Snake45

Thanks. I'm gonna check out mine tomorrow afternoon, too.

I'll take "accident on the freeway," Monte, if it means the B-17 gets to live.

Which '69 Charger?

Also known as The Song With No Tune. I HATED that song from day one, and still do.

Okay, go ahead and declare it and post a starting pic. As usual, if we get eight players, I'll join in to make it nine and then Round 5 will be on. I think three have so far declared intention to participate. Deadline date will be December 31. Meanwhile, here's the final roundup of Round 4. We got 8 finished, which is pretty much in line with Rounds 1 through 3. ROUND 4: FINISH DATE SEPTEMBER 30 2019 Prostreeter69: Pro Street Bronco Bobthehobbyguy: ’32 Ford 5-window SIXTH COMPLETION! GOTTER DONE! Dave Branson: '70 Trans Am FIFTH COMPLETION! GOTTER DONE! Tom Geiger: Camper trailer SECOND COMPLETION! GOTTER DONE! '50 Ford Truck SEVENTH COMPLETION! GOTTER DONE! SamIAm: '56 Chevy NAFAW9: HO scale Freightliner #1 Model Citizen: '49 Ford Tudor Disconovaman: '69 Chevelle THIRD COMPLETION! GOTTER DONE! '55 Ford pickup FOURTH COMPLETION! GOTTER DONE! Straightliner59: '93 Firebird OH SO CLOSE! Snake45: '69 Camaro EIGHTH COMPLETION! GOTTER DONE! 70 Grande: '67 GTO SuperbirdMcMonte: '58 Impala FIRST COMPLETION! GOTTER DONE!

Spotted this at the local Toy show. I’d never heard of this car (or the modelmaker), but it looked cool, the box said 1/24 scale and it looked like it could be, and the price was right ($5). Sold! Here’s what Wikipedia says about the Bugatti 55: “It was available starting in 1932 and was produced until 1935, with the last car being delivered on July 30th of that year. 38 cars were produced in total. The majority of Type 55s had factory bodywork designed by Jean Bugatti, with 16 of the 38 wearing 2-seater roadster bodies and another 7 wearing coupe bodies, both of his design. Of the other 15, 11 were bodied by outside coachbuilders and the other four are unidentified. None of the factory bodied cars had doors which made them far less practical than the cars bodied by external coachbuilders, most of which did have doors.” The Majorette body has doors, so it must represent one of the 11 “others.” Whatever, it’s pretty and I like it. I think this is the lightest diecast in my collection. Only the body (and hood) seems to be metal (and it’s small); the fenders and everything else are plastic. The fenders are molded in black (and the interior in brown). The paint on the body isn’t particularly good. It’s pretty pebbly, not very shiny, and the demarcation between the red and the black doesn’t follow the body contours 100%. I might have a fit of industry and repaint it someday. Both halves (sides) of the hood hinge up in the middle to reveal some engine-y shaped chromed plastic. I have no idea if any of it is remotely accurate. ALL the minor trim parts on this model (the “chrome”) are toylike and simplistic looking. Every single one of them had a visible sprue stub, where it had been broken or twisted off the sprues. I spent a certain amount of time going over the whole model with a sharp Xacto, carefully removing these unsightly nubs, and then touching them up with Silver Sharpie and Molotow. Heck, I basically rechromed the whole thing. I also painted the taillights, and that’s about it. So I managed to make it look more like a cheap (Maisto, Motormax, lesser Welly) diecast and less like a cheap toy. It isn’t my highest quality diecast. But I like it anyway and think it looks pretty cool. It even displays pretty well next to my Franklin Mint Jaguar SS100 (which currently needs it headlights fixed, sorry ‘bout that). Thanks for looking and as always, comments welcome.

That's the '65 car and the kit is the '66. Although the chassis is more like the '65 McEwen car.

If the '65 Chevelle is reissued, I'll buy a couple just to graft the more-accurate roofs onto Revell Z-16 bodies...and/or for cowls and other bits I need to restore some AWB FC glue bombs.

