tim boyd

I too have long wanted to build the "revell" livery version of this car and have been building a reference file for several years. The Revell livery car was a different car than the original 1965 A990 based car that Butch ran in the mid 1960s. This car was specifically built by Ron Butler to campaign in the Super Stock ranks during the 1974 season because the NHRA had essentialy decreed that the prior season's Hemi Darts and Dusters could no longer competitively run in Pro Stock. So Mother Mopar boycotted the Pro Stock world in 1974 and several o their drivers campaigned Super Stock instead. This car supposedly had every trick in the book and was "the most feared car in Super Stock Eliminator" according to quotes attributed to the long loved and lost Super Stock and Drag illustrated mag. Some of the references I have seen suggested that it had a four bar rear that year (unclear whether that had leaf springs too or not), one source even suggested the top was slightly chopped and leaned forward with the windshield leaned backward, along with the front end being slightly narrowed widthwise ( I take those latter suggestions with a very big degree of skepticism). Some also suggest the axles were moved ever so slightly frontward and/or even rearward. Whatever, it was a very successful car that year. However, what also intrigues me is the Revell livery. It was there for a reason. You can find what I believe that reason was in my book "Collecting Drag Racing Model Kits" or alternatively, in one of Hank Borger's very last columns in Car Model magazine after it was taken over by Tonto Publishing. I remain amazed that this info is not more widely known in the model kit drag racing community...TIM PS Tom - did you finish your model and if so, is it posted in the under-glass section. Would sure like to check it out! TB

Believe it or not, actually my Mustang GT convertible was a kitbash of the original Revell 2005 Mustang GT full detail kit. The how-to appeared in Scale Auto around 2008. It was an exact copy of my 1/1 at the time other than the wheels/tires from the Revell F150 Harley kit. Revell's curbside Mustang GT convertible came out around 2010 or so...and I never did a project on that kit....jTB

Pete,,,,I might have met Dave Carlock in the mid-late 1970s when I was doing contract work for AMT, but not sure. I do recall he was a well respected member of the AMT team. Sorry I can't contribute more here....TB

Paul...can't wait to see where you take this project. Knowing your modeling and design capabilities, combined with starting with one of the very best hot rod kits ever, this one has great potential! Onward!!!! TIM

I think that there is a good deal of merit in this idea. Revell's Snap Tite can make a pretty sharp curbside (convertible version shown below), but a full detail kit, with all the specs articulated in Maxx's original post, would be a terrific basis for a newly tooled model kit. However, as a retired 1/1 scale marketer and one who has been consulted on future kit ideas by the most of the domestic kitmakers at various times in the past, I have to admit that I am sometimes disappointed in what appears to be a mediocre market response to all-new kits of topics previously committed to 1/25 scale and still sold being sold by competitive kitmakers - e.g. the ancient 1963 Corvette kit sold by Round 2 as mentioned in this thread. So, as a kiltmaker, the discussion becomes "should I commit the effort (funding, headcount, development time, et al) and the future revenue stream to...": a) a world class 1/24th or 1/25th scale '63 Covette kit, recognizing that the hobby store shelves have other offerings of this subject, and many hardcore modelers like us already have multiples of those old kits in our stash...or b) an all-new tool of a subject that was once sold as an annual kit but never reissued (e.g. a 1968 or 69 AMC Javelin, for instance), or c) an all-new topic that has never seen any kind of 1/24th-25th scale styrene assembly kit (1962-64 Ferrari Berlinetta Lusso) ...and for all of the above - ONLY engineered with the investment for a full detail kit including a stand-alone and complete engine and transmission - Asian kit makers, that means you. ***** Those are the types of debates any responsible kitmaker is going to have today. And a decision that I am glad I don't have to make myself. Best...TB

If you are a hot rod builder or pre/post WWII old school dirt track racer builder, be sure to check out item P-96, which I believe is Norm's all-new 1936 "Wide Five" wheels. He cast then from a perfect original part from the earliest of the original Trophy Series kits - not many of those had the parts correctly formed with the deeply inset half-circles around the outer rim, so AMT quickly changed the mode to smooth them over, meaning 98% of those out you out there have the kit with incorrect wheels. UPDATE - Steve PM'ed me that the above order number is out of date; the new one for the original, fully formed Ford Wide Five wheels, he says, is actually P-195 and this is the one with the new wheels as I described above. Should have ventured down to my model cave and double checked first...thanks Steve for the heads-up...TB Norm's are the wheels you need. Tell him I sent you with your order if you wish....Best...TIM

