Justin Porter

Awesome to see you give this kit a little extra attention. I still feel it's one of the best in the whole of the Tamiya classic sports car range.

Was so unhappy with my one Johan - the Drag On Lady AMX - that it became a slot car for drag racing.

Progress is a bit slower going on the California. Partially down to searching for replacement parts - good lord are the seats just absolutely TERRIBLE in this kit - and partially down to preparations at the shop for the biggest show of the year in our area. Still, a little bit of time with some fine solder and some yellow paint and now the V12 is wired.

The Italeri depiction of the Colombo V12 is probably what I would call "reasonable" given the tooling limitations of the time. It definitely builds nicely without any major fuss. I used AK Xtreme Metal Duraluminum as the base color with a light wash for highlighting. The carbs aren't especially great, but they're really just plinths for the scoop ducting which will need some EPM's filled to be useable. A set of turned aluminum intake stacks are 100% a must though because the kit chromed pieces just don't do the trick.

Well, I couldn't resist starting this one. I plan on keeping a fairly close rein on how wild I get with this one with a focus primarily on fixing some of the kit's more obvious weak points without getting too bogged down. I started with assembling the base engine and drilling both the heads and the distributors to accept plug leads. I will be using fine solder for the plug leads in order to accommodate the wire conduit used on the Ferrari Colombo V12's.

Very happy to see the 288GTO all together. Definitely not an easy kit at all.

Setting aside the "cloned" idiocy, let's look at the Johan tooling list and see what we have. Firstly, let's set aside the Johan funny cars. Revell rolled out a pair of the most accurate and most nicely engineered vintage funny car kits ever tooled in their Chi-Town Hustler/Hawaiian pair of Chargers and they were considered sales bombs. As such, the likelihood of new funny car tooling is especially low and probably industry wide. Secondly, the promo based tooling. Industry logic will hold that the four doors are best left to the resin throwers, so that leaves the two doors. There's certainly some interesting material there. The Studebaker Larks, the '56 Pontiacs, the Dodge Phoenix, etc. However, there's really only one company tooling up 1950's American cars and that's Moebius. Moebius themselves have just come through an acquisition - becoming part of the Pegasus Hobbies brand - and are heavily focused on 60's production based drag cars and 60's and 70's pickups which have proven most lucrative for them. So, lastly, we have to look at Johan's regular kit line and determine what 1960's muscle cars they produced that would have the most general appeal. If I were to point to three Johan subject that have the most potential for newly tooled kits, it would be the following. 1966 Oldsmobile Toronado - the Toronado is a combination of a technical curiosity and a grand American classic. Further, Jay Leno's own custom Toronado has done a good job casting the car into the modern public spotlight. Further, the outcries about the reissued MPC Californian point to there being at least some demand among older builders for a stock Toronado. 1964 Cadillac Coupe De Ville - full size American cars generally do quite well as tooling showcases and the Hasegawa curbside Cadillac maintains solid sales despite its archaic origins. The big Cadillac also has maintained a strong presence in the lowrider, custom, and even pro touring scenes given how appropriate the car looks slammed to the pavement. Further, Revell's own Custom Cadillac Lowrider - which has no replica stock pretensions - remains an excellent seller well after its introduction. 1971 AMC Javelin/AMX - of all of the Johan AMC's, the most potential lies in the '71. Drag racing, road racing, police pursuit, iconic modern pro tourers, there's plenty to justify all-new tooling of this famous love it/hate it pony car. Besides that, this has proven a surprisingly good year for love it/hate it pony cars when it comes to model kit sales.

This looks like such a fun combination of pieces. The Miss Deal wheels are especially at home on the '29 A.

This is such a delightful model. Every sooty mm is a joy to look over.

Now this is a fun take on a big mid-70's coupe. Nicely done!

Definitely a happy moment as I have finished my Revell 1/25 Chevy Impala. This has been a delight to build as the various little things have genuinely turned out just as I had hoped. The color is Mr Color C47 Clear Red over C10 Copper and it really does suit the big Chevy. The wheels are from the Revell '37 Ford Coupe kit matched up with the kit's lowrider suspension option. Emre Arican from here on the forum came through with a few pieces I was missing including most critically the seats! I used a few detail parts including brakes and a pre drilled distributor from Iceman Collections and the air cleaner is from Model Car Garage just to dress up the engine bay a bit.

Happy to say that as of today the Impala is finished and has its "Under Glass" thread. Thank you all for so many kind comments and help as this one has gone together.

I remember a "Strictly Stock" review of the '55 Corvette kit from the magazine that is no longer with us that commented that one of the biggest visual issues with the kit is that the side trim runs "uphill." Does it look that way to you on the '53 and if so do you figure you have a way to correct that?

