Justin Porter

Looks fantastic.

My build of the Revell 3-window kit

Looks fantastic. Whose PE wire wheels did you use?

While they're all fun kits, I hope I'm not the only one for whom the most desired reissue of the Gunze Sangyo 1/24th scale sports car kits is their Lotus Elan. We have a much better 250GTO now in the Fujimi and their SWB is questionable in its proportions, but that Lotus Elan is such a little gem.

Not unprecedented, but not especially lucrative in their primary markets either. Given that they have the McLaren license, that the Senna was a big success, and that F1 superstar and Honda golden-boy Jenson Button races one, a McLaren 720GT3 makes a whole lot more sense.

I'm actually most curious to see what Aoshima, Ebbro, and Hasegawa announce for this year. The follow up to the Pagani Zonda ought to be something exciting to see, more news on the Ebbro Lotus 33 will be great, and Hasegawa continuing their series of touring/street car kits replacing old Tamiya tooling (R32 GTR, MkIII Supra) will be exciting and hopefully include a Z32 or Z31 Nissan 300ZX.

That looks really fantastic!

I'm fairly certain Tamiya's big news will either be 1/48th prop air or 1/35th armor. Their all-new F-4B Phantom II has been a huge success this year and last year's P-38 Lightning equally so. Likewise on the armor side their latest Panzer IV's have been flying off shelves. If they do anything auto, I'm willing to bet it will be some form of safe GT3 companion for the highly successful AMG GT. I would probably lean to the NSX GT3 for that since Aoshima has the Lamborghini license buttoned up and there's very little likelihood of a new Ferrari 488 GT3 kit.

That really is just exactly how that car is supposed to look. This is a truly stunning build.

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.