tim boyd

Yep, the Street Machine version had Mini-Tubs, a woodgrained bed floor (vs. steel ribbed in the stock kit), plus a dead-ringer replica of a well-known aftermarket blower installation with (very-basic) fuel injection. Also big and little tires with a set of Halibrand-style deep'n'deeper offsetwheels. Alas, the vinyl top (and its sink) carried over to the Street Machine version.....TIM

Fully agreed on this comment about Mark! TIM

I think this is one of the best kits ever to come out of the mid-late 1990's "John Mueller and Gang" era at AMT-Ertl. Except for that pesky vinyl roof sink mark duly noted in the posts above. This was a great kit compromised by the most generic box art possible in the original release, that did little to convey the goodness inside (particularly for the Street Machine version of the tool). If you like the box top art shown here, you'll equally like the side box panels - (based on the comp I saw....) - they really convey the contents of the kit just as the best AMT box art compositions of the mid 1960's did. TIM

Seven or eight color paint fade using spray cans (Testors One Coat Lacquers)....TIM

So sweet! Great to see this one done.....and I congratulate you heartily on using that '27T Turtledeck body.....TIM

Luis....great start and really innovative building ideas.....TIM

Tom....sharp! I presume you will be bringing this to the NNL and placing it on the "3 windows and 5 windows" Cult Theme table??? Can't wait to see it in person.......TIM

Dennis....I will be watching this one closely! Great discovery on the '48 Ford rear axle and radius rods.....TIM .

Just to reconfirm, the pulley is shown upside AND backwards in the instructions, as Mark notes above. It is 100% correct when installed as originally designed. Revell has been advised and will correct the instruction assembly manual in the next production run And Tim, John and Bill are correct - the pulley idler bracket is correctly molded; the idler pulley does not hang in space. With some detail paint it is very evident in the final assembled form. Another neat detail of this engine is the way the upper radiator hose slinks around the blower drive pulley and belt and connects perfectly to the radiator. As you guys well know, I'm no fan of SBC's in Ford hot rods, but if you like street-applicable blown SBC's in 1/25th scale, this engine is about the best one I can think of in a 1/25th scale kit these days. TIM PS - for some reason, the front radius rod part numbers on the Highboy version of the '30 A Coupe kit are reversed on the assembly manual. If you have the '29 Roadster kit, refer to the assembly manual there; the part numbers are correctly called out there. Again, Revell has been notified. TB

Remember the full build kit preview posted a few weeks back, for those wondering about that version of the kit.....TIM PS - here's the box art for the full build version....

from the early 1920's to the 1954 model years. Traditional Hot Rods, Customs, restored stockers, Gassers, Street Rods, all genres welcome as long as they are in 1/24th or 1/25th scale. The "Cult Theme" table is at the far left of the NNL event, next to the magazine photo backdrops. New builds, old builds, restored builds, all welcome as well. We had over 100 models on the Cult Theme table last year.....be sure to join us this year with your models..... Thanks....TIM

x2! Wow.....nicely done! TIM

I can't speak to the '55 and '56, as though I have a number of them in inventory, I've never built them. I can speak to the original Revell "H-Series" '57 Bel Air, and you can read the results in the infamous "'57 Chevy Comparo" article back in the 1983 volume (IIRC) of the other major model car magazine. Photos told it all, and the text added flavor. But to save you the trouble, it finished #4 of 4 (and that's even below the original Monogram 1/24th Bel Air, which has some pretty major body proportion issues). I did get it together eventually (as seen in the article), but my recollection is that it took as long to put together as it did to assemble the other three models combined. I think my verdict was something like "unacceptable for the human race" (just kidding). FWIW....TIM

The Hamtramck Registry has images from the Dodge dealer showroom Color and Trim Selector including color images of interior configurations (seats/door panels) and all upholstery samples/choices for most 1960's and early 1970's offerings. It's a great resource for projects like this. And kudos to you Steve for choosing an interior color other than just the oft-seen solid black, or white with black, interior color combos......Tim

Nope....no drag parts.......here's a detailed look at the Piranha Spy Car kit......TIM

Nicely done Chuck.....I particularly like that turbo'd six banger.....TIM

Harry....simply gorgeous! It's your call to make, of course, but if it were me, I''d forego that straps and leave that incredible engine compartment available to show off from now until....well....many, many years from now. Way to go! TIM

Del...I'm thinking exactly the same along those lines. I've already cleaned up and painted the headers (Tamiya Chrome Yellow with Tamiya Flat clear) to simulate late 1960's flat yellow header paint....they actually look pretty cool.....TIM

Just under two hundred photos, all generations of Mustang (and heavy on 2005-2016's) at the Ford World Headquarters, the day after the world famous Woodward Dream Cruise Over 850 cars were there, making this the claimed-to-be second largest Mustang event in the nation. Great modeling ideas; thanks for looking....TIM

Oh be still my heart. I had a 1990 Lincoln Mk VII LSC, in the same light blue metallic with the factory BBS wheels, just as in Bill's picture above. It was one of my all time favorite cars. Wish I still had it. Sadly, today the closest you can get to this in a new car is the Mercedes S-Class Hardtop (S550?), which is a pretty cool car by the, but also WAY too expensive for my tastes. Seems there just isn't a market for this type of car today - everyone is buying luxury SUV's instead. Makes me very sad.... In the meantime, Bill, thanks for the memories! TIM

