Snake45

And NASA can see them from space!

Very nice!

Darn, that's pretty! I have an original AMT '70 full-bumper glue bomb that I'm planning to paint that very color. Thanks for the inspiration!

Would gag a maggot, or knock a buzzard off a gutwagon, or make a freight train take a gravel road.

Got this little backbirth from Randy not long ago. He said it was a real turd and he wasn't kidding, but it was dirt-cheap and as I told him, I love a challenge. Which this thing most definitely was. If it's not the poorest diecast in my collection, it's definitely in the bottom two or three. I wish I'd taken a couple “Before” pics so you could see what I started with, but, sadly, I didn't. At any rate, it comes with no vent widow representations of any kind, just a bare windshield. The whole grille/front bumper area is a disaster and a joke, and it can't just be removed and tossed, my first instinct, because the bumper cuts through the body lines and leaves a huge chasm that would have had to be filled to go that route. The front turn signal lights are similarly comically oversized, and all of that mess is molded in one huge piece. Yikes. I started the Snake-Fu by black-washing the hood grilles, the rocker panels, and the alloy knockoff wheels, and I was shocked at how much better this simple step made the whole evil turd turd look. Encouraged, I drove on. The next big problem was the doors. The thing comes with some sort of logo tampoed on the doors, which the original owner had evidently tried to remove with some kind of solvent. This didn't work out too well for him. He left some big smears right in the middle of the doors, and then repainted the doors in a non-matching red that was noticeably brighter than the rest of the car. Even worse, the driver's door didn't fit, with a huge gap at the lower rear and sitting up too high at the top rear. I attacked the rear edge of that door (the other one fit okay, more or less) with a file until I worked down the site of interference and got the thing to nestle down to where it should be, more or less. Then I carefully sanded both doors smooth with some well-worn #600 sandpaper to remove all evidence of the tampo removal smearing (and some orange peel of the repaint), but took pains not to sand through the red paint so I wouldn't have to prime the things. I thought Testor #3 Bright Red was too bright for the rest of the car, so shot the doors with an old rattlecan of Walmart Color Place red I had on hand. The doors came out about as smooth as the paint on the rest of the car, but the color is about a shade darker. Oh well. The doors now look a lot better than they did, anyway. At least they don't stand out as they originally did. While I had it apart to pant the doors, I painted the HUGE door hinges, which were black and very jarring to the eye, with Model Master Leather, which was a pretty decent match for the brown color of the interior. I see from the photos that I should have done the kick panel areas in the same color, but this isn't that obvious in 3D. I gave up trying to do anything about the front end and just painted the “grille” area flat black. I painted the chromed, oversized turn signal pods with some of the Walmart rattecan red, decanted. They look slightly less vomitatious now. I used some of the decanted Walmart Red to touch up a few chips in the factory red paint, too. Oddly, these blend in VERY well and are now almost invisible. The final step was to add vent windows and frames from a Revelle '67 Corvette roadster 1/25 kit I'd picked up cheap just for parts. These required only some minor filing on the base and front edge to match the angle of windshield frame. I was amazed at how well they fit, and how much better they made the whole sorry production look. They might have improved the model as much as everything else I did combined. Oh, forgot to mention that I hit the hubs of the wheels, which were bare black plastic, with the Molotow chrome pen, which also added a lot. So here it is, in all its hideous glory. I took it from Completely Unacceptable to Just Barely Marginally Shelfworthy, and from some angles it reminds me of the red AMT '63 Vette I built about 30 years ago.. As always, thanks for looking, and comments welcome. I'm particularly interested in hearing what Randy, its original stepfather, has to say about it.

