Chuck Kourouklis

Oh YEAH, Gerry - I'm down-and-a-half for that danm where-is-it-WHEREIZZZIT?! Stingray. Yup.

And that brings up a very good question - is anybody telling anyone not to buy the kit? We'll see some very general commentary like "long as we buy this stuff, it's as good as we'll get" (and I have to confess to being a prime violator of that whole principle 'cause I'm constantly buying this stuff regardless). But as I recall, last time I saw any directive not to buy a kit, it was more in the context of "If you DON'T LIKE it, DON'T BUY IT!" 'Less I'm mistaken, that's the party line specifically mandating somebody deprive a manufacturer of a sale.

I personally found a fairly wide disparity between the 430s, such that Revell AG's really seemed useful for its engine and not a whole lot else. Then Fujimi's Scuderia came along and murdered them both. The 458s, on the other hand, shift the balance waay in the other direction for overall detail - the Fujimi has a crisp body but otherwise seems useful mostly as a wheel and tire donor to the Revell kit. But for proportions, the two are very close iIrc. The area under the front grille seems thicker on the Revell shell, but I believe that's because they molded in a lower lip that's separate on Fujimi's.

Yup, John, right as rain. I've always known Tamiya erred on the side of "too wide" for its tires, and now I've got confirmation on why the 360 looks just that wee bit rotund. The Fujimi 430 doesn't seem to have any of that - wonder if they also saw fit to tease it some.

Thanks, Gerry! Okay, a few more filing strokes, maybe. But abrasives will ilkely solve the problems, as opposed to a full roof transplant.

Well if anybody's heads wanna explode Scanners-style over this, by all means, don't let me stop you - but that Torino's an order of magnitude better for proportions than The Kit That Must Not Be Named. High belt line? Possibly, especially looking at where the door handle lands. But I'm thinking the rear quarter window has been installed a bit too far backwards, and that by itself can throw the entire relation of the DLO elements off. So far it's looking like a few file strokes (and maybe filling in the front marker lights and using the decals) are all that's necessary to sort this one out. And that's an entirely different story than what you need for the other one.

I'm lovin' the Rabbit (which I hope is really the GTI), but for different reasons - always thought it and the first-gen Scirocco were some smart and pert-looking little Giugiaro designs.

In the flyer, the S&H is right next to the Snap Tite '14 Corvette, so one might assume for a minute that "Snap Tite" applies to the whole row. If you examine it, though, each model in that row has its own caption, so that should clarify the Torino's case some. It also appears that the Corvette is a snapper distinct from the Snap Tite "Build 'n Play" kits listed at the top - so it's more in the mold of the '10 Mustang convertible or Enzo, perhaps? Shared tooling with the predecorated glue kit maybe?

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.**