Chuck Kourouklis

LOVE this kit and hats off to Sam Freeman btw - GREAT conversion. My A-pillars were flattened too.

"Why is youth wasted on the young?" I'd respond, "Why is wisdom wasted on the old", but... well, y'know.

HEAR HEAR! Not to discount your observations about vintage subjects - I too REALLY want an early '60s F-series - but you just brought up two of the most utterly tone-deaf omissions in the current market right now. I mean, bully for the Round 2 Gen-6 Camaro 'n all, certainly beats none; but it also demonstrates how criminally overdue we are for good 550s. Look at all the attention lavished on the 197.2. Guess Revell's got Mustang fatigue now, but the timing couldn't be worse. For that 350R to go uncovered...

WHUUUUUUUUUUUT?? AWESOME! Need me some o' that action for the '83 Olds too! Off and googling...

Kool! Only thing worries me are those bias ply-lookin' tires on the box. All this kit needs are the radials it's always had, hope those are the "Polysteel" ones mentioned on the lid. Would be even better if those were wiped on the sidewalls and tampo-printed "Eagle GT"...

Okay. That was funny.

Now now. We Coyote 5.0-bangaz can be a little more magnanimous than that.

Yeah, the MPCs had a good overall shape and with their Firebird counterparts were updated thru '92 by MPC and then AMT as the model years mandated. But they looked a little unfinished around their window moldings and they were a bit impressionistic in undercarriage detail. The AMT '83 had a somewhat dodgy rear hatch fit, but it was otherwise superior all 'round. Those headlight nacelles in the front fascia, scooped out deeper at the sides to curl back to the center to meet the hood at their tops? AMT nailed 'em, where the MPC and Revell 1/25 kits shot those lines straight down from the hood edges for a blocky and oversimplified look around the headlights.

Diggin' it. That there's quite possibly the best of the 1/25 Gen-3 F-cars. I'll have another just for the box and decals.

And the guy's dead wrong, because for the Foose truck, this kit is pretty dead-on - at least in terms of gross proportions. The scanning really shows good dividends here.

Thanks very much, Tim! Yeah, that's what I was also saying about the front wheel arches, Bill - sorry not to make that clearer. That roof lowering is really tricky, though. The lower body seemed leaner to me, but the nearly-stock side windows are still throwing me off. I can't make out the A-pillar chop, even though it seems pretty clear you can't tilt the roof forward without doing that. But coming back around to my original point: for matching the specific Foose FD100, Revell has done as well with this as they have done anything else, whether they owe that to the scanning or not. It really seems dialed in.

Man, that's cool. Work so quiet and sneaky you gotta look and look and look to start making it all out. You got a complete list of the mods some place, Del?

Huh. Well, here's the story from Chip Foose Design, and it seems to cover us both, Bob. There's a cowl and a cab sectioning at window level, so the roof is indeed dropped - but it's hard to judge that from the side window DLO, because it's nearly the stock greenhouse moved down into the cab some: "...In 2005, as part of the show Overhaulin', which featured Chip as co-host and lead designer, the truck was "stolen" from the Foose Design lot. Unbeknownst to Chip, his dad Sam led a team of builders and designers in reforming the '56 into the truck it is today. They were able to use Chip's drawings as their design template. Nearly every panel was reshaped, reformed or cut. The cowl was sectioned, the hood was pie-cut, the front wheels were moved forward, the rear fenders were widened and raised up, the cab was section cut 3 inches at the rear window and the front fender wheel opening was moved up. A Roush NASCAR racing motor, serial number 1, was installed and one-off wheels were cut." The hood's pie cut and the wheel well adjustments were pretty clear to me, but the greenhouse mods were definitely subtler. And yes, the Moebius F-series roof is kinda gross. The rounded C-pillars don't help matters much, and it's all pretty galling 'cause the resin patterns didn't seem to have any of those specific problems. That all has the unfortunate whiff of a more accurate earlier prototype "not looking right" and getting teased and distorted into what we have now. Just crossing fingers for the '65 - that's the one I care about.

Are you talking about the front wheel arches, Bill? Those are definitely moved forward relative to stock, but correct for the Foose truck. The closest thing I've seen to a justification for choosing this subject over the more novel ones Revell proposed is that it's a popular modification and some modelers will appreciate a kit with that work done already. And the top sure gives the impression of being lowered, doesn't it? But looking at a bone-stock truck, I'm not so sure...

The greenhouse doesn't look too much changed from stock, but I have no idea what mods were done or not done to that area on the FD100. If it is stock or nearly so on the Foose truck, I might be more inclined to go with the new kit's dimensions over the old one's. Revell may have sneaked some LIDAR scanning in on the C7 'Vette - if not, the kit is close enough to convince you otherwise - but this is the first Revell model in our hands for which we've actually seen development photos of the 1:1 getting a proper scan. And if Revell did indeed collect that data and they didn't tease any of the measurements in the translation, this kit should be pretty accurate mathematically. I haven't pored over it hard yet, but there don't appear to be many obvious goofs so far in comparison with the specific subject.