I love seeing all of the small thoughtful improvements. This is really going to add up to a nice '53 Corvette.

That looks fantastic. It may sound odd, but the bit I'm most impressed by is how fully three dimensional the door pulls look!

Add me to the list that's curious how you'll bring this one back.

Very neat to see a 1/43rd scale muscle build like this. Going to be very curious to see how it turns out!

A quick update on the Impala as it is dangerously close to finished! This is sort of a personal "greatest hits" post of various details I have finished up on the build that are making me happy. The core support detail on this kit is genuinely something Revell should still be proud of. There's actually an AC condenser in place to go along with the radiator. An unfortunate thing was that I had to chisel away all of the molded-in-place fan shroud on the radiator to make way for the electric fan from a Revell '41 Willys Street Rod kit. The engine is 100% wrapped up. I used one of the pre-drilled distributors from Iceman Collections in place of the kit distributor and I am very happy with the results. I opted to go with an aluminum base/brown cap scheme on the distributor to keep with the "basic aftermarket improvements" theme. Also from Iceman are the lovely 3D printed brakes. A bit of AK Interactive Xtreme Metal Polished Aluminum and Tamiya X32 Titanium Gold mean that they look show car sharp. The firewall was another nicely done bit of this kit with the HVAC unit on the passenger side. Picking out the wiring harness in rubber black gives it enough "it's there" highlighting without making it into a cartoon. The brake booster is AK Pale Burnt Metal and the master cylinder is Mr Color C61 Burnt Iron, both of which are favorite paints of mine to use. Finally the body has its glass and - against my usual practice - I decided to go the Bare Metal Foil route for the window trim. Just to see if I still could. I'm happy to say I still feel comfortable using foil and chrome does pop against the red.

Count me in as another person seeing the plug boots and thrilled!

Firstly, thank you incredibly much for the insight on costs. I'm actually glad to hear that tooling costs are considerably less than as reported. Without delving too much into trade secrets, could you offer some comparison as to where Round 2 has made the most ground in conserving costs? The article points that Accurate Miniatures specifically chose to tool in a highly wear resistant material - copper barilium - which I imagine partially explains their higher cost.

That's positively fantastic to see!

Steering attention BACK to the actual topic here, let's talk about what Johan - the actual currently existing Johan - has been attempting to do and that is joining the 3D printed resin kit marketplace. They announced this project in November of 2022 which means we're closing in on a year since the announcement. In that time, Iceman Collections has released their Vector W8, USCP has released their Citroen SM, BMW E39 M5, and Porsche 550 Spyder, and DiOlex production has released their 1971 Ford Maverick. Arguably smaller companies with less industry contacts and resources and CERTAINLY with less clout and nostalgia than the much ballyhooed Johan have succeeded in bringing competing products to market AND with ever decreasing prices and improving rates of production. This is where the skepticism about Okay comes from among people who aren't viewing those five letters with rose colored glassed so heavily tinted they might as well be opaque.

https://modelairplanemaker.com/2019/06/26/the-expensive-model-kit-myth/ Fun fact, you can get the $200,000 number from readily available first hand sources such as this article which cites an Accurate Miniatures representative stating that they were spending 150-200k per brand new tool on 1/48th scale aircraft in 2007. Corrected for inflation to 2023 dollars, the low end of that - $150,000 - works out to $227,521 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Now, granted, a top-line 1/48th scale aircraft kit will have a significantly higher parts count than a Round 2 Craftsman Plus kit, but at the same time aircraft kits typically have much smaller clear parts trees - with large portions of the clear parts anticipated to be painted - and generally have no need to make considerations for the chroming process. At the end of the day, it's not at all hard to see Round 2 spending at least that much for reproducing old kits ESPECIALLY when you consider that the initial scan of the old kit only creates a rough 3D CAD file that still requires post-processing which can eat up months of work.

An E-Type engine block is typically painted a more gray color as opposed to a straight black. I have found that Vallejo Model Air "Engine Grey" #71048 is a good match for this color.

To be frank, I honestly didn't bother ordering in the 2022 reissue with the yellow boxart - #1262 - because at that point I still had the #1187 Bond licensed kit on my shelf and the MSRP from #1187 to #1262 jumped from $31.95 to $36.95 making stocking it kind of unjustifiable in my eyes. I didn't have any over-the-counter or mail order requests for #1262 either. Given that the all-new Revell kit has a lower MSRP than #1262, I can't foresee putting it on my shelves in the future either. Granted, I'm a data point of one as far as hobby shop sales are concerned, but that was my experience with in production '71 Mustang kits from 2020 to the present day.