Justin Porter

- Modified Stocker Kits The tooling practices of MPC in the 1970's are not relevant to the tooling practices of Round 2 at present save for what the costs involved are of undoing what's been done versus the sales potential of the "undone" kits. Round 2 certainly has proven that if the sales potential is there they will step up to the plate and give builders some form of replica stock option. - Round and the Lowrider '70 Monte Carlo The stock 454 Monte Carlo was most recently reissued by Round 2 in 2015. It will likely make a reappearance. By comparison, the lowrider Monte Carlo hadn't been seen since 2002. In this instance, the lowrider genre builders were the ones who had been underserved in terms of kit availability. - Revell and the Custom Cadillac Lowrider This kit was never designed to be a replica stock Cadillac and wears body modifications typical to lowrider Cadillacs of that generation. Regarding it as being flawed for not being able to be built stock is like regarding the Revell Foose FD100 or the AMT Wagonrod as being flawed for not being able to be built stock. - Round 2 Craftsman kits I am reasonably certain that the Craftsman trend will continue for as long as there are customers to support it. Round 2 has already made their next batch reasonably well publicized with the '60 Chevy wagon and the Plymouth Barracuda. They have their target audience and they have enough subject matter to choose from that I would say it's safe to assume they'll serve that target audience for as long as it's viable. - Moebius We have no evidence to suggest Moebius is uninterested in producing replica stock kits. As to offering 2n1 kits, their stock and non-stock versions are usually sufficiently different from each other (restomod Nova kits aside) so as to justify completely separate boxings, instruction sheets, and releases. If we consider something like the Nova Gasser kit, if we were to combine that with the stock Nova II kit, we're looking at a box with two separate chassis, two engines, a full engine bay that isn't used by one fashion of building, and nearly two complete interiors. I'd be willing to safely bet that'd be an MSRP of around $55-$60. I can definitely tell you that even with all of the "spares" in the box, that pricetag would cut the kit's shelf appeal off at the knees and instead of the Moebius Nova Gasser being one of my top volume car kits, it would be a dust collector sold to one or two diehards.

A full size example isn't always available to be measured or scanned. Combining research materials and extrapolating through proportion and known measured points is the routine by which military kits are accurately produced especially when it comes to ships. Funniest thing is that the method I just used - scaling photographs from a prototype and reverse engineering measurements - is actually how Aurora got their Jaguar E-Type kits to market first by photographing show cars well before other kit manufacturers had full blueprints.

AMT1414 - 1/25 1932 Ford Tudor Street Rod AMT1497 - 1/25 Hot Wheels 1969 COPO Camaro AMT1533 - 1/25 1957 Ford Fairlane Hardtop 3n1 MPC1031 - 1/25 Hot Wheels 1957 Chevy Sedan Flipnose

A fun experiment goes like this. According to How Stuff Works, a 1958 Plymouth stands 53.5" tall. If we convert that to measurements that dial calipers like, that's 1359mm. Divided by 25 that gives us a scale height of 54.36mm. If we take Horrorshow's side profile picture and play around with resizing percentages until it prints at a height of 54.36 we get a 1/25th scale side profile of a real 1958 Plymouth. We then can take a measurement of the side window aperture at the place where it looks the worst to my eye and on the real Plymouth it measures out at 12.53mm. Now all we need is someone with dial calipers and an AMT Belvedere to check their own findings. I will also grant this is just rough calculations based on 10 minutes of Google and playing with my printer.

The best way I can corroborate this is to offer what I have witnessed. Drag kits do almost always sell well. Even some of the ones you wouldn't expect to sell well - the Atlantis reissue of the Revell Mooneyes dragster for instance - do pretty well to the point where no matter how ridiculous a drag reissue may seem (Mopower Plymouth Funny for instance) you don't really want to be caught out without it on the shelf. The big catch, though, is that you have to accept that you will ultimately get stuck with product. There are a handful of kits that have seemed impervious to this in the past - for instance, while I could get them, I could never seem to have enough of the Revell Henry J Gassers on my shelves - but for a lot of drag kits there seems to be an initial bonanza followed by sales grinding to a halt.

Well, this is an instance for honesty. It has been a LONG time since I have worked with enamels and this paint job with Alclad's Candy Cobalt Blue proves that. I laid down the Alclad Aqua Gloss clear coat FAR too soon and the Candy Blue, which was still gassing out, cracked the clear. Attempts to wet sand out the cracking just led to burn through. I was tempted to strip and start over, but it's a useful tool to show what one poor decision can lead to with a finish. I am happy with how the engine bay, chassis, and interior turned out. I might attempt this build again eventually.

