Junkman

Or well travelled. You can't avoid seeing Gurgels when you are in Brazil. They are surprisingly popular there.

They were made Brazil, mostly with VW underpinnings.The one Harry selected this time is the dismal swansong of the company. Gurgel built some nice beach buggys and beetle-based replicas in its days. I believe the most popular one would be the Xavante, which was a veritable VW Thing alternative.:

Unfortunately all I ever came across were badly warped.

French VW illustrator Pascal Meslet also picked up on this: Here is more of his art for all you VWophiles: http://www.escarabat.net/imatge/007.meslet.art/meslet.art1.html

Yeah, all Forward Look Chrysler Corp cars. Wouldn't that be a pip? Including the Ghia-built show cars, of course. ######. Now I woke up.

The quality of the Galaxie Chevy is unquestionable. Unfortunately the subject matter doesn't interest me the least, hence Galaxie so far didn't get any money from me. If they release a 55-57 GM car, please make mine a Buick.

It is outrageously expensive given what you get. Must be licensing fees. But it is such a must have that I will cough up the dough. Remember the Nero car from the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by Wave? It was the same story. And look what those command nowadays.

Inter City trains travel at speeds in excess of 150mph. You would be hard pressed to catch up with them using an auto even on German Autobahns. Given that airports are far away from the Cities they are named after, you having to take the car or train to go to them, having to show up an hour before take-off, then take the train or hire car from the destination airport to the city you may like to visit, the trains, going from city centre to city centre, effectively beat air travel time wise on any journey up to around 700km length. Furthermore, even when considering that electricity isn't created by magic, the ecological aspect is also clearly in favour of the trains.

http://www.craftsmanshipmuseum.com/luhrs.htm

HLJ charges roughly 50$, that's with the 20% early bird discount taken off, so regular retail is in the 60$ region.

Here is what's in the box: Here is a slightly loveless buildup for a trade show: Can you tell that I'm actually looking forward to this?

HLJ is already taking 'early bird' orders.

Apparently you haven't seen a high school parking lot in recent years.

I always found the AMT 57 Chrysler very rewarding. It's well engineered, has no nasty sink marks, goes well together, and you don't have to bother with a two tone paint job.

Fujimi announced a 1/24 scale plastic kit of the Spinner from the movie "TheBlade Runner". Hopefully this will be the first of many Syd Mead designed vehicles from that film to be rendered in styrene.

Halfords.

Yeh, I know. Once owned a three litre Taurus wagon btw. Could do 130mph on a good day, with Euro-spec final drive and Euro-spec cooling system. Still relegates one to the slow lane most of the time, but I found it not too shabby. Too bad US Cars don't have (had?) a headlamp flasher.

I want to pimp a diecast next. Does this count?

You guys all make it sound so easy. After I built that ruddy thing, I needed six weeks of post-revell-multi-piece-retractable-hardtop-trauma therapy. This thing is worse than IKEA on a Saturday.

Where is the Taxi available now? And I only believe it's 1:24 after somebody proved to me it's 1:24 and not the ancient Imai rubbish, which was reissued by ROG several times in recent history. Same goes for the Aoshima Taxi btw.

Yeah, and a Fordor Town Sedan. And stock wheels, axles, and engine.

Yeah, or a Golf with homesickness and tailwind.

That situation is not that dissimilar in Europe. Since the privatisation of the railways, they have to be subsidized with tax money. When they were still nationalized, they weren't seen as profit centres at all, they were just part of the infrastructure, and that's exactly what they should be. Now they have to keep shareholders happy, thus they get subsidized with taxpayers' money. And believe me, distances in Europe are long enough to make trains only feasible for vacationers too, and the long distance trains don't carry many passengers. Where the railway really does make sense is suburban and inter city commuting, in essence travels up to 300km long. Anything further away, you are better off taking the plane.

See, Amtrak doesn't have the benefit of public roads they can use. They have to finance their own infrastructure. And a railway, like a road system, is part of a nation's infrastructure and can thus never be seen as a profit centre.