Justin Porter

I am quite glad to have buttoned this project up after it languished in my stack for several years. It's the Hasegawa kit which was never the source of the build's issues, to which the Studio 27 photoetch fret has been added. The paint is Duplicolor Toreador Red with Vallejo Model Air "Chrome Silver" for the rockers.

Bit more accomplished on my Miura Jota. A little bit of time with my panel scriber cleared the molded mesh out of the fender vents so I could replace it with the PE from Studio 27, and a bit more wet sanding has helped the finish while I've masked and shot the silver for the rocker panels.

Snake's build actually reminded me of another one. See, MPC originally got this VERY right with a lovely illustration of a landmark concept car... Which they then torpedoed trying to get another go-around out of the tooling by releasing this...

This box art will ALWAYS stand out in my mind as one of the big goofs in the modern era. What do you see? A stock '57 Bel Air with some badly molded and undersized C4 Corvette wheels. Some "Street Machine". But what's in the box? A fantastic Art Morrison style frame with beautiful four-link. A unique floorpan with mini-tubs and new trunk floor complete with gorgeous fuel cell. A truly modern crate Chevy Big Block connected to a well-molded automatic transmission. Basically, this kit is EVERYTHING a modern fairground street rod Tri-Five wants to be, and nothing on the box top tells you that. Close runners up would be the same-period '68 El Camino and '71 Duster Street Machines. Again, beautiful modern performance parts NOT called out on the box top while a barely passable box top build-up with uninspired wheels makes you think it's the same sort of "2n1" kit that the '66 Olds W30 was.

Be particularly interested to see this built, actually. 0083 is likely my favorite UC Gundam chapter (tied likely with F91) and Albion always had such a great "White Base, but Hot Rodded" look to it.

Gladly welcome and honestly, the Vallejo Metal Color is super easy to work with. Lay down their Gloss Black Primer, wait a few hours, then coat with the metal of your choice. Biggest critical thing is use their Flow Improver to prevent tip drying in the airbrush but otherwise this was a first attempt with the stuff.

This was a project that was on the shelf of doom for a little while because of canopy fit issues. Originally I had planned to build it closed cockpit and had detailed the cockpit accordingly, but the canopy had no interest in being closed, so oh well and here it is. Overall though I am pretty pleased with my first attempt with using Vallejo Metal Color paints for the finish (the color is Duraluminum) and while the fuselage pieces took a bit of filler to line up it's still a jet I'm pleased with.

The red really pulls the curves out of the 959. This is a really great looking build.

Looks particularly good to me. This kit seemed like it was here and gone so quickly so it's great to see it being built.

Thanks all! The color is, if I remember right from when I painted this several years ago, a Duplicolor automotive lacquer (possibly Ford Toreador red but don't hold me to that) that has a strong metallic which unfortunately makes the orange peel look a lot worse than it is. My standing plan right now is an 8000 grit polishing pad and a hit of Tamiya Clear to try and correct it but since this is paint job #4 of the model's life I'm at the "on the shelf, off the stack" point with it. lol

This is an older project of mine that I pulled from the stack to try and get it wrapped up. It's the Hasegawa 1/24th scale Miura Jota kit to which I've been adding details from the Studio 27 PE fret for the kit. This project went back into the box after 3(!) trips into the brake fluid trying to get the paint to where I was happy with it. There's still some orange peel and a bunch more parts to attach, plus the A pillars were damaged at some point, but I'm glad to show that I'm working on making my stash smaller.

