Justin Porter

Looks absolutely gorgeous. You definitely sampled all of the best Ferrari stuff out there to get the build just right.

Yeah, but if they close because of divorces or embezzling or a sudden invasion of lazer-wielding woodchucks, that isn't relevant to a discussion of as to why it's entirely reasonable for modelers to criticize bad models. You want to level the "we should be glad they made kits at all" line at those of us who do take accuracy into account when choosing which companies get our hard earned money, then OWN that statement instead of trying to mealy-mouth it.

No. It's not. And no. CUSTOMERS have no duty to be grateful that their corporate overlords deigned to manufacture a product. Manufacturers produce products for the purpose of selling them. If those products do not suit the desires of their customers then the customers have no reason whatsoever to purchase them. The argument "But if we don't buy from them then they'll go away" is ridiculous. If a manufacturer cannot produce products that meet the expectations of its customers, why SHOULD it stay in business? We have seen more new companies in the past ten years move into the 1/24th scale automotive space than leave it and most of them have come in with fantastic products whether it's Belkits embracing vintage rally or Ebbro answering the prayers of vintage F1 builders or ICM giving us the first truly good stock Model T in decades. If there's a hole in the market that actually represents enough earnings potential SOMEONE else will definitely move into the space and start manufacturing. And one more thing, did you defend Trumpeter this vociferously when they fumbled through their initial attempts at 1/25th scale American classics or is this sort of "You have a moral duty to save these brands" nonsense reserved only for American brands from when boomers were kids?

Large scale has built a lot of steam on the military side of the aisle in my shop. 1/32nd scale aircraft, 1/16th scale armor, and Trumpeter's line of 1/200th scale ships have all been steady movers for me over the past few years. On the auto side, though, I have a handful of folks who gobble up anything 1/12th scale F1 that I can get my hands on and a few guys who've been devouring the R2 reissues of the older 1/16th scale stuff. For the most part, price-point seems to come up most often as the issue that causes more casual builders to balk at bigger boxes in auto.

I'm not entirely certain they've got it as wrong as the Hannants pictures would imply. The rear 3/4 view looks nearly dead on while the front 3/4 view looks like the car is missing 3 scale inches of wheelbase. I have to wonder if any amount of digital retouching combined with the photography angles are giving us some unintentionally misleading information.

Credit where it's due. This "revival" retooling is definitely some good work. Yes, the chassis is still archaic at best but the body looks great and I suspect that I'll move the bulk of these to slot car drag racers anyways.

Looks like it turned out really well. It can be pretty tough to wring great results out of that kit.

One of my 2020 volume leaders in aircraft sales is the Trumpeter 1/32nd scale P-47D Thunderbolt bubbletop. My air guys all seem to agree it's a steal at nearly 70 bucks. Different sorts of folks. Different priorities.

Sometimes you get a kit that just speaks to you. I had wanted to build one of these Monogram 1/24th scale Edmunds Supermodifieds for a long while and I got a great deal on one and couldn't put it down when I got it. The bulk of the painting is Vallejo, Alclad, and AK Real Color with Testors One Shot "Purplicious" over Stynelrez black primer as the body color. Number decals were spares from a Revell Offy Midget I had built some time ago.

The fantastic thing about supers is their level of mechanical sophistication only improves year to year. Just this past weekend, Aric Iosue debuted his all-new Colloca chassis at Oswego.

With the old version of the '69 Mustang, the problem is that the outer headlights are noticeably lower - I'd wager by a scale inch or so - than the inner grille mounted headlights, which on the actual car are in nearly a straight line across. The DMold resin set and the new '69 Boss 302 kit both correct this egregious error which had kept the 428 Cobra Jet kit out of circulation after being massacred in print.

Tim Halfhill stopped in at the shop again to show off a finished build. This time he built the MPC Pinto Modified straight from the box using a combination of AK, Vallejo, and Tamiya paints.

Basically, what you're looking at here is "Genesis" for what would become the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution family of rally-bred turbo sedans. In terms of Japanese performance cars, it carries a fair bit of historical importance for its place in starting the line that would culminate in the WRC winning turbo AWD Evos.

That would be fantastic. While their 300SL remains one of the most fantastic vintage sports car kits ever tooled, it would be a joyful moment if Tamiya were to bring their considerable tooling capacity to might to bring us a kit of one of the as-yet represented classic sports cars like the Austin Healey 3000, Maserati Mistral, or Porsche 550 Spyder.

YES!!! It has been too long since the Europa was on the market and this new Europa Special version is just going to be very fun to have.

Between the wheels and the hardtop alone, it's going to be great to see this one back out. Great. Now I have to mark myself down for TWO more Aoshima MGB's instead of just one.

That looks genuinely gorgeous.

I am beyond astonished at what I've been seeing as I started this thread and read through to this point. Every addition and tweak and correction is so plain and logical, based 100% on the thought "this part doesn't look like a real part" and the results are amazing.

Looks fantastic. The Delta S4 is probably the Beemax kit that most catches my eye and it's great to see it all together.

It's really proven to be very effective. I have very young twins and became acutely aware of how airbrushing fumes up the house and thanks to the booth I can even spray most cleaners through my airbrush without worrying about the fumes drifting upstairs. Only complaint so far is that it's not quite large enough for larger airplanes, as a 1/72nd scale SR-71 Blackbird build didn't quite fit fully inside the booth on its spray rig. I might end up getting a second one and joining them together as designed.

Absolutely gorgeous build of one of the 80's best looking Indy cars.

One of our regulars at my shop, Greg Halfhill, stopped in with this and I wanted to show it off. It's the Ebbro Lotus 91 kit which he built box stock after picking it up from us along with his first airbrush and compressor. It was a lot of firsts for him. First airbrushing. First F1 kit. First Ebbro. He's already put himself down for one of the Gold Leaf 49-C's when they come in because he was so pleased with this one!

Very good to know, but the Aoshima kit's in current production which means at the moment it's just a matter of my distributor getting them back in stock. I've been waiting on a restock for about a month and a half, and now I've got a reason to go "one for the shelf, one for the shop".

So, little backstory. I've had this kit in my backlog since rush-buying it the last time it was reissued. I had the grand idea to transplant the double blown 392 from the AMT Double Whammy Studebaker between its framerails, but never quite got up to steam. Well, I lately have invested in some seriously quality nippers from Trumpeter and have been a little grouchy at arguments about "real modelers" and their approaches to kits of dubious quality. So, galvanized with a real "I'll show them. I'll show them all" attitude and the added confidence of modern tools and glues, I set about building this box stock. The decals, unfortunately, yellowed over time, and the belly pan turned out a lighter shade of gloss aluminum despite being sprayed in the same batch over the same primer, and the correct wheels in the box went missing during the years so it's wearing the roadster's rear wheels, but all in all I'm pretty tickled to have this on my shelf.

Yes! I will definitely be taking one as soon as they're available. I'll have to get another Aoshima MGB into the shop as soon as I can. lol