Justin Porter

Maserati is pretty far from gone. They're a part of FCA and have been having a successful run as Fiat's answer to BMW between the Quattroporte, the new Ghibli sedan, and the Kubang crossover plus the lovely Gran Turismo 4 seat coupe and its GT4 racing counterpart. It is a bit odd, though, that Maserati's model kit history effectively goes "Aurora 3500GT, MPC Indy, a few Boras, and done" given the company's rich trove of classics. A modern 3500GT or Birdcage or 450S would be something else.

Lyn St James decals are incredibly tempting... It's always awesome to see this series of kits, both the Mustangs and the later Camaros, being built.

Well, let's view it this way. I haven't actually answered the question of "If I ran Revell"... First - An active multi-media approach to brand promotion. Revell is, for lack of a better word, junk at informing the public about Revell. Actively supporting name Youtube reviewers with "before you can get it" test shots, a dedicated and active Revell channel for new release, brand news, and promotional information, closer ties to dedicated scale modeling magazines, developing a relationship/tie-in with one of the prevalent eSports racing franchises such as iRacing, Assetto Corse, or Project Cars, and evaluating sponsorship of either events or teams in motorsport all lead to improved sales. Second - Narrow the product line to identifiable "series" of kits which will always have incoming product, either reissue, modified-reissue, or all new tooling. Ideally, these would reflect not only the interest of the core customer base (American Classics, Street Rods & Customs, Drag Racing, Pick-Ups) but also portions of the market that are notably strong where Revell has been traditionally weak (Vintage & Modern Road Racing, Classic Sports Cars, Tuners). An expected product development cycle with regular communication with the customer base will make "The Next Revell" kit a less mysterious but a more talked about item. Third - Cull badly aged tooling or clearly dated kit design from the core catalog, placing desirable kits with strong customer demand into STRICTLY a dedicated SSP program with accompanying history department to maintain and restore tooling to as close to its original form as possible. Fourth - Create tiered releases of existing kits wherein the core plastic sprues remain essentially the same, but expanded decal sheets, photo-etch, tampo-printed tires, and more fully detailed resin or 3D printed parts are included in upper tier editions similar to Eduard's Weekend Edition and Profi-Pack line of aircraft kits. These additional parts would also be available separately in a dedicated line underneath a nice classy name, one that indicates that we as a company have put our signature on it. Our "Monogram", if you will...

The only problem is that we'd see the kit once and then it would get stuck in the same vault as the 250GT SWB and 250 California tooling. Ah well, we can dream of the day when Italeri does this and maybe a companion Maserati Ghibli or Mistral...

Many military kits have taken to a very simple "add a step" method of including Swastikas such as this example from Special Hobby in a recent Blohm und Voss kit.

In the past few years on the air side, I have seen Tamiya and Airfix dig into their catalogs and discard older tooling in favor of newly tooled kits of subjects within their line for the sake of being able to compete with smaller, more focused companies such as Eduard or Kitty Hawk. I applaud Revell for having "gone back to the well" to make their attempts at improved Mopar E-bodies or more recently to cure the '69 Mustang tooling of its biggest faux pas. It's the attitude of a company that understands what it takes to truly be competitive in today's kit market.

Well, they don't do badly because they're still featured heavily as "Want Objects" in popular media. Tony Stark has a garage of hot rods and classics. The boys from Supernatural drive around in their dad's Impala. The Fast & The Furious franchise has featured muscle cars just as heavily as it does imports. There's any number of reasons for younger builders to WANT to build the typically popular muscle cars. The biggest problem I've run into is that when they start - generally as they seem to - with a Tamiya Skyline or Supra, and then go to build an AMT Dodge Charger, they're almost immediately turned off to the domestic kit manufacturers. Round 2 has mitigated this somewhat by making it very clear that they're re-issuing old kits that are targeted at a nostalgia market rather than positioning themselves as a serious model company ala Tamiya or Trumpeter but old kits lurking in new boxes have done immeasurable damage to the automotive side of the hobby.

