Snake45

So, it's basically man-jewelry, then.

Cheapest JoHan kit I ever bought was $2 for a '66 Marlin. Of course, that was back in 1966.

MY EYES! MY EYES! That first eyesore, the red one, I have an old R&C magazine that has a feature on it. I thought it was the ugliest car ever made--until some of your recent posts!

Yup, you've got it. And? Oh, and my only complaint with the AMT '66 Mustang is that they don't still offer it with the fastback body too (it became the AWB funny car, sadly). The Monogram '65-'66 Mustangs are fine kits, but they're 1/24, not 1/25. Not that I won't keep buying and building them anyway, y'unnerstand.

Yah, there was a hobby shop a couple towns over I'd drive up to every couple months or so. They had boo-coo JoHan reissues in the '80s/early '90s and I pretty much stocked up then. Didn't know at the time that that would be my lifetime stash. But I did manage to get Maverick and Comet pro stocks, AMX, '69 Road Runner, '70 Superbird (S&M), S&M '71 Cuda, SCRambler, Marlin, '70 Olds 4-4-2, '64 Dodge and Plymouth, Mustang funny car, and maybe a couple more I don't remember now. Have built some, hope to build 'em all sooner or later, so no begging, please. Wish I'd bought a few more.

The third one isn't horrible. The others mostly are.

Very clean build--very tasteful and timeless, and your finish is flawless! Well done and model on!

Nice clean build! Well done and model on!

I'm getting in the mood to get back to some of my original AMT '65-'67 Corvette glue bomb resto/rebuilds.

Getting down to scale eye level will give you the same view that you see in real life, and in most pics of real cars.

Found this one at Hobby Lobby; with coupon I was out the door for well under $20. They also come in the traditional white with blue stripes scheme. I thought the thing looked bigger than 1/24, but measuring the wheelbase with a dial caliper, it's darn close to right on the money. I'm not an expert on these by any means but google-imaging pics of the things, the shape and overall look seem pretty good to me. I couldn't find much to Snake-Fu on it. I sanded the tire treads, and worked down some molding marks and flaws on the rear spoiler. Had to remove some molding sprue scrap from the top edge of the clear headlight covers. I could have disassembled the thing, removed the headlight covers and done some detail painting in the headlight area, but after doing all that with a recent late model Camaro kit build, I'm not sure the finished result would have been worth the extra effort and aggravation. I did paint the (came in silver) front turn signals with pearl white and painted on the amber front side marker lights, but that's about it. Maybe two hours total of work on this one, and that time might even include some net research. BTW, the paint isn't as “bass boat sparkly” as it looks in these pics. It's a nice shade of metallic dark blue. I like the new Mustangs okay, but not enough to do a full-tilt kit build on one. For the time, $, and effort expended, I'm very happy to have this one on the shelf.

It's a surprise and a shame that we haven't seen more Chinese kitmakers jump into the popular/competitive priced 1/25 American car market. They're doing it with airplanes and armor. And we know they have the car research in China because most if not all of the 1/24-1/25 diecasts are made there. No, they're not all perfect but some of them are QUITE nice and would be welcomed here as plastic kits if they could compete on price point with R2/AMT and Revellogram.

You know those glue bomb early '60s models you see where the original builder tried to use ALL the kit's custom and racing parts, even just gluing stuff onto the hood and fenders if he had to to use it all? Yeah. It's like the full-size 21st Century version of that.

Last year I bought and Snake-Fu'ed an inexpensive (Welly? Maisto? something like that) diecast '70 GTX that seems to be true 1/25. It's the same size as the AMT '69, anyway, and smaller than the Monogram 1/24. It does look like it was copied from the Monogram, though, and has the same slightly chunky look in the height of the body. Mine came in what looks like Go Mango orange. I'm pretty happy with it and it looks good on my shelf (until I can find an affordable JoHan rebuilder, anyway).

You think it's bad here, try looking at model airplane sites. "High 3/4 rear" shots seem to dominate because everyone wants you to see their cockpit detail, which of course you can't unless it's a closeup of the cockpit area. But "high 3/4 rear" shots of real airplanes are rare; it's not a popular or common angle in real life. From such a model photograph you can get just about NO idea of how accurate the model is in shape, nor whether the builder got the dihedral right, put the landing gear on at the correct angle, etc. I don't mind when a review or a build showoff has one or two pics like this, but 8 out of 10? C'mon!

Bought this one at the local toy show for $8. The paint was intact but not great, but I was impressed by its completeness. At first I thought it was an original 1966 annual, but several of you have convinced me that it's an '80s “Customizing Series” reissue. Still pretty cool. Was wondering what cool thing I could do with a red '66 Wildcat, and then I saw a red Wildcat in the 1966 Buick showroom brochure. No one would think twice about a red '66 Impala or Bonneville, so why not a red Wildcat? The paint seemed to be some kind of general use rattlecan, like Krylon, Rustoleum or Walmart. There was quite a bit of dust and other sorts of boogers in it. I spent a couple evenings carefully wet-sanding those out with #1500, then tried polishing with Wright's Silver Cream, which smoothed and shined things out a bit but didn't come close to removing all the orange peel. The original plan was to do all the chrome trim with foil. I started with the strip down the hood, and then when I went to clean up the foil residue with 92% rubbing alcohol, my standard practice, to my horror it started to take off the red paint! Luckily the stuff was fairly thick and I was able to re-polish it, but I switched the plan to doing all the chrome VERY carefully with Silver Sharpie (dry-brushed the fine emblems with Testor Chrome Silver). Then I applied a couple coats of hand-brushed Future for some shine. Of course I detailed out the wheels, grille, backup lights, rear panel and so forth—all standard Snake-Fu. I didn't do a thing to the interior, chassis, or engine, except clean the interior out with dish soap and water. The glass got polished with Wright's Silver Cream. It didn't come out too bad, considering what I started with. Good enough to put on the shelf, anyway. I have maybe 8-10 hours of work in it, most of that in wet-sanding and polishing the original red paint. That's about a quarter of the time I would have spent getting one on the shelf from out of the box. (Of course, it would look better, but probably not four times better.) As always, comments welcome.

I think the sidepipes became optionally available in '65, and it's correct for any '65-'67 as an option. I don't know of any smallblock hood made for the Revell '67. I think a smallblock hood for an AMT could be made to work with some tweaking, but no "flat" one has been in a kit since the '67 annual was reworked into the '63. You could however fill the fake vents on a '63 hood to make a flat '67.

Thanks! Whatever it is, it looks good!

Is that what became of the Pink Panther car? It's even worse.

Or a fully restored WWII P-51 Mustang...AND operate, maintain, and insure it for several years.

You were indeed.

Broke down and bought the Revell prepainted Hemi Orange modern Challenger at Ollie's. Not a huge fan of the car, but I've been messing around with some modern Camaros, Mustangs and Corvettes lately, so I guess I "need" it to complete the collection. If it goes together like their Camaro, it should be a quick, easy, fun Snake-slap. I'll stick it back for a rainy-day Slump Buster.

I've been messing around with one from the last reissue. It's not great, but not horrible (especially considering its Palmer origins). I really don't like the nonstock "shaker" and its hole in the hood. I gotta figure out how to fix that, and then I'm gonna finish mine off as a modern day restomod.

I watch that, but I'm only up to this year's winter break. I'll catch up this summer. Yah, Kim's badass, but the one who left at the end of last season was even hotter. This is probably the closest thing on TV today to the campy old cops shows of the '70s like Baretta and Starsky & Hutch.

Me too, but I think it wants to be a little shorter. Not as short as stock, but not quite as long as this.