On the tire markings, my first instinct is honestly to go with a PE Tire Stencil like this one. https://www.bnamodelworld.com/model-cars-motorcycles-detail-up-sets-crazy-modeler-ep0027?zenid=31c51241fafb8d9cf60842c40a44e853

Revell was nearly lost because their parent company made poor decisions elsewhere in the business, not because Revell wasn't selling model kits. I can assure you, the model car building hobby has actually been quite stable in terms of sales for the past ten years (according to my wholesalers). Yes, mainstream retail availability has been supplanted by online shopping and specialized shops to a near 100%. This is not a bad thing. This actually ALLOWS the kit manufacturers much more product control in terms of release dates, content, and price point. Walmart would never have allowed the $30 Moebius kits to share shelf space with $17.99 Revell kits and under the previous business model Moebius would not have been able to thrive as a company focusing on offering premium kits of niche 50's and 60's American automobiles exclusively. We have finally arrived at the point in time where American model car builders will have their manufacturers analogous to armor and aircraft companies like Eduard, Dragon, and Rye Field. It's about time.

A 250 Lusso or a California that wasn't buried in Italeri's tooling vault would be something special. On the other hand, if I were to make a request it would be that Tamiya revisit their line of fantastic classic sports and touring cars from the mid 90's and give us an Austin Healey 3000 MkII to go with their Morgan Plus Four and Lotus Europa kits.

As a shop owner, I can say for certain that, among domestic kit manufacturers, factory stock kits outsell race car kits by a factor of nearly 3 to 1. Now, if I factor in my imported kits, then there's a more even balance as I sell a fair number of Tamiya, Fujimi, Hasegawa, and Ebbro kits. Does this mean that the domestic kit manufacturers should start producing vintage Formula One and Sports Car Racing kits?

I agree a ton with Tom. One of the biggest stumbling blocks new adult builders have in the hobby is the road to good results. As a shop owner, I can do all I can to educate on tools and paints and glues and the pitfalls of different kits (provided I either have good first-hand experience OR recent reviews to work from) but every first model that results in a frustrated adult staring at what they've built and thinking "All that time and money and it turns out like this?" equates to one more person who doesn't go from their first model to their second model. Just this past month, Tamiya announced a brand new 1/48th scale MkI Spitfire kit. Their existing MkI Spitfire kit only dates back to 1993 and is generally regarded as "pretty good" but the new kit will offer more options, better fit, and better detail. We in the automotive world would be quite fortunate if every 25 years a kit manufacturer was willing to shelve tooling and say "You know what? We can do better."

That's what resin casters are for.

Lots of supposition and speculation that adds up to nothing. If at any point the XR-6 justified the cost of the tooling AMT would have invested in either new tooling OR even a brand new kit as they did of Ala Kart. Look at what IS justifying new tooling. The two domestic kit companies that are spending money on new tooling are spending it on primarily factory stock kits of passenger cars from the 50's to the 70's. The near dozen foreign kit companies which are doing far more new tooling than the domestics have been focusing on modern supercars and vintage racing cars. The buying public has voted with their wallets and they aren't voting for 55 year old street rods.

I'm all for a stock Deuce on the market, but honestly I'd want either a modification of their stock '34 Ford tooling from the early 90's or I would want ICM to produce a proper new tooling, sometime after they upscaled their amazing 1/35th scale Packard. My eyes just can't unsee the missing 4 scale inches of body height in the well-past-its-prime 60's AMT kit.

I'm honestly a little confounded as to why someone would want the AMT Deuce back in production as opposed to the Revell given its "sectioned from the factory" body proportions and archaic suspension detail.

I fully agree with the "built for fun" ethos you're talking about Alex. I mostly ask because I've long been a fan of the Monogram kit but if there are things to pirate from the Tamiya kit to improve it, I'm curious to know. It's kind of like my personal debate over 240Z kits. I do LIKE the Fujimi 240Z kit, but good lord does it look wonky compared to the the Hasegawa or even the old Revell kit.

On initial viewing, is there anything the Tamiya kit does better than the full detail Monogram?

It's really incredible how the interior is looking in your Lotus and getting the interior right is definitely a big step given the size of the windshield!

That's an absolute monster of a car and definitely neat to see that kit finished.

Really a classy looking car whose build is rising above the source kit.