Dennis....ran across this project while I was looking for Tim Slesak's post in your long running thread here....Did this project get finished and I missed it? I have to say those low angle three quarter shots have just about the most killer stance I think I have ever seen in a 1//1 or scale A rod....hope all is well....TIM

What Tim W. said above!!! TB PS - Here's an example of his point. This is a kitbashed MCM cover car from a couple of years back...and I may have used the original MPC Model A roadster pickup cab instead of the Revell kit counterpart (to avoid dealing with the Revell kit the opening doors), but it shows the potential for a kitbashed model based on the newish Revell Model A Hot Rod Roadster and 5WC chassis combined with the body off this new Revell reissue of the Model A Roadster PIckup/Closed Cab Pickup kit...TB

Exactly right. This kit was simply an effort by Revell, back around 1981 or so when they were really struggling, to get another round of factory production off the otherwise factory stock F150 shortbed, which in itself was not a very good replica. Not sure why today's Revell...which generally has been pretty savvy with its kit introductions these days, would choose this tooling for a reissue, but heh...if it helps to generate revenue for some other kit we'd really like to see...well then... Buy it and build it with that knowledge and enjoy it if the subject interests you. Just realize that it is not a replica of anything that ever came out of a Ford factory in that form... TB

Still not here in my environs here in the Detroit suburbs. However, I am concluding that this is just the latest example of mail service here that has really declined big time in punctuality the last two or three months. It is taking first class mail up to two weeks to show up here after the mailing date. Really???!!! Phone bills arriving just two days before the due date? Year-end tax statements showing up two or three weeks after the financial house reported they were mailed? And of, course magazines showing up weeks after newsstand arrival. I've always experienced a wide variety of delivery dates of MCM...sometimes very soon after your Forum annoucement....mostly about the same time others report seeing them in the mail box...and occasionally some days later than most. Something is very different this time...and I do not think it has to do with MCM.... TB

When I was promoted to my first (of many later) jobs at Ford Division headquarters in 1982, a much higher level Ford exec there heard I was interested in model cars and wanted to sell me his entire collection of promos, mostly Fords. I was not then, and not now, a collector of Promos. I referred him to the famous (for us modelers back then) Automotive Miniatures store in a Detroit suburb, but he wasn't interested. Then he offered me such a low price for it all that I said, what the hey, and bought it. Yes, one of the cars was a red 1969 Mustang promo. I recall selling that one alone to Herb and Bill at Automotive Miniatures shortly thereafter for the then outrageous price of $90....and they quickly retailed if for more, I understand. That more than paid me back for the cost of buying the entire collection, which I recall being around 15-20 units. That $90 in 1982, btw, is equivalent to $295 today. So even back then, as Jim suggests above, 1969 Mustang promos were apparently very, very rare and very highly valued even when less than 10 to 13 years old. BTW, sold most of the rest of the collection just a few years ago to one of the premier old kit vendors. One of those cars was a pretty mediocre condition 1964 1/2 Mustang Indy Pace Car (I rean a picture of it in one of my books). He didn't give me an individual value on that one, but I am sure it was one of the more desirable pieces I sold that day, and another payoff for that 1982 transaction nearly four decades later...TB

Ouch....that hurts! TB

Most of this is new news to me (other than Toteff leaving to start MPC and the '65 Imapala....)...thanks for the added info, Mark....Cheers...TB

Very, very nice....especially under the hood, too! TB

Scott...very cool....guess i go better find the finished model. Image below is from the DAAM show last Sunday at the Few Sprues Loose booth....looks like he has updated the TrailDuster grille to include the Plymouth name....TB htt

Greg....great suggestion! Recommend you repost this in the "Industry Corner" Truck News and Reviews folder in the MCM forum. Mobius personnel are known to visit that site from time to time....Cheers....TIM

Well, this project is finished; you can see it in the May/June 2025 issue of the multi-genre model magazine that just hit the newsstand. But before you do that, please check out the new #226 issue of Model Cars, which among some very cool articles and builds has another pickup contribution from yours truly, this a post-WW-II 1937/29 Model A Pickup with its roots in the reissued Round 2 "Mod Rod" (originally Ala Kart Trophy Series) kit... thanks in advance for checking both of them out...TB ***************** PS - the other article in the other mag doesn't mention my one of my biggest goof ups ever....when polishing out the paint on the roof, I picked up a tube off the shelf of what I thought was Tamiya Fine Rubbing Compound (the middle of the three grades) and applied it to the roof. When I started polishing, it seemed way too thick and stiff. Then it wouldn't polish out, instead sort of digging into the paint. Then it got worse; much worse. What the heck? I was confounded. Then I looked at the tube again. Tamiya body putty, not polishing compound! aAAARRCCCCHHHhhhhh. Dumb, dumb, dumb! That goof sent me back several months alone....TB