Here's the misinterpretation. You are right, it's not a zero sum game from the end customer's standpoint. Two different customers can want and purchase two different products. That's entirely true. What is a zero sum game is the manufacturing and distribution side. As we are so very VERY often reminded, the effort to bring a new kit to market costs a large amount of money in design, licensing, tooling, and other manufacturing costs. As such, the model manufacturers - even the largest ones - rarely bring more than a handful of all new kits to market each year. As a retailer, these new announcements shape a great deal of my financial decisions for a year. When respected and well loved companies announce new kits of popular subjects, I know I can expect good sales. When manufacturers with poor reputations announce kits of niche products, I know I can expect bad sales. Ergo, what I want as a retailer is lots of new kits of popular subjects from manufacturers that have good reputations. A manufacturer that is new to the scene can build a good reputation by delivering excellent kits at reasonable prices of coveted subjects - a good military kit analogy would be Kotare with their 1/32nd scale Spitfire MkI - but this is a tougher road to walk that requires the body behind the counter to do some heavy lifting to assure potential customers that the new brand offers something they want. A hypothetical Johan as has been described in this thread - not the efforts of Atomic City which I respect for serving their niche even if the product itself leaves me personally cold - would be spending their hypothetical tooling budget NOT on producing modern kits of popular subjects. They would not be providing me with a new opportunity to markedly increase sales with another strong anchor brand. Revell has gone quiet on the new-tool front and has even been struggling with their supply chain to distributors on existing product (over a year since I've been able to restock the '64 Impala, for instance) and Round 2 has made it clear they are a nostalgia brand, not a modeling brand. That leaves Moebius effectively all alone to create NEW products in the domestic auto genre. So what I want, badly, as a retailer, is another domestic auto anchor brand. That's why I don't want this hypothetical "scan the old kits" Johan. That hypothetical company wouldn't be offering products that could benefit my business. If there was any brand from modeling past that I would want back at this moment in time, it would be AMT/Ertl. There was a company, for all its foibles, that married classic subject matter with modern kit design at a reasonable price to deliver some all time great models.

There are subjects that Johan did that I would love to see released as MODERN kits. As builder AND as a retailer, I would be thrilled to see a Salvinos JR tooled NASCAR 1970 Plymouth Superbird, or a Moebius tooled 1971 AMC Javelin, or an ICM tooled Mercedes 500K. No. I do not want the Johan kits back. No. I do not want the Johan brand back. No. I do not want another backwards gazing vintage (or faux vintage recreation) brand on my shelves. We have Round 2. We have Atlantis. We do not need Johan beside them. You want me to be excited about the prospect of Johan injection molded kits? Okay, tell me that Johan will start to use polycaps for wheel attachment instead of wire axles. Tell me that Johan is sublicensing slide-molding technology from Bandai. Tell me that Johan is hiring the T-Rex CAD studio that's subcontracted by major kit manufacturers like Takom and Meng. Tell me that they want to deliver products that will be relevant - both in subject and design - to builders under the age of dirt. Otherwise, it's just not a product I see a future in. You seem to think otherwise, but I'm willing to bet no piece-for-piece reissue of the '68 Plymouth Fury police car is going to match the sales of the upcoming all-new tool Aoshima 1/24th scale F&F MkIV Toyota Supra.

Nope, and the screw posts are on the underside of the hood instead of attached to a core support too.

Who's this "they" that you're talking about? Moebius has offered stock versions of every subject they've kitted. Chrysler 300's, '61 Pontiacs, the various Hudsons, all of the 1965 Mopar products, the Novas, the Ford trucks. ALL of them have factory stock kit versions. Revell's general idea of modern "street machine" is a vaguely lowered suspension option, some wheels, and maybe an air cleaner or some disc brakes (case in point, the '56 Del Rey kit) which reveals their focus on factory stock. Their most popular all-new tool kit - the 1971 Mustang - hasn't even BEEN offered in a non-factory stock version. Round 2 has spent this decade so far restoring or remaking tooling so that factory stock builds are possible with kits like their '68 GTO, the Nova II wagon, the '64 Olds, and the '64 Malibu. They even "unmade" the Street Machine version of the Mueller-era 1971 Charger to create a never before offered factory stock '71 Hemi Charger kit. I don't know what you're on about because from where I'm sitting, factory stock builders are being treated better by the industry currently, not worse.

