Mark Crowel

Looks like this beauty will be showroom stock. Looking good.

You picked a good car for subject matter. Will you be building it showroom stock, or custom?

That look your car has brings back memories of those early '60's Car Craft magazines. I'm glad you kept the stock steering wheel. It preserves a nostalgic element of the model. Clean cutting on those opening features. Great workmanship. Dave Shuklis must be smiling down on that car from model car heaven.

Looks like a good start. My first model car build was a 1961 Pontiac Tempest convertible. Half the doodads in the kit glued to it and covered with a gloppy handbrushed paint job.

I hope I did the backside of the front seat correctly. I was working from photos downloaded from the internet, plus factory photos from a book.

Instead of using the corrugated slabs (above posts)for seat cushions, I made the cushions and seat backs as strip-and-panel boxes. If I had used the corrugated pieces, I would have had to paper the fluted edges, and I still would have had to clad them with cardboard strips and panels. The front seat is done, and is dry test-fitted into the interior. It seems to take as long to do an interior as it does to do an entire exterior.

That pre-restoration photo of your Edsel is bringing back memories of my early model car building efforts, 1962-63. Lots of glue, goopy paint jobs, every accessory in the box stuck on in effort to make it look good, flame job decals... The restoration is looking great. You're breathing new (and better) life into a model that deserves a second chance. Nice work. It' looking right.

All four builds are knockouts. And a Hudson kit is long overdue. I'm eager to see what other cars Moebius has planned.

Thank you, Mike, for displaying the photo.

My Dad and I went to the National Packard Museum in Dayton in 2002. A nice, large collection. The Air Force museum is also in Dayton, but we didn't have time for it on that trip. Harry P.: I appreciate the encouragemnt. Thank you. Charlie: I'll try the photo advice.

A little more about the Studebaker-Packard merger: the business deal was finalized in 1954, when it was Packard that bought Studebaker. In 1956, when Studebaker-Packard became insolvent, it went into receivership, and its creditors put it under Curtis Wright's management. That's when the decision was made to concentrate production of both makes in South Bend, hence the "Packardbakers" of '57 and '58. Sources: Richard Langworth, Studebaker, the Postwar Years, Nathaniel T. Dawes, The Packard.

When I try to upload my photos, here's what I get: Error This file was too big to upload Used 1.93MB of your 1.95MB global upload quota (Max. single file size: 21.23K) I might have to continue linking viewers to my website to see continuing photos on the project.

Thanks guys, for the compliments and the offers of help. I was able to download some Caribbean photos from the web for reference, plus I have Nathaniel T. Dawes' excellent book, The Packard, with excellent color photos. I'll give you a holler if I need more, though. Also, it's encouraging to see this many positive reactions from plastic modelers to my simple cardboard models. I like cardboard, and I have fun working with it. Thank you all, for accepting me.

Now for the assembly of the center body section. You see why it's called strip-and-panel construction. The panel parts that you saw in the first post, are joined by strips. The strips for the center section are two and a half inches wide. Notice the half-inch wide strips along the edges of the undersides of the strip parts. This makes the edges double thick for easy gluing. I don't like to use flaps for gluing; it's cumbersome, and can be sloppy, so I glue edge-to-edge, strip edge to panel edge. When joining two strip segments together, as with the bumper segment to the grille segment, they are connected, by both being glued to a piece of paper.

Welcome, and thank you for joining. You will see another member of MCM Forum there: Mr. Moto.

Thank you, will do.

Hello Manuel. I was in the neighborhood listing the Toy Studebaker Collectors' Club, and I saw your listing. I'm over here posting a Packard build thread: http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=47388 Take care, my friend, and I'll see you back at the Stude Ranch. BTW, is your '56 Golden Hawk build thread here? Until later, Mark Crowel

For those who collect toys and models of Studebaker vehicles. Many categories, including Build Threads. Visit our free online forum at: http://tscc-online.lefora.com

I have started a 1956 Packard Caribbean Hardtop, about 1/20th scale (5/8ths inch to the foot). By 1956, the Studebaker-Packard merger was two years old. My usual strip-and-panel construction. I have tried getting more accurate with my models, many times, but a lack of patience and proficiency in geometry gets in the way. I finally realize that I like my basic method; its consistency, predicatability, simplicity, and its look. I've done so many models this way on the paper modeling forums, that it has become my trademark method. It's the way I build a car. I started with an old magazine advertisement as the reference for my profile drawings and subsequent patterns.