X2! TB

Bob...not much as I recall....toughest part was making the lift off front end....TB

As some of you already know, I have been freelancing auto magazine stories for what...nearly 50 years now. (Can that really be ???) Even though I have never been an employee of the publishing houses I worked with, a number of them brought me under the fold, so to speak, and shared with me some of the challenges faced by the magazine publishing businesses. The question that Wayne poses here is one that those magazine publishers have faced for decades, and I don't really know that it has ever been fully resolved. Basically, when a magazine comes off the press at the printing house, it gets shipped to the post office for routing to subscribers, and to the retail magazine distribution network at the same time. Subscriber copies go into the US mail system, which does not give top priority to delivering magazines to subscribers, which results in widely divergent delivery dates at homes across the U.S. For magazines to have top priority, the magazine publisher would have to pay first class mail postage, and the cost of the subscription would be way higher (in the pre-Kalmbach days Scale Auto Enthusiast offered a first class mail option, IIRC it was about three times the price of regular subscription, but copies were always received before the mag appeared for sale on the newsstand or hobby store). To try to partly address the issue, some magazines (including Fine Scale Modeler) include an embargo date with copies supplied to retailers, wherein the magazines are not to be sold until a date that approximates when subscribers might get their copies, but experience suggests that it is widely disregarded, including at major retailers like Barnes and Noble. So, the problem continues. Not to mention that it seems to me that over the last few months, mail deliveries of all types seem to be experiencing a lot more delays than they did in the past. (Dave A. or other mods, weigh in here if I've mentioned anything that is different from the MCM experience...) Bottom line? If you want to be assured of getting your magazine regularly and not having to watch the newsstand to get a copy before it sells out, and you want a lower price overall, a subscription is the better way to go but with the tradeoff that there may be instances where the most current issue shows up on the newsstand before you get your copy in the mail. Tradeoffs, tradeoffs, just like life in general, I guess. Thanks for posing the question, Wayne, and on a personal note, great to hear that you are still involved in the hobby after all these years! Cheers...TIM

If you are referring to the 1966 GT-350, they appear to be add-ons only. TB

Yes, absolutely. Further to your question, Cragars were very expensive back in the day, so they spawned a number of look-alikes in the early to mid 1970s', including Rocket wheels and a pseudo Cragar like all-steel replica from Appliance. And yes, I ran both those on my cars back then to get the Cragar looko without the Cragar expense. The Rockets were mega cool but the chrome was not long lasting. So my take is that Cragars would be appropriate for most models depicting mid 1960s through mid 1970s. Others, weigh in if you see it differently. TB

Seen at the Detroit Area Auto Modelers Show yesterday (click on the link in the first post at this message on the forum). Not sure if this is "new news" or not but passing it along anyway.....TB

Hi Chris....the key shortfall of the Styline options in my view was that they added considerable length to the front and rear of the cars which resulted in an ungainly appearance, especially so at the front. At the time the '49 Mercury kit was being designed and tooled (1963) AMT was already phasing out the Styline parts (they were included in some 1963 Annual kits using the phrase "Advanced Customizing) but they were pretty much gone by the 1964 annuals along with the Trophy Series kits introduced in 1963 and later. The original Merc kit still had some pretty cool customizing parts anyway so for many it was not a big loss for the Styline parts to be gone. Still, I agree they were a cool alternative or the AMT kits. Of course, this is all just speculation on my part so please take it as such. Best...TIM

Hi Ron....thanks for your comments. Gonna have to go back to the reference file on the AA/G classification which is what I thought was correct for non-blown large sized engines in Pony Car based Gassers back then. I thought AA/GS would be the classification for the same cars with blowers but i also recall them changing the classifications regarding blown gassers over time. However, to your point my recollection is that the livery for that model came from the second version (1969 body) MPC Ohio George kit which was replicating a Ford 429 Semi Hemi blown car as we all know. So, for 1969 at the very least I would say you that you are 100% correct and thus the car should be A/G not AA/G. Not sure if that changed or not for the 1970/later period portrayed by the model. As for the front tires, at the time I built the car (dribs and drabs from 1970 through 1987), we didn't have today's wide choice of small diameter thin section front tires (and my kit collection was much less extensive back then), so I used (from memory here) the styrene front tires from the AMT Piranha kit which did not have any tread engraving due to the mold design. Always good to have your eagle eyes comments; it is not OCD on your part at all! Best...TIM