Chuck Kourouklis

Yup, stock bumper and choice of single- or dual-carb intakes. They even mention those in the instructions.

Got me.

Very nice! The squad car shot is looking enough like somebody else's kit that I'm hoping it's just a stand-in for something else, perhaps for a '98-'11 - 'cause yup, the one they have pictured would make no sense.

Yeah, ultimately, it works well enough for me. If I have to deal with proportioning errors, then I'll take errors I can file down, and comparatively speaking, this deviation is milder than others we've seen lately. Doesn't make Lee any less absolutely right, though.

Had a look, Gents, and it ain't entirely a hacked sedan. Beltline may be a bit too horizontal yet over the doors, but the "dip" is a bit deeper and further forward relative to the sedan, as it should be: Couple more shots, deliberately underexposed to keep from blowing out all the details in white plastic:

We need "like" buttons around here.

Good lookin' out, Brett. Thanx for the heads-up.

Kool! I'll have mine later today, so I'll have a better idea. Seems the most logical approach is to try the filing first and keep the surgery as a backup. For symmetry, I'd probably do one side till it looked good, then trace the profile of the new dip onto a card stock template for reference on the other side. Might even go so far as to make a card stock surface gauge template or two for the cross sections on the sides, 'cause I ain't fer sure on my ability to eyeball it all.

Whatcha thinkin', Bill? Suppose there'll be enough material thickness to file it down, or do we cut similar sections from one of the '55s and graft them in?

Yup. Revell steps in it sometimes, but a '70 Torino with stripes slapped on? Revell's had no recent fail of such a magnitude as to indicate that's even a remote possibility.

God, I love that one so. Maybe I'll take one for the team, work from the Model King stock car or get an unobtainium JoHan to bash with the Revell mechanicals, just so they can announce their kit as I'm getting the bumpers on...

I don't know if the Kit That Must Not Be Named really plumbs such hyperbolic extremes of criticism as described - The Monkees half-AeroFox convertible certainly managed to be worse. Come to think of it, Fox Mustangs just haven't fared well with Revell/Monogram overall. But even as someone who tends to be blunt about these things, I have to point out there's been nothing lately from Revell/Monogram so egregious as to indicate they're going to try putting a '70 Torino in striped tomato drag. Looking at the tea leaves, seeing both Revell and Moebius are playing previews closer to the chest, I halfway wonder if the game might not be getting quietly stepped up here, in fact...

Comedy gold. Well played.

This?

Yeah, thanks much, Brett and Jim! Exciting! Add me to the number who'd love to see a '72 Torino fastback from the Starsky & Hutch tooling, but heck, S&H is pretty kool too!

At least I've met your challenges.

Actually, if you look at the nit-pickers and the nit-picker-police in the aggregate, it becomes all too clear where the "bloody-streak-screaming" truly originates - though if perceptions are distorted enough to immediately identify discussion of kit inaccuracies as "screaming", that's a potentially helpful insight. As regards the Palmer kits, it ain't the '60s any more, and the fact that they were not seen as particularly acceptable even then doesn't make them much of a reference point for what we're supposed to appreciate these fifty-some years since. Cast my vote also for The Kit That Must Not Be Named, with a body beyond any excuse in this day and age, the only body in recent memory that actually got worse in my hands than it looked in previews. But even that comes with a qualification: the latest drag racing version is so nicely conceived and executed, I'd just about buy it without a body! Otherwise, like Mark J, I have enough of an idea what I'm coming into not to get too surprised. Planes, on the other hand, I'm not so familiar with, and I thought Meng's 1/72 G.91R fighter-bomber could have been rather more than what it was for 40 bucks - though the tooling is still nice. **DISCLAIMER: none of the hyphenated words above was checked for dictionary listings. My apologies to the 99.99% who don't act too daft to comprehend this, but you do get to make the occasional compound word up without leaving the English language balled up and weeping in the corner. If anybody needs me to spell those compound words out, I'll be happy to if the thread doesn't get closed first.**

Enjoying the link? I carved out the really belligerent parts - it just had to be shorter and cleaner. Still think it does the job, though.

Yeah. Finally.

First, get it straight who's appointing himself - then ask him.

"Foaming at the mouth" isn't the sort of language to indicate you don't think anybody's off-base. And an honest examination of this thread will reveal that the true "foaming" started not in the criticism, but in the same, sad personal attacks on the critics, as it has been, time immemorial in these forums, rinse, lather, repeat. So now it's an abuse of over-privelege to have a frank discussion about a kit in a forum ABOUT model kits, huh? And you guys have the brass to harp on twisted panties?

Riiiight. It's all tizzy over that lousy little pair of pants the emperor forgot to put on today. Got nothin' at all to do with the mob waiting to lynch anyone who points it out.

Danm straight, Bob Not only is this the sort of false equivalency I've had eviscerated for 15 months now in item 2 of the linked blog (look at that beauty: wanting a kit to BE WHAT IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE = laziness and absence of skill, makes you a gluer, not a builder), it totally ignores the inevitable, obvious notion that there are still plenty of ways for a builder to express his skill with an accurate kit, and that some of us would rather spend that same effort and ability enhancing an accurate kit than correcting an inaccurate one. But such are the flights of gibbering irrationality these guys have to resort to to support their attacks. I'm still trying to understand how anyone can sell himself on the idea that the burden of credibility doesn't fall on manufacturers to deliver on the promise of a scale model, it falls on us as consumers not to risk upsetting them!

And I, on the other hand, have the hope-springs-eternal attitude of critiquing the kits but buying them anyway - I'll probably have a fourth copy of the Kit-That-Must-Not-Be-Named, thanks to all the goodies in the latest-version-that-should-have-been-first - not to mention a history of actually fixing a lot of the problems I harp on. Precisely ZERO of which has shag-all to do with anyone having eyes and brain enough to tell where a kit might be going off course or not in representing its subject. But my case (never mind myriad others) does expose the inanity in the angles you guys always use, groping to justify your hysterics at anybody pointing out issues in a kit. And as long you all exhibit such a comprehensive inability to deal with those criticisms without going all ad hominem on the critic, picking and pecking away at the barely veiled misdirections you decree to be necessary credentials, you will inevitably betray your reactions for the hysterics they are. E v e r have you done so, and EVER will you. And I'll tell y'all who's NOT GOING TO WIN: a n y b o d y who'd appoint himself sanitizer of whatever opinion he doesn't like in a discussion where criticism of the subject is to be expected.

Thanks for the update, Mr M!