Chuck Kourouklis

Welp, here's how I'm breaking my slump... Glue-bombed some together as a kid, and this is my first-ever serious attempt at a warbird. New-tool Airfix is nice 'cause they tell you so on the box, it's reasonably up-to-the-minute in detail, and it's relatively inexpensive so you don't have to be depressed if it all goes pear-shaped. YouTube is lousy with buildups all over the place. This 1/48 Hurricane's been a right blast so far. Introduced me to Mission Models, a stellar line of acrylic paints; finally pushed me to use the little Tamiya weathering kit too, which made its advantages for car use obvious. Lotsa fun on the bench. It's these discussions that have gotten onerous lately. Thank God one really has nothing to do with the other.

You did. I heard ya, anyway.

Nice! Looking good so far, and it's a subject you don't see every day. Stateside, at least.

It does repeat. I'm taking this under serious advisement for the futility of it all in the future - was going that direction anyway.

No disagreement from me there. I resent that it happened.

Y'know, I went checking the AMT Nova wagon thread for aaawwwwllllll the inevitable controversy - y'know, from those hoardes who "ruin it for everybody", who whine unconditionally, who find something to complain about no matter what. Fancy that - there wasn't any(!) ? Could it be 'cause that particular kit actually, uh, looks like its subject? Nnnnaaaaaaaaaaah. Rivet counters musta just MISSED that one. ?

Well y'know, take a dig, maybe watch you don't have any easy marks yourself? I ain't TELLIN' ya now, I'm just sayin'. You didn't spell it "grammer", so there's that. ?

Yeah, you're right. Even as I remind myself of all that doesn't rise above the lizard brain around here, just like politics, somehow I just can't stop myself entirely from tilting against the windmill, which essentially renders me just as idiotic as anyone else. F T F Y on "one's", btw. SO. Numbers. This is what I did to make a sedan out of Revell's '50 Olds coupe, and those of you who've seen it are invited to draw your own conclusions how it compares against the resin and other conversions of same that you might have seen. You find pictures online as close to dead profile as you can. You pick two measurements to establish a proportion - in the case of the Nova, the front DLO, height by bottom edge length. Camera angle, focus length, lens distortion, bla bla bla. YES, which is why you don't establish the ratio with one picture, you take a mean over SEVERAL. And when .32, height to length, dominates with little variation across those several pictures, you can take that to be fairly reliable. On the model, that ratio is more like .28 to one. Mathematically, that puts the drip molding a little more than 10% too low. Which is about the way it looks. Is photo comparison sooooooo unreliable? There's my forecast. Guess we'll see when it's released. One thing I won't do is call this a lazy effort, though. The thing has great guts, so I'm in probably for two.

Guys, I'm sorry. This whole camera angle thing just doesn't wash. Not when The Kit That Must Not Be Named looks chopped in preview pics and then months later looks just as chopped in your hands, in bare or painted plastic. Not when fender arches are too flared, or drip moldings too low and flat, or headlight nacelles are too bug-eyed or a Chrysler roof is too crowned and a Nova roof is not near crowned enough and an E-Type follows a freakin' banana contour from front to rear - in the plastic just as much as in the jpeg. HOW MANY TIMES does the in-hand production kit have to present exactly the way it did in previews before the hard facts finally drop that penny home - as if nobody is capable of accounting for camera angle in their comparisons to start with? This Nova's drip moldings are low. I promise you that unless the greenhouse is retooled, that's exactly the way the shell will look in your hands months from now. That is an OBJECTIVE observation. It will be backed by hard math. Objective observations are not where a thread goes wrong. Where this thread went sideways is exactly where these things usually do, turning PERSONAL. And this time there was crossfire, one side gunning at the other from this ridiculous, unending offense-taking over the mere mention of inaccuracies, the other firing at a veteran contributor they perceived to be a shill. Both, demonstrably misguided.

Oh, Jim. I was really hoping to avoid the elephant in the room...

(man, I wish I could have placed MONEY on the first reaction I was gonna get... ?)

