Chuck Kourouklis

Oh, there's no way they're going to line up perfectly. You can tell the model was approached from a different distance relative to scale than the blue 1:1, because the opposite-side daylight opening is smaller relative to the near one, where there's very little difference in size between the same two areas in the 1:1 shot. But both shots have the opposite side DLOs pretty neatly centered in the near one, indicating that both the model and 1:1 were shot at angles very close to one another. Exactly? No. Close enough to start circling around potential problem areas? I think so. There's nothing in perspective distortion to account for horizontal elements shifting relative to one another at the same vertical points in the lens field when the pics are this close. But as you say, we'll only only know when these hit the shelves, and I mean to experience at least two first-hand, regardless. For all we know, Dave M and crew may have seen all this and gotten on top of it already.

WINNER. Chicken dinner to Mr Hayes, please.

That's a question that would have a shot at making sense if people truly treated accurate models as a matter necessary for life. Or kit inaccuracies as life-threatening. Again, am I missing something?

Yup, I caught that the wheelbase is not perfectly centered in the wheel arches and wondered about the wheel centers as touchstones. But if you place them more optimally, you slide the front bumper inside its "mark" and the rear bumper outside its, reinforcing the impression of a too-long deck. So something's gonna be off - if the greenhouse winds up placed properly within the wheelbase, then the rest of the body work will be that smidge too far back(!) And the proportional relationship between the door and the area behind the front wheel arch will remain the same; if the front door gap lines up, the rear one will be off alignment. And I don't yet see how these things can be explained away by lens artifacts. I see how extremities can get distended or compressed by lens curvature, but as I understand it, that distortion will be uniform, so a C-pillar touchdown should be pulled back by the same amount the rear quarter is getting stretched, and the horizontal relationship between the two shouldn't shift. Now nowhere do I suggest a retooling based on these pics alone. I do think they might be helpful in pointing out areas to examine the master, however. And I'm sorry, but time and time over time besides time again, the funk in preview photos has landed right in my hands with production kits. Except in the case of The Kit That Must Not Be Named. Which actually got worse by comparison.

Uh, 'cause foiling hood trim is a far more bone-headed proposition than hacking plastic to scootch a roof back? Eh, did something like that with the Revell '50 Olds, and I'm gettin' me some Moebius '61 Ponchos irrespective - if the '61 comes out the way it's looking, I'll pull out the knives and show everybody again. That's a very good question prompting another one: when's the last time anybody insisted you agree Kit X is a screwed-up mess? Did I miss something there? Cause sure, that'd be effed up. For my part, I'd just be happy if I could evaluate a kit like a grown-up without all the attendant hysterics from people who can't handle that. And I don't mean simple disagreements - got a blog full of all the puerile nonsense I'm talking about. I, like MOST, very rarely call a kit out-and-out garbage and NEVER insist everybody else toe some arbitrary line.

Oh, well now, I think some of the commentary here is more knowledgeable than heat-of-the-moment typos might allow. But I do wanna make sure I'm reading the deafening silence following my question correctly: In Brett's pic, the blue lines largely vindicate the Moebius model along the lines of wheelbase and overall length: but Harry's red lines - in the very same comparison - show the greenhouse is off on the very same horizontal orientation. So, anybody offering commentary on the quality of the photos should have the wherewithal to explain exactly how the very same lens artifact variation between the two shots can simultaneously vindicate and contradict an accurate model as stacked above. In light of what appears to be convincing graphic evidence, it's incumbent on you to do so. Is somebody gonna break this down? Or will this comparison stand as a refutation to the whole photo comparison objection?

WOW. It's like a checklist, this thread. Just five days shy of a clean 18 months since I've lined all this up and shot it down in one place, ya got plainly visible inaccuracies written off at the "micrometer" level (#6, High-friction Slippery Slopes), ya got criticism of major flaws herded together with people complaining about option levels (#2, False Equivalencies), ya got "crybabies" and "whining" as infantile variations on the whole name-calling exercise (#10, "Rivet-counters"), ya got supposed inevitable complaints about a 100% flawless kit recalling the classic "perfect kit" misdirection (#1), and ya even got a sprinkling of "are you a MODELER or not" (#3, Credential-challenging). Which I guess leads to the conundrum of that whole "Failed Tactics" exercise: if somebody had the capacity to understand the deficiencies in these approaches after you drew him a picture, he'd probably have the sense not to use them in the first place. Let's just set aside for a minute how… typical the whole "smell your farts" angle is. Look at the instantaneous, contemptuous ease with which keyser flipped that whole analogy around to something FAR more truthful. This is the difference between an actual point, and those sad little shams upon which the most basic logic visits a rough, prison-cell kind of justice.