Mark....I think that is a very intriguing idea.....TIM

I should have addressed this before. My objection to how Tamiya treated the so-called engine in the Aston kit had NOTHING to do with the idea of using it in other models, such as street rods or the like. My concern was that they gypped me of a complete engine in what was the only "full detail" kit of an Aston Martin that had been tooled in the last 40 years. For a good ten years of my career, among my various assignments and responsibilities I worked closely with members of the 1/1 scale Aston Martin team on various projects. With great dedication and spirit, they achieved wonders with relatively constrained resources vs. other 1/1 scale exotic car makers. And a great deal of the character of their cars derived from that wondrous V-12 engine. I was so looking forward to building a model of the 1/1 scale cars I had seen in development, in their design studio, on their assembly line, and on their showstands at the top motor shows around the world. To open that kit and see what they did (actually, did not do) with the engine was a bitter disappointment to me, and in my view highly inappropriate for a "full detail" kit of one of the premier exotic car makers in the world. It has nothing to do with how the finished model appears; it has everything to do with the completeness of the entire model including all the parts that are not seen at the end. I know those parts are there (or not there). This treatment seemed incredibly disrespectful to the Aston brand in my view, and as a result graded as an "incomplete" on my kit evaluation matrix given the scope of the rest of the kit and the cost of it. That was my view then, and it's still 100% my view now. I understand others see it differently; I respect their point of view, and I don't expect to change their (or your) minds. Cheers.....TIM .

That's a good question. The International Model Car Museum focuses primarily on the historical works of model car builders, rather than the broad array of kits and building genres. They prioritize identifying and then collecting some of the most famous and popular model car works from past national model car contests and the pages of historic model car magazines such as Car Model, Model Car Science, Rod and Custom Models, the Auto World Catalog, and the early years of Scale Auto Enthusiast Magazine. Given the era in which these models were built, they do tend toward the categories you mention, as for instance Muscle Cars really became a dominant build theme starting in the mid 1980's and onward. The kind of museum you are looking for might have been better satisfied by Dean Milano's Chicago-based Model Car Museum, but as noted above, it never generated enough traffic to become a sustainable enterprise. That's really sad, as there was some really good exhibits there too. TIM

Bob....I have much respect for your point of view here, and you've built and completed many more Tamiya kits than I've even opened the box on, much less started. Taken as a whole (throughout the entire product offering) you offer a very compelling argument for your assessment of Tamiya's kits relative to the global competition. Yet there are American-designed kits, that on occasion fully challenge even the best Tamiya kits, in my opinion. The one that most comes to mind at the moment is the Revell series of Offy and V8-60 Midgets, and the '50 Olds kits. Other recent offerings from the domestics? Not so sure.... I've not built the Moebius Hudson kits, but from what I read, they might???? be in the same category. The new AMT '16 Camaro SS, depending on how it assembles, might be the in same league. This assessment does not factor in the price disparity between Tamiya and the Domestics, but if it did, the domestics would blow away the imports in value for the dollar (or yen). I am highly doubtful that Tamiya could have delivered kits as good as these domestic-designed kits of these subjects, especially in terms of their drivetrain/chassis completeness (which may not matter to most of you here but does matter greatly to me) regardless of the price point. So when individual efforts are concerned (vs the consistency of the entire product offering) I don't see Tamiya's position as unassailable. I realize that the group following this thread will again probably mostly/completely disagree with me, but I've never been one to back down for the sake of popularity, either. Then again, as you said several times in your post, subject matter trumps all, and I can sure agree 100% with you on that point. Thanks for taking the time to state your case. ....TIM

Harry....I think Bill captures it well....it may also be a generational thing. My family environment growing up did not include car maintenance or car building as a way of life, or even as a weekend driveway exercise. The only way for me to learn about cars, then, was to build models. In doing so, I wanted to build every component in the car in my scale exercise, whether it could be seen on the finished model or not. Ultimately, what I learned about cars from building models was a key, key competitive advantage for me vs my peers in my early sales and marketing jobs at Ford, and it gave me exposure and experience that greatly benefited me later in my career. Also, as Bill and I were coming into the hobby, the addition of engines to model car kits was just becoming a key competitive selling feature. It was a feature that we came to expect, even demand, as we traipsed to the local hobby store to consider our next purchase. Now, fifty years later, to be in a situation where some of the most expensive kits on the market either simplify, or even just "suggest" the elements of the engine, seems a huge step backwards to me personally. I wouldn't have learned about the mechanics of cars if these were the kits I was building as a kid. It should also be no surprise that I generally prefer American-designed kits over Asian-designed kits. While each have their advantages, American-designed kits as a whole do a better/more realistic and lifelike recreation of components in the engine compartment (and often, with other areas of the car that are unseen in the finished model), while Japanese and Korean kits often have their own advantages in other areas of the model kit. I also generally want my model building experience to be an exact scale recreation in 1/24th or 1/25th scale of the same assembly process that I would follow if I was building the car in 1/1 scale. For all these reasons, the Tamiya Aston kit was a huge disappointment for me, and I was very vocal about that. I'd like to think that my objections, along with many others including respected members of this board, led them to move to separately-molded engines in their high-end kits that followed. But even with this, I'm not sure that they are yet, consistently, at the full level of engine detail found in many American-designed kits today (ergo the comments above about the 300SL engine...). For others who first entered the hobby a few years later, the overall finished appearance of the model, rather than the process of recreating all the internal elements of the 1/1 car in scale, may have become the greater consideration. And there are others who simply grew up preferring Asian-designed kits for whatever reason, And under these points of of view, my objections to the simplified or even simulated engines would seem irrelevant, silly, or even, yes, stupid. So I can try to understand and acknowledge the opposing views here, but for me, my own position remains unchanged. Thanks for everyone taking their time to explain their positions here. It's great dialogue like this that makes me want to revisit this forum every waking day of my life TIM