I can't agree with this statement more and I have the viewpoint from behind the sales counter to back it up. Car kits DO sell to younger builders, but my younger REPEAT customers tend to be on the military side and the truth is that the support from the hobby is there too. New companies, new product, ever improving product, ever improving tools, and much of that driven by the influx of new builders who emphasize fit and accuracy over price. And my younger car builders? Primarily Tamiya.

If only Hasegawa (or maybe Italeri) had a suggestions department. Or for that matter if Airfix really wanted to make a splash of a jump back into 1/24th scale car kits as I'm sure there are plenty of now-adult British children who had well loved blue Matchbox Grifos...

Because the "construction" of the model is really the part that I enjoy most of all, I like complex sub-assemblies and all the parts that give me a chance to sit back and go "Ah, so that's how that part of the car went together." I genuinely dislike promo or motorized style chassis because they do rob me of the building I enjoy most, and quite frankly when compared to some of the full-interior armor kits on the market by Takom or Rye Field, a full detail car kit is a doddle.

Got one more of those pesky backlog projects done before the end of the year. This one is the Tamiya 1/24th scale Toyota 84C, one of Toyota's early Group C cars. It's just a box stock build but it was a fun one with more detail than its small parts count would suggest.

Well fellows, I can tell you that more than a few people are going to get to find out how correct it really is "in the plastic" because I got the message today from Stevens Intl that they're in stock. My shop should be receiving both the Boss 302 and the Chevelle next week!

If I remember right, the figures from that series were based on character designs done for GS by Kenichi Sonoda, whose most famous work was the insanely car heavy comic Gunsmith Cats, which featured a pair of lady bounty hunters from Chicago whose ride was a '67 Shelby GT500. lol

The kit, if I'm not mistaken, dates back to the very well loved Gunze Sangyo High Tech series and while I doubt it has some of the white metal and photoetch parts that featured in those kits it ought to be a nice build all the same. Also, as an aside, the characters from that release are part of a very long running Japanese cartoon called Lupin the Third which is about a master thief and his accomplices who pull off daring heists across the globe. It's a VERY car heavy series including an episode where the titular Lupin enters the Monaco Gran Prix driving a privateer Tyrrell P34(!) in order to pull off a casino heist.

Granted, it wasn't helped by one of the worst "Pep Boys specials" sets of wheels included in a muscle car kit, but what's the best way to ensure that no one knows there's a beautifully done (possibly AMT's best) 426 Hemi sitting inside the box? Paint the box art model practically flat orange, build it with the tail end sagging like it's carrying bags of concrete with blown out shocks, and superimpose it on the first image that comes up on Shutterstock when you search "Rural Highway".

That's definitely a well turned out model to show off what everyone is in for with the new Revell kit.

Given the contents of the kit box alone, the sheer scope of what you've added and corrected is amazing.

Well, I'll say there's probably going to be someone grumpy if I ever get back to my 365GTB/4... lol

We carry the Trumpeter line of hobby bits at my shop after a few of our ship guys requested them and I've been pretty impressed.

My fiance has been on my case to do a car in blue, and because I actually hadn't really picked a color for the car I've started leaning towards Chiaro Blue.

Back to the "shelf of doom" to try and rescue a project from obscurity. This time it's the Testors issue of the 1/24th scale Fujimi Enthusiast series Dino 246GT. Last night I got the body into primer (Tamiya Fine Grey) and started doing some detail painting on the engine which in the way-back-when I had airbrushed with Testors Metalizer Aluminum.

Glad to be corrected and then I'll certainly look forward to seeing what Aoshima does with this tooling!

Unless I miss my guess, this kit is a stock variant produced out of the kit Aoshima did of the famous (in the drifting world) Blitz ER34 Skyline sedan that competed in the D1GP series for several years. That may explain the separate fenders.

Stupid question maybe, but were the tri-power carbs used on the W30 Olds 442's the same two barrels, because the AMT '66 442 has a beautiful set.

Because the decal somehow went walkabout from my bench-top. Haha. Eventually I'm sure it will turn up. For now I just keep it turned in the display case.