Junkman

My youngest asked me that once. I replied no, it was forty shades of grey.

I love the 6R4. I was lucky enough to drive one once in a Rallycross event at Buxtehude (finished 3rd). The sound alone is something you'll never forget (youtube it!) and the acceleration is like someone just rear ended you doing 50. It's one of those cars that make you cancel all your self preservation instinct. I only hope they'll do the Tony Pond - 1985 Lombard RAC version, when he finished 3rd (see what I'm doing here?), ironically behind two Delta S4s. Sadly this was the best result the car ever had in a WRC event. At least I hope someone will make that decal sheet. So I'm going to buy both - the Belkits and the Beemax. One to build the above, one to build the car I raced at Buxtehude.

Well, you can hear the 'boom' from explosions in space, so why not? And every helicopter sounds like a Bell UH1, right? There is an episode of The Rockford Files in which one of the baddies works on an AMT '68 Shelby Mustang.

So far mentioned in this thread are the following versions: H-1458 Tony Nancy H-1460 Don Garlits H-1461 John Keeling/Jerry Clayton H-1462 Shirley Muldowney H-1463 Tom McEwen H-1464 Don Prudhomme H-1466 Jeb Allen 85-4312 "Jungle" Jim Liberman Were there any others?

Thank you so much for the info hitherto. How did they achieve the different rims and injector hats? Are both versions included in each kit, or did they use mold inserts? I see from the box art that there were at least three distinct combinations of wheels/hats. It looks like the Jungle Jim one has the same wheels, but a different hat than the Cha Cha one.

I just got this one cheap because it's missing the chrome sprue. I know it's only one of many such TFDs Revell issued throughout the Seventies. I hope they share at least some components and thus I can lift the chrome tree from a more popular issue than this one is. I wonder whether together we can trace the history and evolution of these kits. Questions like Which ones were available? How many different basic tools were used? Were there commonly shared trees? Were there unique trees for each version? Or am I entirely wrong and each kit was tooled individually?

Not that I know of. The Falken version is deffo new. I hope they follow this up with some Le Mans versions.

HOW MUCH????? Thirty-three bloody Dollars for some stinking repops???? What is this? The Weimar Republic?

What was hitherto deemed impossible has happened! A model kit making company has released new model kits, it has emerged. According to well informed circles this is tantamount to commercial suicide.

The worst selling kits of all are the ones that don't exist.

What makes you believe I'm not interested and then negative?

Thanks God there is a lot more racing than Nap Cars and Formica ones. What's with that there No Hot Rods Allowed? Is that for sale, too? If yes, I'd bid £1.27

And?

GM commissioned them to do so, so they fit the standard Promo SKUs of the day. They are thus narrower and shorter than proper 1/25th scale. However, GM insisted that the interiors are the correct length in 1/25. Thus, much to Mr Haenle's dismay, they had to make the models ill proportioned. That's the version I was told by Dennis Doty. Citing issues from 60 years ago properly manifests a disgrace of what magnitude the model kit industry's persistent negligence of 50's Caddies really is. What have they given us in those 60 years? Some half arsed '58s, a '59 Eldo and Sev and that dismal Foose abomination. This is not good enough!

Besides, those Arii kits are rubbish. The size of them alone.

It's a bloody disgrace that 50s Cadillacs are so novercally dealt with by the model kit industry. One would think that such iconic, popular and historically significant cars would be total no brainers, but alas.

They are in fact two different cars. The Merit/Smer can be nicely pimped with Heller bits, which allows you to own two T-L Grand Prix cars.

Something fishy about the headlights. They neither resemble US, nor Euro spec ones. Japanese spec maybe? Why the Parisian numberplates then? The rear indicator 'flutes' are also wrong for a post facelift car.

There was more choice in the Soviet Union.

Although the letter cars were restricted to certain colours, Chrysler's special order programme allowed one to order them in any factory colour available for the year, even two tone combinations, and surprisingly many people did that. One single 1957 hardtop was indeed delivered in special order Indian Turquoise. Read: https://www.allpar.com/cars/chrysler-300c.html "Officially, the exterior colors were black, white, red, brown, and green - all monotone - but others appear to have been used based on special orders."

I'm a bit overwhelmed by the plethora of car kits being released.

They are Argentinian Dodge Polaras built by Barreiros in Spain from CKD kits and badged Dodge 3700 there. Valiants and Darts were built in Argentina under licence until 1968, when Chrysler Argentina replaced them with their own "Dodge Polara" which is unrelated to the US Polaras. They might be technically and conceptually related to the Valiant/Dart, but have no direct North American counterpart.

Promos are much more than what has been mentioned hitherto. They are the cradle of our hobby and a vital part of the American automotive advertising history. Most of the American car model kit manufacturers of yore started their business by making promotional models for the real car industry and only ventured into kit making as a consequence. In the 1950s American car corporations began to commission outside suppliers to provide plastic models of the current cars to be distributed to car dealerships, which used them as giveaways to entice real car buyers. For some reason, the overwhelming majority of these promotional models was made to 1/25 scale. The model manufacturers then went ahead and coaxed further profit from the tooling by modifying them into kits by adding additional parts, like speed equipment and customizing parts and wheels, thus the 1/25th scale American car model kit was born. Most contemporary car kits that could be built stock were promo based until the real car manufacturers stopped commissioning promos in the late Seventies - early Eighties, which explains why so few model kits exist of later American cars. Note that this is a very rudimentary description of a history that has hitherto filled numerous books and omits many a detail, but in a nutshell, this is how it went.

That'll never sell.