And the answer for anybody following who's curious: the original releases of the '62 Catalina did not have vent windows. I actually mentioned that in reviewing the kit when it was new, and the unofficial word we got back from Dyersville was "oops"... Round 2 fixed this problem in the reissue with the Arnie Beswick car on the cover. The windshield was modified to spread backward and fill out the vents in one piece.

Y'know, Bill, I really think the wind is just blowing Fujimi right now (the Testors is the Italeri btw). That's probably as you might expect, since Fujimi's is a couple decades newer than the next most recent release. I'd have to defer to someone who's been all the way through the Fujimi kit, but I've taken one of mine through a comprehensive 30-piece mock-up and indications are the fit is very precise. Think it stands to reason its current engineering standards won't give you a huge fight on the way to the finish - though the Italeri kit didn't look so bad for fit either. Not that Fujimi's doesn't have its little issues. The generator/fan belt is a web rather than an open piece, and you'll likewise have to cut out the webbed-over interior panels for the doors for a better appearance inside. The entire drivetrain is arguably a bit blocky and oversimplified. But for the low-fuss shelf model you want, the newest kit really looks like the best candidate. Perhaps not enough to throw away an Italeri if you already have one, but if you're starting from zero, I'd say Fujimi's is the one to go for. footnote: Aurora's is 1/25 but falls drastically short of your overall body shape objectives. Protar's is far prettier if it's not that much more correct, and it's just enough shy of dimensions for the other 1/24 kits it could almost pass for a 1/25 - but it's probably got some shenanigans in store for you to get it together. Gunze's all-plastic version of its High-Tech kit might also approach your objectives if you're good with a curbside, but it's long out of production and pulling some collector prices by now.

Point taken, but irony is more easily identified if it has a discernible basis. Great synopsis, though!

Whut Jon said! Thought we might get a pre-paint but nope! All up to you.

I'm looooong overdue to chime in on how GREAT this work is, Bill! BIG improvement. It's just a pity that circumstances should make you feel constrained to pepper this fine thread with all those disclaimers. As I've mentioned before, there's an oft-repeated saying about what to do with 'em if they can't take a joke. A grown-up audience requires no qualifying language for work like yours.

Yup! Saw a couple perched on top of a Monogram '55 F100 pickup, resisted the urge to shake my head once more at the subject selection, and grabbed the one put aside for me. And y'know, if we're not gonna demand anything more than retread subjects when offered a choice on new tooling, the resulting kits could certainly be done MUCH worse than this. I'm liking mine a LOT so far. Just 78 parts, but maximum leverage on those for detail. They get the entire bed box/fenders/tailgate molded in ONE PIECE - with barely detectable seams! Maybe it's just my ignorance about the process, but I'm all, like, WWWWW-O-O-O-OWWW imagining the molds sliding in and up and out and down to produce that part.

Nobody's said the first thing about throwing away a pre-Fujimi GTO (+Daytona??) stash. There's a lot more friction than slope between anything anybody has claimed in this thread and such an extreme. And maybe the point about hand-built car-to-car variations is so obvious that some of us had actually accounted for that before we made our observations? The rear wheel arches on the Gunze kit just don't match any 1:1 GTO - but even with its broad shoulders and somewhat gangsterish overall take, there's still a lot to like about Gunze's kit. It's certainly more accurate in proportions than the Protar - sorry, but Violati/3851's deviations don't account for all the ways that particular model goes afield - and waaay ahead of Aurora's earliest-breaking kit, which was not only misproportioned, but ugly. At least Protar's is still somewhat appealing, if not correct. For the best mean bi-scale representation among the Series 1 GTOs, Italeri's ever-so-slightly slab-sided body was far and away the best until Fujimi's came along and moved the game on. I personally think Fujimi's is better even than Model Factory Hiro's recent 1/12 variation (and that's one of my favorite kits ever). If somebody showing off a stash of older GTO kits started this thread and a litany of Fujimi GTO posts rained down too late to do him any good, I'd understand the reaction. But this discussion was started by someone who wanted to know before buying, and the responses have been entirely appropriate to that.

They didn't look so disastrous on Revell AG's website, but that's some serious what-da-fudgecake goin' on right there. And Revell AG's gonna splurge on tire trademarking while Revell Illinois won't, eh?

Hey, Alan - Torque boxes seem to be on a tree with stock parts - (check bottom tree left of tires, top right just beside the stabilizer bar). Just to refresh, the unplated tree with F & F parts:

I know that when I don't have a Charger available for rent, I get after a Fusion next (Mustang convertible trumps all else if it's on the menu, though). Think I could just about LIVE with a Fusion ST. Throw my applause in with everyone else's on these new full-detail kits, and the Toyotas will indeed be something new if they go that far. I didn't realize how much I missed these till I saw the new trees.