Justin Porter

Had taken a picture of the finished interior before buttoning it up.

Very attractive mild custom.

Finished! My Revell 1/25th scale '32 Ford three-window coupe is all wrapped up. I settled on just plain old Tamiya Flat Brown for the interior which actually turned out pretty nicely with the Inca Gold exterior. The body was given a final polish with Novus and all the little chrome trinkets were added. It has been ages since I've done a hot rod like this so it was nice just to build something straightforward.

I'll be more than happy to put a few of these on my shop's shelves. On the whole it really looks great.

More progress has been made. I still have the full interior to address, but we now have a fully dressed chassis and the body in full color. Wheel centers were painted in with Vallejo Metal Color Magnesium.

And at least Tom is happily working with the model kit company this thread is nominally discussing which has resulted in some fairly solidly selling kits that will only motivate Atlantis to locate other long lost show rods in the vaults.

Quite a lot of really fun street rod material there. I genuinely want one of those Topolinos and it makes me really glad to see the Miss Deal back in any form.

Engine is all dressed up and ready for its permanent home. All the mold lines were addressed on the body and especially at the base of the pillars they were fairly ugly. I'm also having to break out the fiberglass pencil to deal with the ejector pin marks on the floorboards of the frame.

This kit has been on my shelf for a little bit of time with the overhanging worry of "What do I do with it?" Why the worry? Well, Revell's recent reticence when it comes to their street rod kits has left the evergreen 3 window version of their Deuce missing in action while the 5 window is in production. But I wanted something fun and straight forward to build, and I decided just building a mildly detailed version of the out of the box kit would be fun enough. Marking out the mold lines shows that time and popularity haven't been too kind to the 3 window, but it's nothing a good Flex-i-File session or three can't fix. Drilling the heads for ignition wires was a breeze, while the hole for the Gofer distributor took more aggressive methods. Mr Color C34 Sky Blue and AK Interactive Real Color 020 Aluminum give a good base color for the engine and transmission and both airbrush like a dream.

That Targa is a really welcome sight. The Fujimi 911's are both fussy AND can be tricky to order on a consistent basis so it will be good to have a decent alternative.

Nope. The 412P and the 330P3 used the same 4L V12, however as the 412P's were customer cars they were carbureted rather than the factory fuel injection. They were essentially a customer focused update of the P3 and are also often referred to as a P3/4 depending on which Ferrari historian you talk to.

Absolutely gorgeous! You ought to be really pleased with that one.

A fun game I have at my shop is counting how many Tamiya, Hasegawa, or Aoshima kits on my shelf have a lower MSRP than the latest Round 2 of leftovers. It's painful to see as a retailer, but at least builders can take comfort that in two years the unsold stock will wind up on a pallet at Ollies for less than your local hobby shop's wholesale cost.

Revell's current position is not at all dissimilar to the one Airfix was in several years ago. Badly aged product catalog full of missteps. Lack of operating capital. Decentralized manufacturing. Zero product focus. It has taken them the better half of a decade - and some pretty shocking quality control missteps - to find their place in the model kit market again and now they're back to being a reliable seller of 1/72nd and 1/48th scale aircraft with a few oddities and vintage throwbacks mixed in (and clearly called out on box lids in their Airfix Classics line). The German owners have been very methodical in setting Revell up to succeed for the future. Bringing the Revell paint and supply line to the States to take advantage of the Testors implosion was a VERY smart decision. Dissolving the remaining Morton Grove HQ and merging the Revell USA offices with the Carrera USA offices for product research, marketing, and distributing was clever and necessary. Selling off decades old unused tooling to Atlantis was inspired. Making Revell leaner, more streamlined, and preparing the company for a 21st century way of doing things that can make them competitive with their global peers was a long time coming. Whether or not the company is announcing new kits doesn't tell the whole story in regards to health. The whole picture shows Quantum working to finally give Revell some unification after decades of rudderless lunacy on three continents.

They also have just shown test shots of their all-new 1/48th scale SR-71 Blackbird (the first all-new Blackbird kit in decades) which is likely to be a bigger seller than any US domestic car kit could be.

Great looking build of a really fun sweetheart of a kit.

Lovely build of one of Tamiya's nicest. Hopefully a kit they judge to be due for a reissue soon, too.

Very excited to see this! The ex-Monogram kit always seemed oddly "bubbly" to me in the roof and the Tamiya Savanna kit is so moment of production specific with its rotor shaped wheels and sunroof, plus all the motorization compromises in the chassis.

Looks absolutely lovely. The yellow paint is especially rich which is nice to see.

With Revell reorganizing US distribution, there's been a slowdown in shipping product to wholesalers. Last week, one of my distributors got a refresh of 33 SKU's of Revell product. Yesterday, another got in a restock on just 16 SKU's. I imagine now that Quantum has consolidated the USA offices of Revell with Carrera things will get back to normal.

Even sadder is that it's not as if you have to fight with BLAH_BLAH_BLAH_BLAH like Squadron Green anymore, either. Most of my seams - IF the initial glue together with Tamiya or AK Extra Thin doesn't take care of it - can get dressed with either Vallejo Plastic Putty or Gunze Mr Surfacer in a matter of minutes. The lower valances on both my Tamiya Lotus Europa AND my Fujimi Ferrari 330P4 only needed a bare basic amount of sanding.

I think there's a bit of a disconnect, Alan, because my comment wasn't at all about folks like yourself who aren't interested in early 90's Group N rally cars like these. Even I personally wouldn't call Sierra sedans a must-have in my book the way Hasegawa's Lancia O37 is. My comment was aimed at "sky is falling" naysayers who believe that because the hobby as they remember it isn't what currently exists therefore the hobby must be dying. And you're undoubtedly right on your Bf-109's and M4 Sherman thought. Even short run companies like Special Hobby or Dora Wings have a 109 in their catalog albeit sometimes an obscure type. They make money, no doubt about that.

That looks really nice!

Wargamers are some of my best regulars for supply sales because the typical gaming shop stops their paint selection at Citadel with MAYBE Vallejo Game Color or Army Painter at some of the bigger ones. Stop in through my door because you want fistfuls of AK Interactive and Abteilung 502 and AMMO by Mig products? Yessir rightaway sir!

Nail on the head and thank you. That's just about entirely my point and it's one I have to contend with daily at my counter, and often with a strained smile as I have to patiently explain "Yes, Testors discontinued the Model Master line but look at all of these other amazing paints currently available", "Yes there's currently a slow-down in Revell production and distribution but that's due to corporate restructuring under new and much better financed owners", "Yes, there are fewer young modelers building hot rods and customs but there are still lots of young model builders primarily in Gundam and armor" and so forth. But no, there is a strong sect that ignores the huge and growing variety of product on my shelves, the vast improvements in tools and materials and paints, and the fact that every time they come through my door there are more customers and younger customers just so that they can remind me they used to buy whatever it is that Round 2 are reissuing for $2 with the money they made mowing lawns when they were kids. As to the Sierra Cosworths, I'm hugely excited for them honestly! We've had kits of the Subaru Legacy and the Mitsubishi Galant from this era but the Sierra sedans got overlooked. It's a HUGE gap in early 90's rallying and I'm glad DM is planning on plugging that gap.