papajohn97

Fabulous outcome on this one and that last-minute quarter windows/ column sedan conversion looks pretty much perfect to me. Sure wish I had this build in my door slammer collection to add an early Mopar SS'er.🤞 that we someday see an injection molded kit of these "ugly duckling" '62 Darts/ Fury's (I read the Jo-Han molds are no longer so it would require new tooling by our friends at Moebius/ AMT R2/ Revell). Thank you Bill for posting the WIP as well as this UG result. Cool build!

Nice one Mike and I think you've officially set the record on this forum for the greatest number of AWB '65 Mopars!!!! Thanks for this tip on the AMT '40 Ford source for the Keystone mags, I used wheels from the Revell Thunderbolt kit for my S&M AWB '65 Ply build and they required a lot of tedious tire hole trimming to fit. That last shot of the three with hoods off is awesome. Someday you need to post a pano photo of all your SS & A/FX builds lined up! Bravo!

Beautiful job for a first build (or even 4th or 5th!). Love the two-tone red & black and the washes on the grill & engine look great. Keep building & posting!

Thank you Dennis for all the effort you're putting into posting this WIP. So far it's a masterclass in 1/25 car model detailing. And your close-up photos are incredible (DSLR or cell phone camera?).

I LOVE this kit. I recall my older big brother building a custom version back in '61 with the initial release and it left a big impression on me. I built the chopped-top custom version of the 2014 re-release six years ago and gave it to my younger big brother a few years later.....I miss it! I've been wanting to build another one but the re-release became hard to locate & $$$. So glad R2 is re-popping this kit, one of the best looking '30's lead-sled kits out there IMO. May have get two so I can do a gasser as well?

Me too! Along with a four door wagon too please R2! I would also love to build Beswick's A/FX 421 SD sedan along with an A/FX "Mrs. B's Grocery Getter" wagon! News of this '63 convertible is promising.

Absolutely loving what you're doing here Bill with this early SSer. The slightly lowered front end stance shown above looks very much like "tribute" entries I've seen popping wheel stand launches on the 1/8 mile drag strip at the last few Irwindale Nitro Revival meets (😢....RIP). Blairs was a legendary speed shop/ sponser of drag cars in the '60's, hoping someday to build a Steve Bovan AWB Nova match racer with a set of Fremont decals I've been hoarding. Seeing these '62 Darts & Furys as a car crazy nine yr old when they were new, I remember thinking they were really weird looking. I learned later that they were the last Chrysler designs penned by the talented & tasteful Virgil Exner but were radically reduced in size and re-configured from Exner's original designs by the bean counters (probably why he quit?). I think the combination of the awkward styling with the raw violence of an open exhaust 413 Max Wedge in an ill-handling chassis draws me to these cars as an early SS drag car modeling subject. Maybe someday soon I'll pull the trigger and spend the $150 of my retirement savings on an unbuilt Jo-Han kit and just accept running out of paint & glue $ sooner?!

You're welcome Andy! I agree!!! I have always found modelcarsmag.com and Britmodeller.com to be the two friendliest, most well-behaved, tolerant and civilized scale modeling sites to share builds, tips and encouragement. I re-joined FB a few years ago to communicate with fellow members of a local scale modeling club I joined. The FB page for my local club was fine and reflected the great bunch of guys in our club but I found the other "feed" that the FB algorithm directed at me to be total garbage. I couldn't believe the BLAH_BLAH_BLAH_BLAH that showed up in my unsolicited feed (and the FB utility for blocking inappropriate content is totally useless).

2025 has been the worst year sales-wise in the history of the ICE Mustang (ref. here). Don't be surprised if the curtain falls on our beloved last American pony-car within the next year or two....😢

I second the motion on Mike Elky's comments! Totally awesome build using a 60 yr old tooled kit (AMT I assume). What interior tub did you use to get that accurate hardtop interior (with the total width back seat) and the Bostrum front seats (scratch-built?). Are those "Galaxie" front & rear letters from a MCG photoetch set? Occasionally I see builds posted here that are so beautiful that I want to totally copy them; this is one of those builds. Bravo!

Very nice early 60's period custom, Larry Watson would approve! I also really like the interior with those custom fabric pattern decals. Nice job!

Thank you Mark! I believe these square "cut-outs" within the side-walls on each side of the engine bays were the openings that remained when the shock towers were cut and shifted forward the 10" for the front wheelbase change. I'm surprised the engineers at Amblewagen didn't patch these two openings with welded sheet metal, maybe they figured it provided a slight weight reduction at the front end and that there was little concern about maintaining body stiffness?

Thank you Edgar! I ordered these Holley 3116's from Fireballmodels.com ("Chief" Joseph Osborne), he offers a terrific line of reasonably priced resin upgrades for 1/25 model cars. I lost one of the door handles for my Mr. Norm build and was rescued by him with some beautiful replacement early Mopar handles. Highly recommended!

I didn't know this, thanks! I went with the steering column shifter that came with the kit for this and the other TorqueFlite builds. Landy must have pulled a dash-mounted push-button controller out of a '64, the last year they were offered?

Thanks for heads-up. I read Harrop used 90% nitro on his winning run at this "the Woodstock of super-stock drag racing", pretty daring back then. Also interesting how a few of the big-name racers back then had day jobs selling cars on dealer's lots (Harrop, Gas Ronda).

