CapSat 6

Yup, I have seen those. I scratched the itch for a VH some time ago (the “Charger” generation, which is done in resin), I got a Trax 1/24 diecast some time ago. I did correspond with Andy a bit about the VG recently and he’s hip to the project! Still- lately I have been liking the VG generation. I started looking at the Revell ‘68 Dart and decided that it was a good starting point. They do the VG as 1/43 and 1/18 prebuilts (along with many other OZ cars) but I really want to limit what I get in those scales. Also, whenever I start a project like this and it goes long term, eventually they start to make the car that I want. Many years ago, I started the conversion of an MPC ‘69 Barracuda into a VH Valiant Charger, and eventually, that 1/24 diecast became available.

We must all be going to the same Hobby Lobby...all they had at mine were Prowlers, too. One of the people working there said they had other kits, but that’s all that was left. If they weren’t the Snap Fast Kit, I would have gotten one for the powertrain. Everybody must really dislike that kit!

Look for pictures of the Dodge Challenger Diamante. That was another factory show car that Dodge built. It started out as a modified Challenger with a still-stock-ish front end, called "the Yellow Jacket", and later, was revised the next year with a Daytona-like nose, repainted, and then called the Diamante. It still survives to this day. As you know, the E Body was built around the B Body engine box, with a shortened chassis pan and overhangs, so a Challenger-based show car in this vein is (body wise) close to what you describe!

Hey Tom- you ought to hit some of the local cruises near you, you'll see that car...I was talking to the owner last year, he says that he lives in Montgomery County, PA, and that he does as many cruises as he can. Good guy, originally from New Zealand. He bought the car in Australia, then moved her and brought it with him. I saw it in pics from a car show in Roxborough (Philadelphia), about 2 blocks from the house where I grew up...so that was mildly weird (but in a good way)! I really think the VG (1970) Valiant Pacers are cool. I'm trying to piece together the 2 door version of this car, starting with a Revell '69 Dart. I'm using the custom grille from the Jo Han '68 Chrysler 300...hoping to be able to cut that down and add the square headlamps, maybe a front bumper from the AMT Dart Swinger circle track car...I'm not going to get it 100% but hoping to get sort of close... I'm also going to do up a Mexican Super Bee (Duster/ Dart Sport) at some point. It will make up my collection of "Darts from around the world"... Give me a few years, maybe you can set a sub-theme of "Mopar A Bodies" for the NNL East some year...and maybe I'll have a few built by then! The 4 door on the other hand...if you look, it's very different from the U.S. Dart 4 door- different rear window/roof stamping, quarters, taillights...a little beyond my skills.

If I was thinking more clearly I would have tried to shoot that straight on. Maybe then a decal could be printed from the image??? I just thought it looked cool and popped a quick pic of it between the crowds. I think it's great when a restorer preserves artwork like this when they go back to stock. If you wanted to go for something along those lines, you could maybe see what you could find by way of panel patterns from Slixx or other producers, find a mural image that you like, use both decals and then clear the daylights out of them after they dry. I'm building a '70's style custom right now (long story) and I found some illustrations that I'm going to try to print on decal paper to use for various areas.

You are quite welcome!!! It is a HUGE show, and it gets HOT. Plan accordingly. Let me know if you want any advice on how to do this one!

I didn’t by any means get to see the whole show, and I didn’t take pics of everything I saw, but here are some pics:

The King! Of course!!!

I do the same thing! Usually we're parked in that school parking lot. We usually get there by about 9-ish, it takes us about 2 hours or so to get there. I go with a friend usually, but I have gone solo on Fridays in some years. This year, my friend will be on the lookout for '71 Satellite parts. One year, we came home with a complete 440 and 727 Trans for his car- his Dakota pickup struggled with that load a little . I have found the occasional built model there, too. My biggest Carlisle highlight was probably the year I met Brock Yates there. He turned out to be really nice. One of my heroes. He had his Cannonball Challenger there with him that time. The special displays are always top notch.

GREAT WORK! That grille looks perfect, and you have captured the driver vibe very well. One of the new car dealers near where I grew up in Philly had an Arrow Pickup as a parts runner for many years. I might have to try to build that one, looking like it did towards the end of it's service.

I'm gonna be there Saturday. Jason- try to get there before 9AM, parking tends to fill up quickly, even on Friday!!! If you have never gone before, Friday is a great day to shop the swaps. Let me know if you need any more info, I have been going for 25 years now!!!

