedan use the same chassis. But no body panels interchange except for the hood side panels. The sedan was WAY off, I would suspect the coupe conversion was done without any thought of going back to the sedan.

The car pictured looks like it is on the stock wheelbase, with the interior converted to a two-seater and shifted back. Lots of work there; it doesn't look like the door openings are the rear ones of a four-door, that would have been easier to do. Shame about the original engine. A small-block Chevy is perfectly good, but that car was built with a Cad and should have stayed with one. A similar car could be done in scale. Only one convertible body would be needed: just rescribe the door lines and move the cowl back. The interior might be tougher than the body, with removing the original rear seat. The original engine looks like a pre-'49 V8. I'd pluck a V16 out of one of the Jo-Han classic car kits, and maybe throw in that big Miller-like blower from one of the AMT early Sixties Ford pickup kits.

There are two different cabs (stock and separate front end) as well as two interior buckets, and two beds (stock and stepside). Only one chassis (drag version has stock front suspension). MPC issued the Datsun pickup with every combination of parts anyone could dream up. But the flip-front version always had the Chevy engine, the stock cab versions always had the stock engine.

Never saw it, but did win a set of the three kits at an MCCA convention (Dayton, Ohio, if I remember right). There was a board with something like 25 parts from model car kits. I was able to ID more of them than anyone else. I think I got something like 23 right. The parts were all over the place, too: new, old, domestic, foreign, stock, custom, show car, drag car. I figured I'd be in the running, thought maybe I'd get about half of them right. The kits weren't in general release yet. I'm not sure the movie had opened yet. One NASCAR fanatic offered me $20 apiece for them before the day ended, and I took it. I don't think I've ever seen anyone get that much for any of them since. Since then, someone gave me a little cardboard thing with the Days of Thunder logo, that would be tucked in between the bottom row of kits on a hobby shop shelf, and hang over the shelf. Haven't got the kits to go with it though!

Slot racing's heydey was from about 1962-66. It rapidly fell off, and, other than HO scale (which Aurora pretty much owned at that time), slot racing was a small-time thing by the end of the Sixties.

I've got a complete original issue kit. Those were molded in off-white, solid white, and gray. At one time I had all three colors. The kit never included a tonneau cover for the interior. The Victoria roof was chopped and was intended to be used with the chopped windshield frame. The Carson/Hall style top was modified into the Deville half top that is in the current issue. Missing parts include the Stylizing rear fins, fender skirts, and a custom rear bumper piece. Maybe a couple of other small parts also.

For first efforts, those kits weren't bad. Some of the parts look like they were cribbed from other kits. The Sand Draggin rear tires look like the two-piece plastic sand tires in some AMT and MPC dune buggy kits, only rubber and one piece. The Toronado drivetrain in the Sand Draggin looks like it is copied from Jo-Han parts, with custom valve covers from the Revell Anglia/Thames kits.

For 1970, Palmer made three 1/25 scale car kits that were an attempt at competing with AMT and MPC: one-piece bodies, more detail. Their Corvette was pretty much a copy of an MPC kit, with some different optional parts. Same for their Dodge Challenger. Their Boss 302 Mustang (with a 428 engine!) copied parts from AMT and MPC. These kits had a few unique parts like Firestone radial tires (so lettered on the sidewalls). The Mustang had the Ford "black stripe" hubcap/trim ring wheels that nobody else included in a kit until Round 2 put them in their '71 Mustang reissue. These three kits ended up with Lindberg and were reissued by them with some changes. The Mustang had been modified by Palmer to look somewhat like a '71, the Challenger was updated to '71 and later '72. Lindberg's '40 Ford coupe was also an ex-PSM kit, one they never released. It was largely cribbed from AMT's kit. Supposedly they had started on a '36 Ford kit (another AMT copy) but didn't get too far on that one, if at all.