Bingo, Peter. Rick, I covered your angle fifty ways from Sunday almost a year and a half ago - prob'ly best you don't hit the link in my signature. Um, I think it's only fair to point out that maybe Brett wasn't doing his comparison entirely to vindicate the model. Now Art, I don't mean to minimize your input - and evidently Tom Montgomery, the man who partnered with John Mueller to give us that nice run of new AMT tooling 'round the turn of the century, needs an introduction around here. Applause here, Tom! And if you'd like to weigh in on this one, all the better. But it's incumbent on anyone who says Harry needs to get his facts straight to be a little more specific than that, 'cause frankly, the focal length/camera position arguments have been played before, and I still got a '56 300 in my hands with headlights that look like they're on eye stalks. We're no longer talking just one photo comparison, gents. We're talking a series now, and a composite analysis begins to emerge. And Brett's comparison is the one that most minimizes those camera position and focal length issues. So I'm gonna toss every other concern aside and boil it down to one, specific question: in Brett's shot, how can it be the focal length, lens position, or any other aspect of photography so throwing off the greenhouse position relative to the profile of the 1:1? Guess I can't avoid the aspect of a challenge here, but I'd be very much interested in a detailed answer.

No, Harry, you're not.

No disagreement from me there. But we're far further along on the development curve this time...

Thanks, Tim & Bill, and I agree this time about seeing it in person.

Were the Bonnevilles longer in the rear quarters, Bill?

Thanks, Gerry!

Well, to get the kool design trick in, they had to compromise the spacing of the fins, which isn't even, as it is on the 1:1: But that's alright - I'm all good, long as they please, please, purty PLEASE get that body closer than the Ford pickups, anyway...

True - no way 'round the model year timing issue, no 2 ways about it. Far as the simplicity, though, it delivers almost exactly on the formula promised by Monogram's previous late-model 1/8 and 1/12 scale kits, and those did alright in their day. The finished piece looks impressive, imposing, and largely correct; and not only didn't it tax a modeler's skills too bad, it also didn't hit his wallet that hard. Tamiya knows it has the market to go all the way to a 600-piece opus if it wants, but for Revell to venture even into 160 parts or so for posable steering and a few more opening panels? Doubt it would have done them any better, and there was nothing in their history with large scale kits to indicate that was necessary.

HUH? I don't recall a double post from yesterday. Wooops... * E D I T *

Monogram Big Deuce for me all the way, E-Type tucked very tightly behind. They set a standard half a century ago for a combination of accuracy, buildability, and detail that's not often matched since. Jury's not entirely in yet, but there's another eighth-scaler I'm finding one of the most impressive of this day and age - I'll wrap that one soon enough. And man, there's something about that Revell Thunderbolt that just gets me - crispness, subject matter, kool factor. Just love it. Subject matter is probably a plus for me, driving something closely resembling it, but I thought Revell's 1/12 GT500 didn't get half the enthusiastic reception it deserved. Haven't seen a 1/12 Tamiya to go wrong yet, Enzos in both scales are a killer one-two punch. Fujimi's downright polar in execution from one kit to the next, but their recent 250GTO is another that drills me dead center, and the 288 and Daytona are my gotta-have-it EM series cars. Loove me some Hasegawa 250TR. Most consistently impressive across the board right now is Aoshima, far as I'm concerned. To answer Mark Jones's question, Jo-Han Turbine car. Looked so killer in the box, sooo killed me trying to build it. Gotta revisit that one now that I got more grown-up skills.

