Chuck Kourouklis

Well I dunno what that "winning" thing is about. I saw a few problems off the bat and more as they were pointed out, but I woulda still bought a few. I'm just glad that Metzner and company are showing the maturity and coolness of head so absent in this thread - especially among those who hurl their monkey-scat at all those nasty "rivet counters". Bottom line: a better model is coming, and that's absolutely a notable, laudable credit to Moebius. My thanks to 'em, and I'm looking forward even more eagerly to mine.

WAITAMINIT - wouldn't Kirk have had you believe Spock's problem was really those limited-dip spliffs? Yup, yup, just came up with that one.

Hey, man, that wuz Cap'n Kirk's line. Though I think he woulda gone for the polygamy. Just sayin'...

Hell, man - sometimes I peer around here and wonder if we aren't doing a little too much DSL...

What, too much LDS?

Thanks, Harry. Alas, I'm gonna push it a bit now, and you indicate you've seen exactly why. Trust me when I say I wouldn't if the situation didn't demand it. Ah yes. That age-old mutual exclusivity between lowly critics and those high, exalted, rocket-surgeon modelers. It's a point that hasn't had any novelty in the last 50,000 times it's been brought up, and it's never had any logical merit. It's a straw man, a reduction to absurdity, a slippery slope that actually has much more traction than any of its proponents seem to realize. And good on you two for treating it with the seriousness it deserves. In my case, though, I can't help it. It's there thrashing about in the water, rolling my eyes back and drawing my fifty rows of teeth out for the kill before I even know it. Imho, two of the most lurid pieces of garbage foisted on an unsuspecting car modeling public in the last 20 years have been AMT's '66 Fairlane and Revell's '95-issue AAR 'Cuda (and sadly, the new one ain't a whole lot better). There would have been no excuse for the horrid, mail-slot window treatments on either of these losers in the last fifty years, let alone since 1992. Here are mine: Not exactly world-beaters, but anyone who knows his anus from an anthill will see that there's a bit more than "kit assembly" going on here. The Fairlane in particular had its stance entirely redone, and there's a lot of resin under the hood for shock towers and a less pathetic air cleaner - that, in addition to the body work. What's this? I've just savaged both kits before your eyes - then I've actually built them... and **gasp, well hush my mouth** actually fixed what I found wrong. Anybody about to have an aneurism over that? Sticking to the whole "kit assembler" canard would kind of mandate you check your pulse over this. And then we have Mark Taylor, notorious for his dress-downs, such that much of this forum comes after him like something out of a George Romero movie every time he dares to post - and yet you've seen his tutorials. Check out that MPC '67 Charger piece again, and then come back here and try to sell anyone on the notion of him as a "kit assembler". But the level of hysteria around here really made itself plain when a notable hobby veteran was called out as a "rivet-counter" for pointing out a fender arch flaw that Ray Charles could have spotted from beyond the grave. Before God gave him his eyes back. That veteran? None other than Terry Jessee. Go check out his resin columns and his three-decade body of work, and see how that "kit assembler" thing holds to him. Seriously, where do any of these examples (and hundreds more just like 'em) fit in that retarded little fairyland false dichotomy between those craven, lowly "kit-assemblers" and those cancer-curing holy and haughty "real modelers"? So. For those of you who soil your diapers over kit critiques, ya might wanna watch how you appeal to fact and logic and what's there to back up an argument. Personally, I'm hugely entertained by dismembering each of these pathetic little points as they arise, but for your sake, I'd advise against too many challenges based on logic and rationality. Because generally, that's just not where you're coming from.

