Mark

You don't often see built ones in magazines of that era. I have three or four of them, none were painted. I'd bet that, in spite of the accessories that were included to make them more appealing to older builders, most were built by kids and were bought at discount or closeout. There were such places back then...the first AMT kit I remember having was a '62 Falcon, bought in 1966. I remember that surplus store having those window box Falcon and Comet kits stacked on the floor. Auto World also had "hard to get" older AMT kits in their ads well into the late Sixties.

The long-serving AMT '56 Ford kit includes the "crown" trim as an option. It's due for a reissue early next year, if you can't find one in the meantime.

Parts of the Buick wagon, specifically the trailer and display engine, were reused in the original Nova wagon kit. The parts are moved around, and a bunch of Chrysler engine parts are plated in the Nova but not in the Buick. The Buick wagon was not reworked into the Nova, though. Totally different cars, no sheet metal, glass, or chassis parts from one would come anywhere near to fitting the other.

The V6 is somewhat based on the aluminum V8. GM had a lot of problems with the aluminum engine blocks, so they cooked up the V6 as an alternative. You don't often see those Buick wagon kits mint in box. I've got an annual Nova wagon, but the Buicks I have were all built when I got them. I don't think they set the world on fire sales-wise back then, I'd suspect the tool was pillaged to get the accessories for the Nova leaving the wagon itself for the scrap heap. If it had been kept, I'd suspect it would have been seen again as a Craftsman series kit, or in the Flower Power series later in the Sixties.

Those Cragar wheels have long stalks molded onto their back sides. Trimming those would pull the wheels/tires under the fenders, and make everything look a bunch better. Or swap wheels to something else, like steelies with Ford hubcaps, or early V8 wires.

Not positive, but I believe the cast iron V6 was first available in '62.

If you are in business to sell stuff, would you start telling people you don't know when it will be available? It's not a life or death thing, it'll get here when it gets here.

Round 2 has a stock VW Beetle kit...the Polar Lights snapper. AMT never did one on 1/25, though I think they did do a 1/43 scale one.

They might be skipping these until there is some certainty about when the stuff will actually be unloaded...

Pinto was on my short list when I bought my first new car. I liked the wagon, and Ford was offering the panel version without the stripe packages (and maybe even the portholes). That '79 restyle absolutely killed it for me, boy was that front end ugly...

They DO carry other items...several brands of paint (shipping on that can get stupid), Molotow pens, an admittedly small selection of Evergreen styrene and K&S metal strips and tubes (more K&S stuff than the LHS presently has), and even casting supplies. And, every so often, there's a new kit or two. LHS seems to be pricing kits at "whatever the market will bear" lately, often $4-7 over retail. I'll pay retail once in a blue moon, but never over. When I can get something dropped on my front porch cheaper than buying local (sales tax included in both)...sorry, local...

The AMT '67 Camaro annual kit was an SS 350.

I'd suspect that with the pricing and payment terms HL gets from the manufacturers, they buy in very large quantities, and don't always get the newest items first. So the last of the "same old" has to be sold before the "new" stuff gets put on the shelves.

Definitely Jo-Han.

A shot of the back side of those Cragars would narrow it down. I will say they are definitely AMT. MPC Cragars often had blank center caps, sometimes only lettering (misspelled on occasion), never the S/S logo that I can recall.

Had the "can you hold that kit for me" deal happen once, years ago. A guy somewhat well known (now long deceased) asked me to hold a kit for him, two weeks later got a letter saying "I found a rebuildable one". Fool me once, shame on you. After that, it was "first person to get me the cash, gets it". These things aren't necessities, either you can afford it or you can't. And if you need to wait for money from somewhere, or aren't confident of your job status, hobby stuff should be a bit lower on the priority list...

Still some goodies left on that tree. Those little "U" shaped thingies are teeth for the '54 Chevy grille; those were separate pieces on the 1:1 car, and customizers often put additional ones on in between the original ones. The '62 Chrysler and Dodge grilles are better than the equivalent Jo-Han parts. The Dodge grille fits the Revell '62 Dodge body perfectly. There's a '60 Oldsmobile grille there too.

I don't have one of those '58 Biarritz kits anymore, but I remember the tires as being branded "Douglas" or something like that. Those Silvertowns do resemble the Monogram Cadillac tire, except for the whitewall insert which looks small. The front tires don't look like anything from any kit I can recall. I still think they might be something Modelhaus did, or the current Modelhaus Tire operation is doing now.

The one on the left is AMT, the one on the right is Jo-Han. It came in a number of kits in the 1970-74 period: original issue Superbird, '70 4-4-2, Javelin, and Roadrunner annual kits, Mark Donohue '70 and (AMT boxed) '71 Javelin Trans-Am racers, '72 Torino NASCAR, among others. At some point in the mid-Seventies, Jo-Han retooled a lot of their racing tires. These hollow one-piece tires were retooled as two-piece, those are okay but not as good as the early one-piece version.

He may have been selling something similar, and used that tactic to keep a competing item off the table for a while.

AMT grille and bumper parts pack.

No, not the whole frame. The Deuce frame is needed with the stock fenders, as the area between the body and running boards IS the outside of the frame rail. The Willys kit frame, in some cases with tweaks to the outer most rails, will work under an Austin body. I think I tried it under a '33 Willys body too, I might be wrong but I remember it being workable for that too.

Why not try it, on a junker body at least? You can probably do it, you just don't know you can just yet.

The pro street look would dictate stock fenders all around, with the rear tires tucked in. You might not go super big with the rear tires, as the diameter of some of them probably won't work with the rear fenders. One kit I'd take a look at would be the Revell pro street '41 Willys coupe. The rear tires are big yet not gigantic, part of that rear frame section might just work with the Deuce frame, and the 392 Hemi is a street version...street blower setup and block hugger headers should work with the '92 in the 5W coupe kit.

You'll have to tackle reworking the '32 chassis yourself, as there aren't any Deuce kits with a pro street chassis setup. Find magazine or online articles for reference, and do what they did, only smaller.