Justin Porter

Massively eye-catching with that drop and those wheels, to say nothing of the color combination!

The California Kid is one of those inescapably RIGHT cars that's made it impossible for me to look at a '34 Ford coupe and not think "black, flames, chopped, nerf bars" no matter how unoriginal the thought is. I would also add, and somewhat critically...

Ebbro has done a lovely range of Lotus 49's, and have added a Brabham BT-18 F2 car to that range as well. Tamiya and Hasegawa have both offered kits of the Honda RA272, with Tamiya also producing a lovely kit of the Lotus 25. Fujimi produced the Ferrari 330P4 and Ford GT40 in both MkI and MkII guises. Heller also tackled the 330P4, which was also reissued at one point by Union. Heller's line also included a Porsche 907, a McLaren M7A, and a Brabham BT-33. There is actually quite a long list given how globally popular the source material is, with new kits being released all the time.

For the past few months, my two distributors haven't been able to get their hands on several Revell or Revell of Germany car kits that are "high demand" items, with the '68 Chevelle being in that group. Another "oddly enough" example is that the RoG Ford GT racer is still outside of my distribution channels despite the fact that Tamiya's Ford GT was effectively in my hands within seconds of its formal announcement.

Amazing to see one all built up and looking good. Definitely, I agree with you that just ignoring the "features" is the best way to go.

Oh boy howdy has it not been smooth... I'm not sure who was doing product demand predictions at Revell to determine production run sizes, but I feel like they moved a decimal point to the left by accident. At this point I've resorted to sacrificing a goat to the old gods to try and get more '68 Chevelles and Baja Broncos for my inventory.

The warbird news has been exciting for me so far this year too. Eduard is supposed to be showing off their all-new 1/48th P51-D. Granted, we've seen a good number of nice Mustangs lately (Airfix's being the standout so far) but Eduard is easily my favorite kit manufacturer for airplanes so I'm pumped.

Lovely build of what are some amazing kits.

Already had to remove the rear header and re-jig it because the luggage area plate wouldn't fit properly around it. Honestly between the overflow tank and the airbox it's likely going to end up in "what you can see" territory.

Another update on my Fujimi 1/24th scale Dino 246GT. Two color coats are down and I think looking quite good on this particular sports car. More chassis work has been done too with the full rear suspension in place and the exhaust starting to come together.

Really an astonishing and original piece. Something to be proud of, Paul!

That really does look like an eye-catching piece for any shelf. Great looking work.

That's a very attractive kit. I'd need one for the shop shelf and one for my shelf.

Absolutely a lovely build of one of the more fascinating cars in motoring history.

Now that is pretty well turned out. The color is really striking and appropriately 50's too.

The first tip I can definitely pass along is to keep your micro drill bits and pin vise handy because none of the holes for the locator pins are either wide or deep enough especially if you have any paint on anything. It's very easy to misalign parts because of this.

Really liking the engine and interior detail so far.

Well, first update on the Dino and it's progressing nicely. I sanded down the handbrushed enamel flat black on the chassis and laid down a fresh coat of Vallejo Black Primer to tidy it up. The bulkhead and rear frame work is in place and the engine is now safely in its home for the model. The interior floor was painted with Vallejo Model Air Elfenbein Ivory. Finally I attended to trying to dress some of the less than perfect body joints in the kit to prepare for paint.

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.