Can't say I disagree, Danno - but what, did I see a challenge on some fact-checking earlier in this thread? Oh, the whole Ala-Kart flap is pretty germane to this discussion, alright, for reasons which will be plain shortly. Now I don't know if anybody was keeping track, but it wasn't Mark Taylor who first brought the subject up in here. And anyone who troubles himself to examine the photo album of the guy who did bring it up may find his precious little preconceptions upset just a bit. Going from the premise that a millimeter is very nearly a 1/25 scale inch, anybody who measures old-tool Ala Kart valve covers and the pieces from the new one will find dimensions of just about 20mm and 15mm respectively. Now have a gander at this pic from Dave Darby's album: Factoring in parallax from the angle this picture was taken, John Mueller appears to measure this valve cover, from an engine of the same series as the Ala-Kart's, at 17.5". Even if we round it down to 17, the valve cover dimensions would indicate that the new engine is very nearly as underscale as the old one was overscale, in length at least. A more-than-ten-percent discrepancy either way - and to try and reduce that to "rivet-counting" is only to make an even bigger fool of yourself than anyone who uses that phrase already does. And then there's Dave's comprehensive analysis of just how badly awry the sectional curvatures go. His pics tell the story: Compare both to the top pic of the actual Ala Kart in this article page: So much for anyone's "nothing to back it up". The point of all this? A modeler's unwillingness to acknowledge discrepancies in a kit doesn't mean they don't exist. And that certainly doesn't give him any entitlement to ridicule those who do notice those discrepancies - and that notion, more than any other, brings us right back 'round to this discussion of the Moebius Hudson.

Yup. Much as I sypmpathize with parties on both sides of this issue, there's NO DENYING that point, and it's complete and total bunk when it happens.

Don't really know how careful you have to be, Dave. Unlike some of the self-appointed forum nannies around here, you, Art, and Sven actually have a great deal of yourselves invested in this, and therefore at least some entitlement to defensiveness over criticism. You in particular have been admirably restrained in this regard. And I hope you understand that in my case - and I would expect, that of many others - seeing a few errors does not necessarily equate to outright displeasure. That kit comes out as it is, I'm still eagerly anticipating a few copies. Straighten out all the bits you mentioned, all the better. The gratitude that's been expressed for your previews is very well placed. It takes a bit of courage to subject your efforts to that kind of scrutiny, and I think even the harshest critics can appreciate that.

Oh, I think it is, Skip - the main reason we didn't catch those upper windshield contours in the pattern pics was that the visor shielded them. I just can't picture my Hornet without one, which is why I'm not too worried about that detail - but I do believe you can make it out in the test shot pics as separate.

Well, don't know if anybody's seen 'em, but Dave has added a few lower-angle shots: lower perspectives at beginning of album I will say I see what everyone is talking about, and I'll have to agree. Still eagerly awaiting a couple of these, though, plus whatever variations they come up with afterward...

Kinda my point, Darin - my memories of the car, vivid as they are, weren't enough to catch that relatively major deviation on their own.

Roger that. Most of my life I lived with the '67 Mustang hardtop my mother ordered new, drove it, washed it, loved it - before I finally realized, only a few years ago, just how different that rear fender belt line kick-up is between it and a fastback.

Thank you, Dave! Appreciate your insight, and yes, I imagine that overhead is pretty high for a newer company like Moebius. I'm hoping that some of the older guard will start looking at this seriously, though - they kinda need to.

Sure, Harry. Know them portable laser scanners used for rapid prototyping, like some of these? a few portable laser scanners Got an online earful from an insider years ago about how impractical it was, about how they tried scanning and had to go with traditional methods in the end to get the prototype looking right - but that was years ago. Now, I'd like a kit manufacturer to just shut up and use one of these on the next 1:1 car they want to produce in kit form. I'm thinking just the body shell, and I'm thinking mainly for older subjects that don't have a bunch of CAD file archives. If an actual scanner is too expensive for the company itself to acquire, I believe there are contractors out there who own these machines and will collect the data for you. You can use these scanned measurements to make a 3D model that's pretty flawless in gross measurements and proportion, if not fine detail. For once, I'd like to see a car body reduced without any interpretation at all - there'll still be plenty of interpretation needed for just about every other aspect of the kit, so it's not as if this one step will replace every jot of human input into the kit's design. And I think such a model would serve a number of useful purposes. We've had some discussion of perspective and stereoscopic distortion in judging a model's accuracy, and also of the fudging some manufacturers do to compensate for these factors. Something we know is mathematically precise and accurate in scale would be a fine little acid test for those principles. It might also be amusing to see if anyone detects what they feel are proportioning errors in such a model. But there's been a lot of theory developed about what affects a viewer's perception of scale accuracy. We are are now on the cusp of technology that can prove those theories one way or another, if we don't have access already. And I think we're fast running out of excuses not to see it done.

