Chuck Kourouklis

^^THAT right there.^^ I mean, it's not as if "1953" was mentioned anywhere in this thread... repeatedly... but I'ma stop right there, 'cause it took three passes thru the '71 Mustang thread before my penny even dropped on the honest-to-Henry new Revell tool they was talkin' 'bout. ?

*oof* ?

Yup. Not that the others are ugly mind, but the Starliner doesn't scream "FIFTIES" like they do. Its purity and absence of gimmicks give it an agelessness unmatched by nearly any other of the era, and the Exner cars only began to approach its sleekness closer to the end of the decade. But for the Corvette - and only thru '57 at that - GM wouldn't even be in the hunt till Mitchell took over.

X2, emphatically. Uncommonly low-slung and beautiful, especially for America circa 1953.

You're telling me - I got all the way here before I doubled back and caught the "nuance" that this is a new REVELL kit we're talking about (and actually Revell instead of the usual crank-step manufacturer mixup). LIDAR, too? EXCELLENT. Serve it up... ?️

uh... Though it's true I'd prefer the '67 (and a Terlingua/Titus variation would probably justify a '67 more than a '68), there was a bit of a joke in there somewhere. ?

NAAH. '67 is exactly what it should be. . . . (three guesses why I'd say so and don't look too close)

Kool! May have taken forever, but really good choices and work on those two, far as I'm concerned.

(course, I have no problem naming that kit till the beef is home, m'self - it was more a... uuuhh... nod to those who were sick of having their biases and illogic laid bare by that particular example.) ?

Least I can do is appreciate this belatedly. ?

Sweeeeeeet. See the E46 isn't far from breaking cover...

^^^^

And so, in the latest attempt to justify this arcane tendency to take personal offense at criticizing kits that go a little wayward in their stated objective as scale models, we now circle the moebius loop back to a point I made on another forum some ten years ago: kit manufacturers drove themselves just about bankrupt by doing what we asked them to. Not sure what-all that has to do with tooling amortized decades ago, which I thought was the topic here, but it's a point, anyway. I mean, I don't recall just exactly where '41 Chevy pickups or 1/6 scale visible engines ever listed that highly on the most-wanted polls, but by and large, we didn't do 'em any favors demanding subjects and then giving them little more than a flash of initial sales. So yes, quality products aren't quite as guaranteed to fatten the bottom line as inferior products are to diminish it. Far as that hugely impressive PBY goes, it's one of a litany that deserved to do better. But as arduous as the whole development process may be, there's some reasonable expectation and reliable delivery of profit overall, or it wouldn't be happening. There may be a lotta love going into the product - in fact, it's possible to appreciate the sweat that went into a kit that was ultimately inaccurate - but this ain't a charity, or some goodness-of-their-hearts enterprise for which we all should be prostrate with gratitude. Subject selection complicates the picture a bit, but generally, as a consumer, you have a right to expect something living up to reasonable expectations, and it's not quite the affront to humanity some would have you believe to express disappointment with a product that doesn't meet some obvious, objective standards. And as much as some fellows on the forum have projected onto me their own need always to be right, I have to concede, well into another decade of seeing this sad little pattern repeat, that maybe I'm the one who needs come clarity here. It's all the sort of conduct that would make the vaguest kind of sense if this forum's stated objective were strictly to celebrate kits and not offer any sort of criticism about them. This is a privately owned forum and the owner can do whatever he wants. There'd be nothing wrong with sanitizing the content that way, so maybe I missed a memo someplace. But I participate here with what I see to be a conventional understanding of a modeling forum (and again, I'm open to correction even on that). Straw men premises, such as this fantastical cabal for whom "nothing is ever good enough" - that's what goes off topic. For one of a panoply of examples, take a number of us for whom a certain Kit That Must Not Be Named was a bitter disappointment, who also happen to be delighted with a new kit of that same marque even though it's curbside, simply because the new kit is accurate while the one from 7 years ago was not. The whole fable of the unconditional whiner is demonstrably a fairly tale, but it's what you need if you're going to make any sense out of a certain viewpoint. "More important things to think about", well DUH. Everyone has more important things to think about than kit inaccuracies, this year most particularly. But last I checked, this wasn't Twitter or Facebook, this was a forum about model cars. Not only is "having more important things to think about" blatantly off-topic according to my understanding of a conventional modeling forum, taking a break from those "more important things" may be why we come here or even build models in the first place. Mandating that we're talking about "toys" routinely drives the discussion off topic - even though I don't necessarily disagree with that. I mean there are toys... and then there are TOYS... and then there are TOYS: But even accepting the notion of "toys", who is any one of us to dictate the elasticity of that concept to the rest? If certain forum members take their "toys" a little more seriously than others, just what is it to you? Mandating one rigid notion of the appropriate seriousness is what drives these discussions off topic. What might have stayed on-topic would be a suggestion to temper your expectations a bit because in the case of Atlantis, we're talking about the purchase of tooling half a century old - but no, instead we got somebody telling everyone else how they should feel, once again. That's always driven the discussion off topic, as it has in this case and it will every time it happens again. Unless I missed the memo.