My uncle had a Dodge dealership. WAAYYYY back in the day (around 1984), I remember that he had a LOADED Dodge Ramcharger in his showroom. It had power windows and locks, premium sound, ALL the toys that were available back then. It was black and sliver, mag wheels, etc. I loved that truck. He had a Shelby Charger in the showroom at the same time. If you gave me a choice between the two, I would have taken that Ramcharger in a heartbeat. Even back then, we started to see "lifestyle" vehicles morph into "Premium SUV's". Remember, by 1984, the Ramcharger had already lost it's removable roof, the Blazer soon followed suit. I think the full size Bronco had a removable roof until about 1995. The Grand Cherokee Wagoneer made it's debut during that era. This was simply a market that the manufacturers didn't know they had at the time. Where were the roots of all of this? In the '70's, big engines and performance cars were DOOMED, thanks to skyrocketing insurance rates and gas prices, and new safety regulations. Muscle cars went away in a flash. Convertibles went away for awhile, too. In that era, I had a cousin who traded in a '70 AAR 'Cuda for a Cordoba (can you imagine??? I can only think that he would have thought that "Chicks will dig a new Cordoba more than a 5 year old Barracuda". JOHNNY DON'T DO IT!!! Guess what? He drives an SUV now...). Luxury cars & cool trucks replaced Muscle Cars in a hurry. They created excitement, when Muscle Cars became a tough sell, and later, neutered & ugly. Combine the two (luxury and cool trucks), and you had an acceptable alternative. This was not lost on the manufacturers, who were only too happy to encourage the buying public to line up for easy-to-build and high-profit SUV's. Pile on the options, and push the prices up. Make everybody want them. Most people wanted them with 4 doors- remember when the (2 door) Bronco II became the (4 door) Explorer? The Explorer was MONEY for Ford, pure and simple. Making that SUV into a 4 door was nearly a no brainer. This was the death of the "standard" automobile in the U.S., and, while we were at it, the 2 door SUV. I spoke to a dealer about that several years ago. He told me that they simply do not order them that way anymore, since nobody wants them. More people are coming in for pickups to use as their work truck, and they figure that they'll just spend the extra money on extra doors and luxury items because they'll be spending most of their time in it. Many independent contractors around my neck of the woods even bling their work trucks out- with huge custom wheels & tires, custom grilles, etc. This might work against them, though- I had a guy come to my house to give me an estimate on a new roof. He showed up in a super-nice, brand new, loaded Ford F 250. Another contractor showed up in a beat up old pickup truck. Not surprisingly, the estimate I got from Mr. Bling was WAY higher than the one I got from Not-Mr.Bling. Not Mr. Bling got the job, and he did a fine roof for the money.

I'm not so up on the Funny Car offerings from AMT in the '70's. I do remember an AMT Vega/ Astre kit from back then. I'm REALLY hoping for the short wheelbase, stock-ish bodied Van- I have a junk Monza somewhere that can give some parts over for making it into a street machine. It would be nice to also have some MPC Funnies from the late '70's back, too (Vega, Omni, Firebird)...

Does anybody know which '76 Chevy Vega Funny Car will be released? Is it the long wheelbase coupe body, or the short (stock-ish) wheelbase Van body kit they used to do??? If it's the van body kit (!!!), I'm in for one, Coca-Cola graphics or no...

It seems to me that they have done this with their new Goodyear Polyglas GT's, too- I have seen them printed as Goodyear Radial GT's (a late '70's tire which does NOT have the same tread pattern as the Polyglas GT), and as Firestone Wide Ovals (which would probably be closer to the look of a Polyglas GT carcass, but probably not the same tread). Then again, I'm a bit of a scale tire nut. Maybe they think that most modelers won't notice, they'll just really like the pad printing?