CAD looks much better than I was expecting and I am stoked that it will be full detail. Should be a wonderful shelfmate for my Tamiya Giulia.

At least from my cash register I see this. The Nova Gasser and Restomods outsell the factory stock Novas. The A990 outsells the Coronet. The Super Stock versions outsell the base Satellite and Belvedere. Were I the one with the purse strings over at Moebius, I would be prioritizing street machine and drag versions of new tools first to grab the casual builder sales and then send purely factory stock "base model" kits out to bat clean up.

Are only $2 more than the current MSRP of $35.99 that Round 2 put on the Craftsman Plus Comet Caliente kit. You tell me which is the actual unfair price.

Box art has been posted in this thread along with CAD images of the kit in development.

The engine bay is all together on the Belvedere and it's up on its wheels, too. I couldn't resist a stance mock-up at this stage before I have the last steps of finishing out the body.

Interior is all set for the Belvedere. I used AK Real Color Russian Cockpit Turquoise and Pure Blue (RC980 and RC818 respectively) with a little paint detailing here and there. Really think it's a combo that pops especially against the body color.

Really solid curbside kit. As I recall, the only really disappointing aspect that the Aoshima outdoes is the interior bucket has very little side panel detail. Otherwise a fun and inexpensive build!

Got the undercarriage done for the Belvedere while I wait for the body to fully gas out. The kit has some VERY positive fit for these components though I will admit that there's some missing finesse in some of the details like the leaf springs. I'm really looking forward to the interior on this one though. I made a choice after doing some research that I think will pop!

It makes sense to an extent. A huge piece of Modelhaus's business was replacement parts for promo collectors rather than aimed specifically at model builders. For folks wanting to restore old Johan promos for display purposes, having the small, often lost parts commercially available is a godsend. You see the same things in the die cast world.

Eduard's "best ever in 1/72nd scale" P-51D Mustang has barely been on the market a year and Arma Hobby is already trying to one-up them with a new-tool "best ever in 1/72nd scale" P-51D Mustang. Meanwhile, the newest tooling of the historic 1964 Ford Mustang is a convertible by Monogram that dates back 30 years and is a modification of a kit of the 1965 Mustang fastback that had debuted ten years prior to that. The hardtop roof 1964 1/2 Mustang, of course, is not represented in common modeling scales by anything even remotely resembling a modern kit. We're not talking about some obscure option code or long forgotten orphan. This isn't begging for a 1/24th scale super kit of an AC3000ME or a Hudson Terraplane or an Ascari KZ1. We're saying that highly popular, common as crabgrass, everyone and their brother agrees they're classic cars like the MkII Escort deserve to be revisited with the same frequency as military kit companies COMPETE to deliver the best possible product of a given subject.

I second Topher. Just do as Alclad says on the side of the bottle. Once the base silver had dried, I laid down the first thin coat which was basically just to put a fine mist of the candy down for the rest to adhere to. Then I set a five minute timer on my phone, worked a bit on the engine, and then went back and laid down another thin coat. Just keep doing that until you get the tone you want.

And they can take the Abarth 131 and BMW M1 with them!!!

There is a violet but I wouldn't say it's very dark though I'm sure if you laid it over copper or gunmetal instead of silver you would get a deeper tone.

The October 1999 issue of SAE had a really killer article about combining the Galaxie Limited Aerosedan and the AMT '68 El Camino Street Machine to make a modern street rod out of the classic Chevy. The wheel & tire package they used in the article was from one of the snap kits of the Dodge Copperhead concept. Your build really calls that article to mind. Looking forward to seeing what happens next!

Whenever we bring in new products at the shop, I like to have a build on hand that makes use of them. The idea is that I can point to the build when folks ask what a product is like to use, and then offer an informed opinion. In this case, we recently brought in the full Alclad II rack complete with their Candy line. I KNEW I wanted to have something to demonstrate the Candies on hand, so I selected this Moebius 1/25 1965 Plymouth Belvedere to serve as the demonstrator. I already had a good time assembling the kit's 426 Max Wedge engine with my usual selection of AK, AMMO, Mr Color, and Tamiya paints. The color combination I picked is Alclad Candy Cobalt Blue over their Bright Silver Candy Base, sprayed over Mr Surfacer 1500 Gray Primer.