GO. JUSTIN. And let's not pretend the whole driving-manufacturers-out-of-business-with-criticism angle hasn't been run ragged over the past decade-plus. That's a lame, wildly hackneyed rationalization plank surpassed in wobbliness only by the mandate that a scale model can't be seen as anything other than some Mattel-grade toy.

Yikes. Makes me glad I landed my little set years ago...

1/16 caught my eye, too. I'da guessed the 3rd-gen F-cars are something Revell AG might hang onto - they just used the Gatorback tires from the '87 IROC/GTA update for their Porsche 928 - but at this point, who knows? 1/16 and likely GM... hmmm...

Sorry. That's just a whole sled team of badly-abused pooches right there.

My approach for the backups would be small foil strips gone over with white paint just thicker than a wash. I pored this thing over against the '68, looking at stuff like identically-shaped windshield wipers and window recesses, and the ejector pin strikes inside - and it does indeed appear the core body mold is common to the two. As differentiated as the body shell is, that seems to be accomplished by different side cavities with extremely close tolerances.

Yeah! Good enough I'll have one, anyway.

WOW - that's more differentiated than I expected. The way they separated the rear taillight nacelle/moldings might have led you to expect distinct side cavities for the '69 applied to the same core mold, but shoot - differences in the front and rear bumper areas, even the rear wheel arch seems to follow a slightly different contour (may be the variation in perspective between the two bodies, though).

Oh I just saw that and brayed like a jackass, if it makes you feel any better...

X3.

Yup, can verify the Tamiya kit has an engine. Seemed like AMT did some copying from it, too. Think their kit has the same twin-turbo setup, whereas a more accurate modded Supra would have a bigger single turbo. Still, considering the dreck we got after AMT's 2000 bonanza of new tooling, this kit was actually something of a low-bar improvement. Certainly stronger than the Eclipse and Jada-cartoons Evo and 350Z, even if that ain't saying much. AMT had a later version of this kit with better-looking headlight covers than the weird original ones the boxcover would indicate for this re-release. Wonder how that all works.

YEAH, I'm good widdit! Tamiya's is fine 'n all, but I'd LOVE one with a platform interior and front wheels I can point right or left. Diggin' me some 'Gawa lately.

You may have hit on the only way to make a more conventional build of this kit, Matt. Because it follows that uniquely Heller practice of integrating the DLO side windows with the inside door panels in one clear part that you glue from inside the body shell, you wouldn't have to spread the rocker panels to get the body over the interior. As you describe it, the body should just drop right on once you've done the surgery. Only things I can imagine complicating the process are the rear splash aprons for the front wheels, molded to the forward sections of what you want to cut loose. Still, I think that'd beat trying to paint a filled body fuselage-style, around a complete interior and drive train as the aircraft guys always have to do.