In speaking to a former Philly PD Policeman, he stated that they often got Slant 6 powered squad cars. His words: "we usually only ever needed a taxi in the city". The Philadelphia Police often experimented with smaller cars for patrol. Two-door Studebaker Larks, Ford Falcons, and the downsized Plymouths of '62-'63 were used as patrol cars back in the early '60's. The Philadelphia Police usually used full sized Fords or Plymouths from around 1966-1977, usually 2 doors until about 1970. Judging by pics I have found online, it looks like they used 2 door Plymouths in 1966, 2 door Fords in 1967-68, 2 or 4 door Plymouths in 1969, 4 door Fords in 1970, and 4 door Plymouths again in 1971-73. It was mostly 4 door Gran Fury Plymouths through most of the '70's, later, Ford Fairmounts and LTD's, and Chevy Caprices found their way into the mix with the Plymouths. They even tried Plymouth Horizons out in the late 70's (THAT did not last too long!). They might have also split contracts in some years, getting both Fords and Plymouths at the same time. The bid would usually be for a bunch of six cylinder and small V-8 powered cars, with a few "Highway" units (that patrolled I-76 and I-95) equipped with larger engines. They really just needed to be tough and easy to fix. Philly PD cars were red until about 1967, then they went to red with white roofs. Once Frank Rizzo (former Police Commissioner) became mayor around 1972, one of the first things he did was switch their paint from red to blue, the blue they used was a lot like Petty Blue, but supposedly was mixed in a special reflective formula. Everybody in Philly up until then called them "Redcars", which Mr. Rizzo supposedly despised. I know I'm going off topic a bit, but I think that the history of Philly's "Redcars" (many of which were Plymouths), and their experiments with alternative models geared toward economy, is pretty interesting.

Cool pictures!!! That blue Chevy shortbed looks like a clone of the MPC snap together kit that was offered when the show was on (but was never in the show)...

One other thing I’m seeing now is that it looks like there is extra length in the body side between about the front 1/4 of the door and into the fender. A slightly “funny car” look for the Revell body if you will. I’m probably not very good at expressing this. The MPC & Jo Han bodies seem to be better there, too. Yes, the Jo Han-Revell Cram job is proving difficult for me, but that body work to correct the Revell body would probably just about break me. And with that, I’ll stop. I promise.

Everybody literally sees things differently. I used to work as a color technician at a dyehouse. That job was a real education. Some people see colors very differently than others. Color blindness, or course, is a thing. We had a guy who would work overnights, and “correct” formulas by adding yellow pretty regularly. That meant that the day guy, our boss, would often have to correct those corrections- by stripping (bleaching) that cotton completely, then rerunning the original formula. Yellow happened to be very tough to strip. Joe was well known to EVERYBODY ELSE that he had a thing for adding yellow. I was always told that in that business, you either had eyes that could see color properly enough to do it, or you didn’t. Joe just about lost his mind when one night we had locked up the yellow before his shift. My point is: some people see shapes differently, too. And other things. None of the senses are entirely consistent among humans. It’s simply a fact, and there is nothing wrong with that, unless you have a job at Revell trying to sculpt model masters. I wouldn’t let poor Night Guy Joe mix colors for me if my life depended on it. There are things I’m probably politely kept from, too. My wife tells me that I’m “hard of smellin’“ all the time. I did read on another board recently that a new, small company (not Revell) has been designing a new car kit, and while an unpaid outside expert was communicating with some of the design staff, it was revealed that a body line was being included in the tool that the president of the company is insisting is there on the real car, while the designer and the expert believe (rightly, it seems) that it is not there. So, that kind of thing seems to happen, too. In any case, it should be no reason for somebody to not enjoy the hobby. We all build and enjoy. Our comments about body shapes, etc. are not meant to ruin things for everybody, but I think we still have the right to point something out if we see it. And more than one of us sees these things. So - I won’t try to convince anybody that there is anything wrong with a given body, as long as nobody tries to convince me that there isn’t. I still will point out what I see however. I agree to disagree. Neither of us are wrong, but I can see that this could be becoming a buzzkill, so I apologize. I just simply see something here that does not meet my own personal standards. I happily built Monogram’s ‘71 Hemi Cuda and ‘70 T/A many times, they have their problems, too. It’s just at this point, I’m a little frustrated that some (but by no means all) new kits of subjects that I am really wild about, with modern design resources being used, for the kind of money they cost these days, are missing the mark so much for me in a very basic manner.

Cool. Looks like something out a video game or animated show...like "Driver", or "Interstate '76", or something...and yes, that's a big-block Chevy in there. Adds to the mystery!

Sorry for bringing that up (maybe)...I just feel pretty strongly about this one! Agree 100% - if you like it, build it! I will not judge anybody on that. I'll judge the product, the design, but NOT what anybody wants to do with it. I WILL however share my opinions. I do look forward to using the parts from these to enhance a Jo Han bodied build. The interior & separate body bits are gorgeous. I have a Revell Hemi Cuda interior and chassis under a Jo Han body now. I was using a Revell AAR hood with it, and was going to use an AMT '71 Duster 340 engine with it. I'm a little judgy on that Duster 340 engine too, since I think it's shrunken in some odd places and misshaped. I have spent a LOT of time with 1:1 LA engines, and I feel almost the same way about that Duster 340 engine as I do about the Revell '70 Cuda body, but, it's literally the best we have right now. I'm holding hope out that this new Revell 340 will be better.