Yup, nice build, Tim, and a solid assessment I think. Many thanks! The "who the eff do you think you are" note falls more on both sides of this discussion than it usually has in others, and that note applies to ANYBODY here trying to dictate to others how they contribute content. This isn't your hobby bench. It's an online discussion forum. And if your knickers are going to get all in a wad over a frank discussion about plainly visible inaccuracies, YOU are the one with the problem. Trying to mandate to everyone else how futile the discussion is in a discussion medium is only going to get you the shove back you're begging for, and in the end, all you'll have to bitch about is getting treated the way you treat others. BUT. The self-appointed content-dictators have some actual traction in this thread, for a one-in-a-trillion change. Because just as the less-blind members here should be able to point out any given plastic emperor's actual state of dress, Tim also has the latitude to share content any way he sees fit. He is providing a COURTESY with his preview. Those of you who instantly equate a kit criticism with an attack on Tim, great with me if you just go ahead and keep stepping on that rake. It's amusing any more (which is why I've really taken to the laughing "like" these days ?). But the game changes when you start calling Tim names or impugning his integrity. That scat-slinging puerility has never been a good look on the other side, and it won't work for you either. Those of you essentially called Tim a shill, there's a nice steaming tureen of crow for you in his notes on the Nova.

I dunno - they seem sized about right, and I have a lingering impression of BFGs being o e m for the handling package on that generation of Supra. You sure find a few used ones wearing 'em... Now are the tires depicted all that well by MPC? That's another matter entirely. But I distinctly recall the kit itself being a winner.

Goody gumdrops. Got two of the originals and I'll just as greedily snatch a couple of these, now that we know it's got the Deuce shell and the Buick mill it should have started with. 'Cause it's not as if, y'know, you could swap parts between the original roadster and coupe or anything. And so the internal dialogue goes...

Not for nothin' Tim - and this may explode a few skulls around here - but the model could be fifty ways from jacked and many of us would still be interested in following along. Juuuuuuuuust sayin'...

The only comment actually worth repeating. Btw, LOVING the "like" feature... ?

Niiiice! Also pleased about Mister Two - looks like it'll scuttle the ol' Fujimi but good. But that 117, how g o r g e o u s - looks like the spiritual predecessor of the Piazza/Impulse. Speaking of - ain't tellin' ya, now, Hasegawa, I'm just sayin'...

Alright - Gift horses 'n all, but there's the matter of one more Z a little conspicuous by its absence as the 1:1 breaks cover. Spring, maybe? Seems inevitable...

Thanks, Les - I was actually talking about the old Tamiya Mk1 Facelift car, silver on the box. Speculating with keyser whether that one ever made it to the USDM those 40 years ago. I tend to lean on Japanese vendors for stuff like the new one.

Y'know, every single one I'm looking up seems to originate in Japan - maybe this one didn't make it stateside. C-note+ on auction sites right now...

Faust rawks.

Wow, so they DID have an early car, okay. I've only ever found this one, so I didn't have the complete picture:

Yup. Seeing where the molds part at the rear of the body, I'm guessing/hoping they'd have another rear insert to smooth the license plate relief for the facelift cars. Happy about the early one. REALLY want one of the later ones. (think Tamiya's was a smooth-bumper; kinda "meh" about rotary wheels, motorization, and buck-plus auction prices...)

Kinda nuts about those first-gen Toronados, so I got an AMT '68 and the JoHan '66 it sprang from, too. Not to mention the '67 Eldorado that shared basic running gear. Can go more in-depth later if you like, but I can tell you right off that the under-hood breakdown is the most distinct variation between JoHan/AMT and MPC: the MPC kit encompasses firewall, fender aprons, and core support into one integrated piece you glue in from under the body shell. All those components are separate and more detailed for JoHan/AMT. **EDIT - or, exactly what Mark B said above. One of these days I'll catch it all BEFORE I post. Got a wee bit of asymmetry in the MPC body shell, but I ain't fer sure that was production or something I induced by boiling out a warp. JoHan/AMTs are just crisper and more detailed overall, but the MPC still isn't bad for its day. MPC has asymmetrical custom fascia options front and rear, while the JoHan '66 custom bits are more conventional. Fwiw, I think the chassis/drivetrain elements are nearly identical in any JoHan Eldorado, if you need to "fill out" one of their Toronados. My impressions are the MPC and JoHan/AMT kit dimensions are very close if not identical, and since the engine bay elements and chassis plates are separate in both, it shouldn't be a huge p i t a to mix and match between the two.

Nice! Got an original MPC '67 Toro, it'll be interesting to compare...