Chuck Kourouklis

Notice how they've backdated the model year on the Mustang LX? This was to address the seats and 10-hole wheels, which were fine for a '92 SSP, but not so much for the consumer 5.0 cars. Pay no attention to the retouched 4-cylinder hatch in the catalogue shot...

Ayuh, I c'n diggit. Just note that the doors glue open or shut, 'less you wanna make your own hinges. Other'n that, I like me some hyena Ferraris...

Hmm, good question. I'll probably snap one up though, for better or worse. One step closer to the one I REALLY want, the 288 GTO...

YEAH, man! Don'cha just hate it when all those YAY-sayers come crashing the party, slathering premature praise on a kit from lousy pictures?? Oh. WAIT...

Hardtop glass is definitely out. The others - hmm, interesting...

Oh MAN - even I didn't need that visual.

Hey Mark! Get a load of how our avatars stack! 302 '70 hardtop, no power steering, metric speedo, was my first car...

I'm diggin' it. Of all the '12 releases, this is the one looking closest to target, to me.

An educated guess, I'd say Tim, based on the apparent presence of hardtop glass in some iterations of the preproduction samples... Hmm. Yeah. A gasser for the next version would be very cool.

Well, I don't know how far it stretches feasibility that somebody said "yeah, advanced kit, advanced modelers can file these lines/fix this fit/correct these arches/do a sedan conversion to legitimize the decals." But comes to this... *boom* The bull's eye blown out by that one is probably three miles down the road.

The People's Republic of SF?? WOOOOOOOOO! Perhaps you might guess why I'm DIGGIN' that, Chief! Excellent. Thanks for the proof.

X2! 1/24?? Jaw-dropping.

Thought this was a good assessment, glad to see you brought it over here.

Right. 'Cause of course, nobody who's pointed out these problems before has ever EVER fixed them...

Yup. It'll still need smoothing, but after a small chisel's done the heavy lifting, you could go to one of those narrow sanding strips for cleanup and possibly avoid the script entirely.

Well, looking it over, the effect presents a bit worse in shots than it does in person. It won't be a huge ordeal to straighten the gas cap lines and the fender seams are actually pretty well placed for you to knock 'em down and know it once you've gotten rid of 'em. As for the header panel seam right above the CORVETTE script up front, that's bitchier. Maybe a piece of masking tape to protect the script?

Cloudbursts? Shade when the sun gets too intense? Maybe the hardtop-mandated drag version some were hoping to build out of this kit, covered in some depth just a page or two back in this very thread? How about having a complete kit in 2012? Not that it matters much - considering what Revell pulled with the '72 Olds and that there appeared to be a rear window on the parts display at last year's iHobby, the NEXT version is apt to have an uptop.

Y'ain't gotta be an expert, Erik, and you're absolutely right. There may have been some reference to previous master patterns, but these new parts have nothing else in common either with the '58/'59 or the diecast '62. People complaining about the lack of an uptop might be going a bit far to call the kit garbage for that, but it's a legitimate issue (even if not a deal-breaker for me). The most serious deviation I've noticed is that the sides of the rear quarters bulge a little too much as they wrap into the taillight area, one of the few points where the diecast body has the edge - molding considerations might have forced this in the plastic body, and the shell might be thick enough in that area that you can file it down a bit leaner and flatter as per the 1:1.

**edit** - this situation is better resolved than it looks, so I'll just say I enjoy Jacen's content and leave it at that. The more global observation, however, I'm gonna leave up: There's a miserable little contingent of modelers who nit-pick everything to death, never find anything positive, and truly justify the term "rivet-counter". But there's an equally (if not MORE) miserable contingent who'd have you believe that there are WAAY many more of that first contingent than truly exist, who just mess themselves with sky-is-falling hysteria every time an imperfection is pointed out in a kit, or in a test shot that's obviously indicative of what's coming. And some of this crowd have slathered Bill with that broad "rivit-counter" (sic) brush, with an unfairness crossing clean over into farce. Irony is, that second group is also very fond of pointing out how critics have no skillz - and I ain't yet seen a one offer proof Geary couldn't MURDER him build-to-build.

Guys - and I'm talking generally, not jabbing specifically at Craig who seems quite affable and well-reasoned for the most part - ya might wanna watch that whole modeler/assembler false dichotomy, and its consequent implication that people who rightly point out things that shouldn't be missing only do so because their building skills are limited. First, there's a healthy number of us who criticize and then fix the problems, who've demonstrated the outright falsity of that premise time and time besides time over time again. But second, and of perhaps more interest to those using this argument, the whole modeler/assembler canard has an inevitable smugness about it, which might appear to result from a life so bereft of meaningful accomplishment that the user is desperate to be smug about something. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure NOTHING COULD BE FURTHER FROM THE TRUTH in most cases, and I honestly don't believe it applies to Mr. Irwin at all. But the fact remains that even the most vaunted modelers ain't exactly curing cancer, so it's kind of a silly thing to express smugness about - intentional or not.

Jason! Good on you for that AMT street machine version - don't see many of those built, and it deserves its day in the sun. Had to do these OOB, so I'm not sure what they'll contribute for inspiration - maybe an idea or two for mixing and matching between new-tool AMT and Revell...

Yeah, figgered. It was a fun thought.

John (and Harry) are absolutely right on this one. It's not just a matter of the kinked-up side trim, but also that the top of the body sides echo the same mistakes - the top edge of the door should run gently upwards into the rear quarters, instead of downward as it does on the model. That, and like the Ala-Kart issued about the same time, the curvature of the sheet metal from the side surfaces to the top ones was too sharp in its radius. "Virtually unfixable" is a dead-on assessment. A pretty serious letdown after that very nice '57 300C. Now what would be cool is if Round2 took this opportunity to revise the body shell. Won't hold my breath on that - but they've done some other neat stuff lately...

Yup! I'll use it.

I was just stoked enough with the one my Dad's friend had, that the impression stuck with me. We also once rented a U-Haul that I recognized instantly as bumpside Ford cab even at six years old, and I was like, OOOOOOOOOOOOH...