Mmmhmm. Guess I better look at making this another blog post... http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=92517&p=1271431

I'm just diggin' on this whole notion of "blind criticism". That's a new one. Prob'ly 'cause the inherent screaming oxymoron is just a wee too ear-splitting for most anyone else to drop it. And another company may scoop you on CAD data from a given manufacturer's current models. And you may have a payroll to meet. And you may have to cut tooling in a blizzard uphill, both ways. And you might throw a tantrum 'cause a published review wasn't the free advertising you thought it should be. And despite your attitude of an entitled executive who needs a b-smacking back into adulthood, at least in that moment, I might even yet contrive a fair amount of sympathy for you and the hurdles you face. In the end, what's off in your product is NO LESS SO for all of that. Can't handle the blowback, you're in the wrong effin' bidness.

Ri-ight. Olds McGriff decals. Guilty as charged. This whole concept of expecting a group of notoriously skinflint hobbyists to double down gladly on resin for the sedan those markings demand - I've characterized it all as "pea-brained" (although as anybody with half a mind might recall, I wasn't the first to wield the phrase "pea-brain" on this subject, now, was I?). And of course, I only ever brought those decals up out of a total inability to build a coherent model. I only ever puuuled and bleated about it all out of comprehensive modeling incompetence. In fact (one more time), I undertook that whole conversion to serve notice that yes, Virginia, Santa MAY EXIST as long as he lives in a corner of your little heart - but FAIRY TALES are NO BASIS for a rational argument. And there's been a pretty constant stream of dope-slapping beat-down evidence against this TRIPE some of y'all yet cling to so desperately, about people complaining 'cause they can't build their way out of a paper bag, 'cause "their hobby is complaining on message boards" God forbid they ever finish a kit. But the fact that you might not be attentive enough to catch WIPs on models not "perfect enough to build" don't mean they ain't happenin', Cuz. I don't know what's worse - that we've got hobbyists who won't let that horse dung go, or that we apparently have company executives spreading it, too. And calling manufacturers "idiots" is a pretty recent development, people. It's useless to pretend that this line of civility in the sand wasn't crossed looong ago and far more decisively by people who can't handle kit criticism, and it's not hard to make out who's at the more constant moral disadvantage in these exchanges: Thank you, Mr P. And thank you, Mr D. "What have YOU built", indeed - as if I would have been ANY less qualified to point out compressed windshields and cockeyed rear fender arches and incorrect body styles even if I HADN'T methodically corrected each one. Which was really the point of that whole exercise.

1st: FUNNY. 2nd: sounds like a great idea to me...

Yup, it's true, and it's the end run: calling a corporation "idiots", useless as it is, doesn't break any forum rules - so that's how you get your jab in without an explicit person-to-person attack. And i'm guessing by a similar rationale, calling groups of people "whiners", "rivet-counters", "crybabies", "no-lifers", "kit assemblers", and etc ad nauseam doesn't really break any forum rules either. Do I really need to explain where I'm going with that one? Which came first, and which still occurs with far greater regularity than the other? Look what's happening in this very discussion - even as the thread bends decisively in the direction of how inappropriate it is to call names, we get "Tamiya worshippers" slid right under our noses. Seems the doubleness of this standard could walk up and bend people hard over a barrel, and they STILL wouldn't acknowledge it. Ain't sayin' nobody would've ever leveled "idiots" at a manufacturer otherwise - but that kind of attitude sure facilitates it.

Thanks, keyz! But just in case it isn't clear, the one I posted was the older full-detail Special Ed '10 SS kit, with a funky ride height out of the box and a wheelbase too short for the body. There are ways to fix that, but within my parameters it wasn't appropriate to do so. Brett wound up demonstrating that the new kit appears to sit a lot better, even before you make any adjustments for height.

with Joe, +4 here. Got your Revell '68/'69 for the full-outs, the old MPC with corrected roof buttresses for the less ambitious projects, and now this snapper covers the wham-bam. I'll have one or a couple, funky wheels or no. Room for a '70? I wouldn't mind one, but as Steve said, there are worse ways than this to subsidize more serious new tooling in the future.

Thanks, Harry! Had to do it box-stock, and what you see there is the front axle as far forward as it could be mounted, and the rear shoved as far back as possible on slightly trimmed pins - which is why I was wondering if the ZL had a better stance, and apparently, it does.