Sorry I'm late. Got laid off first of the month (my "3 to 5 week" temp gig finally ran out after 11 months ) so didn't have the usual incentive, and then had to find a spot in my house to shoot the now-customary pics. But I'm here, finally, for February. Better late than never, or something. Calendar Corvette: White '63 roadster with wheel covers and '67 hood. Diecast: Revell '63 roadster in red with alloy knockoff wheels. Close as I could get. I didn't even have anything closer in plastic. Calendar Camaro: Hugger Orange (or, possibly, a non-factory bright red, definitely not '69 Garnet Red) '69 with white Z stripes and aftermarket wheels. Diecast: M2 Hugger Orange Z/28 with black stripes and Rally wheels. Pretty close. Ironically, was the Calendar Diecast that started it all for me here last year about this time.

If you really want a 210, M2 does one.

Very cool! You don't often see the '40 Ford built Gasser-style. Well done and model on!

Very nice! Your build style is very clean and you really captured the feel of the era. More, please!

What year is that? It's a C4, right? I need one for my Vette collection just to have something of every generation. I'm interested in it, but not if you're asking an FM-type price for it. I'm a Welly/MotorMax/Maisto kinda guy, remember?

I'm thinking seriously of making that my project for the next Bring Out Your Dead build (which would start in April, if we still have it). Started it almost 10 years ago, about time to kick it through the goalposts.

That Datsun is an M2, right? I've seen a few variations of that at Walmart and HL, but never in a color I particularly liked. I do like the car, though, and hope to get one someday. I appreciate your detailed photos and review, thanks!

All that's nothing compared to trying to make the front end look like it actually fits the body. I ended up gluing mine solid and performing major surgery with file and J-B Weld.

Or this one. It doesn't show very well on the net, but in my original brochure, you can clearly see the '68 Chevelle emblem on the front fender, and how it's been touched out. The '69 taillights look much more "painted on," too. http://oldcarbrochures.org/United States/Chevrolet/1969-Chevrolet/1969-Chevrolet-Chevelle-Brochure/slides/1969_Chevrolet_Chevelle-08-09.html

Yes. Many. That is EXACTLY why I started this thread, just so we could celebrate our little accomplishments, especially when they're not world-changing.

VERY interesting that the front bumper now includes the turn signals. I've got several issues of the coupe kit dating back to 1969 originals (and the Elky) and every one of them has completely open slots there, no lights at all.

They were thinking they could get by without having to change the '68 molds. Or maybe, the chrome strip was still speced for the '69 SS at the time AMT was finalizing it. If you have the original showroom '69 Chevelle brochure, look at it carefully and you can see that every pic is actually a retouched '68!

Does the convertible body also have the chrome moldings running down the body sides? If so, you'll have to remove them to do an accurate SS396.

Yesterday at a gun show, I bought an old Crosman .22 CO2 pellet gun, Model 44, which looks just like an old Colt Single Action Army .45 and is almost as heavy (all metal, no plastic except the grips). Dunno if it works, but it's complete, and if it doesn't, for no more than I paid for it ($20), I'll hang it on the wall. The cylinder is a bit stiff in rotation. I just went on eBay and found a "factory service manual" available for it cheap, so I bought that, so if it's fixable, I should be able to fix it. (Hey, it's just a 1:1 scale model, right?) I have several of the old Crosman 38C and 38T CO2 revolvers, too. Some of them work; at least one needs seals. While I was manual shopping, I bought one for them, too, from the same seller. The idea of getting some of these things working and shooting them in my basement is getting very appealing. Last time I did the math it was almost as expensive to shoot CO2 as it was .22 rimfire, but .22RF prices have more than doubled in the last decade, so the gas guns might be a more economical option now.

Heard this on the car radio for the first time today. Darn near moved me to tears. Been there, done that. A magnificent song:

More like Montgomery Burns, or his little friend....

Very true, but that particular kit's not from the 3-in-1 customizing series, it's from the Profile series, which featured decals for three sets of markings illustrated in the popular Profiles monographs of the day.

Outstanding!

But by your own reasoning/definition, then, the Barracuda couldn't have been the first ponycar, as it was already preceded by the Valiant compact! The prosecution rests.

Yup! Pony car is an American car classification for affordable, compact, highly styled coupés or convertibles with a "sporty" or performance-oriented image. Common characteristics include rear-wheel drive, a long hood, a short decklid,