Now I'm kinda thinking of starting the dedicated thread NOW, when the calendars start showing up at Walmart, rather than after the first of the year, when you'd be lucky to find one or two of the four still in stock. BTW, if we're gonna do it, it won't be limited to the calendars available at Walmart. As you mention, there are numerous types of car calendars available, including classics, antiques, exotics, and so forth. The idea is to get as close as possible to This Month's Car with a diecast or model--and to have the two publicly displayed together. How's that sound?

I've built five of the MPCs and three Monograms (and three Revells, and one original AMT annual, and have owned two real '69 Camaros for a total of about 15 years), so I feel qualified to speak on this topic. First off, NEITHER ONE is worth expending any "special effort" on, such as wiring engines, extra detailing, aftermarket resin or PE, expensive "authentic factory" paint, etc. If you want a good '69 Camaro model, get a Revell kit and drive on. The Monogram is 1/24, and a bloated looking 1/24 at that. So if you're a 1/25 purist, that's the deal-breaker right there. If you really want a nice 1/24 '69 Camaro, start shopping diecasts. M2 has done quite a few interesting variants of their very nice '69, and most of them are available at very reasonable prices. Johnny Lightning did a 1/24 '69 which isn't quite as good as M2s, but still WAY ahead of the Monogram. And there are probably high-end Franklin or Danbury Mint ones, too, I haven't checked. I have no intention of ever building another Monogram OR MPC, but if you put a gun to my head and MADE me build one, I'd pick the Monogram over the current issue MPC. I figured out how to do an easy mod to the front valence of the Monogram kit that makes it look about 100% better, at least from the front. (Still looks bad, but a lot better.) But I'd rather build one of the MPC '80s reissues (or an original 1969) than the Monogram. My two green models above--the dark green one and the Rally Green one--were built from the black plastic '80s reissues. I made some mods to the body of the dark green one (built around 2007 or so) which improved it a bit, and even more mods to the Rally Green one (started around 2014). I'm semi-proud of both of those--I think those are about as well as that kit can be built, or at least as well as I can build it.

You reminded me of one of the funniest lines on SNL in the last decade. The "Girl You Wish You Hadn't Started a Conversation With at a Party" (who is white) said, with a straight face, "I wanna go see Cuba before white people ruin it." I miss GYWYHSACWAAP, but we'll never see her again. It turns out that the character was an amazingly accurate (if completely unintentional) impression of an individual you now see on the news almost every day.

Very nice! Model on!

Might be a good idea to double-check that the wheelbases on these GM cars were the same. I know that in later years, the fancier brands had longer wheelbases than the Chevies.

I've never seen all those boxes together before--VERY cool! I have at least four of them.

You see ANY hope of finishing either this one or the Vette by the end of the year? We're about to start a new round of the Bring Out Your Dead build and we'd love to have you on board!

Can't answer your question, but that's a good looking model! Drive on!

There's actually a term for such people: Locusts.

I think I'll start a new thread of its own the first of the year. Think there would be play-along interest in "Snake's Calendar Diecast Challenge"?

Here's three more MPCs I've built over the years. The gray HT in the middle is an original first-issue I built in 1969. The other two are from '80s reissues. And bad as they are, they're all better than the latest reissue, and the one before that (the blue one shown above in the OP).

I recently discovered that Testor now has a Semigloss Black in the lacquer line. I bought a can but haven't used it yet.

I just scored an ERTL 1/24 diecast '68-ish AMX on ePay for under $5! New in the box! Postage will cost twice that! Have never seen one, but from what I could find on the net, it should easily be worth $15 to check out. Will have photos up soonest.

The kit did come with a proper BBC. The "too much body" problem you mention is because MPC tooled this body out of their '68, which had the crease running pretty much down the center of the body. Chevy raised this line a couple inches in 1969 (to the tops of the wheel openings), but MPC didn't raise the line, they tried to get away with rolling with it as-is. And they did the same thing with the '69 Firebird, which is also screwed up to this day, and will never look right no matter how masterfully you build it.

Oh, now I get what you were asking. Translated: "Where do you suppose the molds for this engine are?"

Okay, I gotta admit it: Gas Monkey's Riviera Desecrations aren't THAT bad.

Oh, NOW you're in a hurry?