I'm not going to knock anybody for their opinions, but, just a warning: I will most likely hold onto my own. To some extent, I agree with everybody! I'm glad we're seeing new product. I really do appreciate what the kit manufacturers do. I'm more from the school of "it should be an accurate scale replica", as in- "it should look like what it's supposed to be". The most important thing to me is capturing the look of the item being replicated. If the body looks right, then generally, I am happy. Cue ominous music. Still- if provided with something we can work it, but might have a few flaws, fine, I have no problem correcting a few flaws. Here's the thing with the Dana: sure, easy enough for me to replace. It's forgivable to me, but then again, if Revell had their eye on multiple versions of this car, then I too can see why this might be considered something they should have logically addressed, if they think to offer other versions in the future (340 4 barrel, 440 Six Pack, 70 Trans Am racer, or???). Most performance Mopars came with 8-3/4 rears. The Dana was mechanical overkill, reserved mostly for Hemis with 4-speeds. Would I replace the Dana when I go to build mine? If I were to do an out-of-the-box build, maybe not. Again, I don't flip 'em over too much. Will I replace the Dana when I go to build mine? Yes. Definitely. The reason being: if (admittedly, my building pace is glacial) I ever get one of these built, it will have a Jo Han body. See my third paragraph. Myself, I can't stand the body on this one. I will be going to a LOT of effort to rebody it, so replacing the Dana will be minor in comparison to what else I will be doing. Here's my own personal problem with this kit: TO ME, the body looks swollen, or bloated. Sort of like a bad counterfeit of a 'Cuda. I owned a real one for a long time. My car was by no means perfect, and it sat in the garage a LOT, but in that time, I got to see what one looked like. Even the back window of the Revell kit bothers me. Compare it to a Jo Han or MPC body, and to me, I can't unsee it. That's the real sin in all of this. BODY. SHAPES. MATTER. TO. ME. TO ME, this make the kit a collection of fantastic detail parts married to an awful body. It's not terrible, I have seen worse bodies (a few '69 Camaros come to mind, and of course: Hi Palmer!), but, it's nearly that bad. To me. Would I knock anybody else for building it box stock, or taking a different approach from mine? NO! As far as I'm concerned, it's not my time, money or effort going into it. I seem to remember this being a free country, so I'll go by that. A good friend of mine who posts on another board has built a few of the Revell Hemi Cudas, and they look really nice. I would take them off his hands in a minute. For that matter, I would love to have Tim Boyd's black one on my shelf. Any good build should be commended, and I would encourage anybody to enjoy the hobby as they see fit. Since I have the means (old Jo Han bodies in stock), that's just the approach I will take. It might be different if I were just starting out in the hobby. In that case, I might be more bent about it. I would care about the Dana even less if they got the body right on this one. Nobody needs to agree with me, and since nobody was asking, that's how I feel.

I’m like that with Brand F and G rearends, but since I know what a Dana looks like- I can’t unsee it.

Thank you for that- that made me laugh, which I have really kind of needed the last few days!

I can kind of live with the Dana, for a few reasons: 1) I have realized recently that I don't flip my models over all too much. 2) other sources for the 8-3/4 would be: the Revell '68-'69 Dodge Dart, AMT '71 Duster or '71 Charger, Revell 1/25 '70 Challenger R/T-T/A. 3) if I really had to scrounge for an 8-3/4, I would not be averse to using one from the Monogram 1/24 Challenger T/A. 4) it could be worse, the Revell 1/25 Challenger "T/A" used a 440 Six Pack! At least it looks like we're getting a nice 340 6-BBL with this kit. I'm really hoping they throw in an optional 4-BBL (bringing them closer to a "Trans-Am" equipped car, Minilites would be nice, too), can anybody confirm whether they do or not??? Somebody should cast up 8-3/4 rears for these AAR's, and also for the AMT '70 Challenger R/T kit. Several casters do nice 727 Torqueflites (probably based on the ones from the Revell '68 Dart or AMT '71 Charger), which are always useful to me, as I don't like to build everything with a 4 speed.