This one was the most challenging, the gutted supercharged NHRA rule-breaking match racer that Gary Dyer briefly held the 1/4 mile record for door slammers in Oct '65 at Lions. I had to scratch-build a straight axle for the front end, probably not accurate but good enough, grafted a resin AT to block and the blower, manifold and bug catcher/ injector are resin parts from Speed City. I also scratch-built the headers and fuel pump and had to do major surgery (after painting and decaling, I hate it when that happens) to get the aluminum nitro fuel tank to fit in front of engine bay. Paints used were ScaleFinishes HOC PBC36 TruBlue base lacquer over Tamiya Pearl Light Blue lacquer. Decals were from Fremont Racing Specialties. Really pleased with how this one came out, it's my favorite of the five. Thanks for looking! Cheers, John

Here's Landy's car, Slixx decal set and painted in Tamiya Silver Leaf lacquer with Tamiya semi-gloss and flat acrylic back. I've always assumed that Landy had a black vinyl roof on this car so I bonded two strips of thin styrene on the roof to indicate seams. Other upgrades are similar to the other builds. I forgot to mention that I had to graft resin TorqueFlite 727 AT's onto the blocks of this car, the Harrop car and the Mr. Norm's car. I'm surprised that Moebius didn't supply an AT version of the hemi with this kit which was more common than the four speed.

This one used the excellent Racing Racing Specialties decal set and the kit Hilborn FI. Aftermarket parts (Detail Master distributor/ wiring/ Gopher harness parts, scratch-built fuel lines same as the other builds. Love these "flying carpet" markings.

This the first of the new Moebius '65 Dodge AWB A/FX cars that I built using the box decals. I used two resin Holley Carbs in place of the kit Hilborn FI to depict an earlier version of this car. I thought I this build would be a "dry-run" of this new Dodge kit but I made mistakes on the other three I subsequently built so sometimes one kits enough! Moebius did a great job on these AWB Dodges but I think the AWB Plymouth is like 10% easier to assemble. I found the chassis to body fit at the rear was really tight and took some finesse and tweezer crow bars to get positioned correctly. I used Gopher four point racing harnesses on all five builds but only on the drivers seat, conventional seal belts on the passenger side. I replaced the thick fuzzy belt material that came with the Gopher belts with finer adhesive-backed fabric from Scale Motorsports. The stainless steel Gopher photoetch was challenging to remove to the frets.

It's been ages since I posted anything here in the way of drag car builds, hoping this report on my summer project, a "Moebius AWB Mopar Assembly Line", will make up for my lack of posted builds. I'll never catch up with Mike "Building the Covers" Elky (who will!?!) but this five kit build is new personal record for me. This assembly line consisted of the last AWB '65 Plymouth that was in my stash and four of the new AWB '65 Dodges. As always for me, decal availability drove my picks. Here's my latest AWB fleet: Here are some picks of the '65 AWB Plymouth A/FX Lee Smith car below, I'll post the others on separate postings. Decals were from Fremont Racing Specialties (thank you Joe Curtis!), I airbrushed ScaleFinishes Plymouth Dark Turquoise Metallic base lacquer over Tamiya Pure White lacquer, it's more green than turquoise but I like the color with these decals. Some Detail Master parts and wiring/ fuel lines and Gopher racing harnesses were added, otherwise OOB.

Excellent execution of a "what if" subject. I love the creativity of thinking they would have used their push car for the basis of this AWB drag sedan and recycled the yellow scoop. It made me think of all the recycling that "Ohio" George Montgomery did in the same years when he morphed his legendary '33 Willys cammer gasser into the '67 Mustang which I believe then morphed into his '69 Mustang "Mr Gasket" FC. Love this period when money was tight and ingenuity was prolific.

Cool build & magazine Mike! I agree with that this Bud Faubel "Hemi Honker" is one of the more striking cars of the '65 Mopar AWB A/FX's. I would love to build his "Hemi Honker" version with the twin turbochargers if there was an aftermarket/ resin mod kit, it would be a challenge beyond my skills to scratch build the engine bay details: Question: are "Chris Walsh decals" and the eBay vendor "The Glory Years Decals & Graphics" one and the same? The decals on your build above appear to be of pretty good quality (vector graphics, Alps printed with white as well as the colors?) and the decals listed by this eBay vendor include this car, are reasonably priced and offer a lot of mid-60's SS subjects which I wasn't aware were available. Have you bought decals from this eBay vendor and would you recommend them? As always, decals tend to be my determining factor of what door slammers I build.

Great job Vince on this big Revell Isetta. That two-tone blue&white is a perfect period correct choice and looks really good with the plaid. I love that Revell engineered the kit so that the steering column/ wheel articulates outward when the door opens, a really cool feature. I built this kit when it was first released (2016?) and remember it going together like a Tamiya, your build makes me want to do another one. I did a search and it looks like the original kit is no longer available. Revell Germany has just released a new "70th Anniversary" edition which includes a book but unfortunately it doesn't appear to be available within the US yet: I purchased the Revell Trabant Anniversary edition with a paperback history book included from HLJ (pre-tariff) and the book is excellent.

What a treasure this model must be for you, the decal patina, the cigarette smell, the dusty interior, a link to your father and a love for cool cars that you both shared. I have a few hand tools that my father etched his name onto using an electric engraving pen. They are old and worn, nothing special to anyone else but very special to me. You should display this one Mike with all your beautiful SS builds, they belong together. Thanks for sharing.

More big decals Mike and you did a great job on this one too! Those long ones along the middle of each side profile must have been a challenge. At this rate you're going to have a 1/25 reproduction of every one of the '65 AWB Mopars.... impressive! Once you've completed everyone on your list, please line 'em all up and post a group pic of them. I would love to browse through your SS magazine collection, it would make for some fun mid-60's drag racing reminiscing!