Well, if nobody minds me going off on a tangent, I will say this: I'm really starting to get antsy for a car model that I know was developed from a 3D scan of its subject - for the body, if nothing else. The occasional analyses we see about perspective and tricking the eye are convincing and eminently credible, but for once I wanna see something the math tells me is spot-on - not just in every 2D linear dimension, but perfectly to scale in every 3D radius, curve, and proportion - and see just how much I need to convince myself it looks right. James Cameron once went off on the "less-than-brilliant" visual effects artists who cringed at the advent of digital image manipulation, in some making-of featurette or another. What I think is going on here is actually more ridiculous than that: some true geniuses and luminaries in this industry appear needlessly fearful of working what's essentially a fancy pantograph straight from the source. I really think all that brainpower and creativity would be better spent on the actual breakdown of a kit than on taking endless measurements and photos when a roughly $40,000 hand-held apparatus promises to do the job more accurately and efficiently. Just let the scanner and a computer handle the drudgery of reduction. A clever, imaginative human touch will always be absolutely required to interpret that data into the best possible kit breakdown for a given scale, so let's not bother with that classic straw man canard about a machine doing all the work this time, please. That's NOT the way it's worked out in other industries, and that's certainly NOT the way it would work out here. If the whole notion is still cost-prohibitive, technological history dictates it won't remain that way much longer. And it's only by doing something like this that kit manufacturers will be offered any prospect of the inevitable scale controversy dying down a little in future releases.

Well, ain't seein' too much outside my personal tolerances just yet - though when I actually have it in my hands, that may change. I do think a 1:1 that matches trim and year a little closer might make a more helpful comparison (or a more positive confirmation of any errors made), so let's see how long these links work:

Ditto! Odd car, but I'm still pretty pleased. Hobbysearch's notes on the model say this: "The essence of this machine also say something to make the top of Toyota's 1 / 24 scale model approaches." Untangle that a bit, and it's almost as if it says, "Since the LFA is such an ambitious, high-caliber machine itself, only the best execution ever bestowed on a 1/24 Toyota will do." Wonder if that means we get an engine this time...

And not a digger chassis in sight... Sorry. I'll stop now. Yup, saw those, been wondering since what they might be for - doesn't look as if the boxcover modeler availed hisself of 'em. I'd still say this body shell matches most mini-Chargers I've seen more than the Polar Lights kits, nice as they were. Mark, ever since some yutz purportedly from Revell said they were looking to save money on the tooling by sliding the digger chassis under the Hawaiian (probably 'cause he couldn't keep it straight from the McEwen car) - sorry, I DID say I'd stop that, didn't I - there has been some speculation about where and to what extent Revell would cut corners between the kits (I was wondering myself for some time). I think Len was speaking more to our ilk than to yours.

Just do your usual scoop-grabbin, Gerry, and all will be well. You have a good eye for noteworthy stuff. I personally would be interested in what Moebius is doing with the Batman Tumbler, in addition to their Chrysler and Hudson kits, if it occurs to you while you're there...

Yup, we do! I was just coming to this thread to paste that one up myself. So what was all this about the digger chassis under the Hawaiian again? That source is suspect, methinks...

Meh. Chuck all that.

Man, Harney's a Corvette guy from way back, so I hope everyone pardons me when I say ROGER THAT. My mind also flitted immediately to a nice 1/12 ZR-1 right after I saw that GT500...

Um, psst, Mark - DON'T FORGET THE SCALE BIGOTS...

Let's freakin' hope. I'll have a couple of these in the meantime, though! AWESOME! I LOVE big scale, and I'm overjoyed to see Revell/Monogram doing a new one after 20 years...