Junkman

I had no idea Beavis and Butthead were into model kits!

The French "big block" flatty can be made to look like a wartime US Ford V8 by swapping over the cylinder heads and distributor, which will fit with a bit of tweaking. You will also need a US camshaft to drive the US dizzy. The German flatty looks like a pre war US Ford V8, because that's exactly what it is. Another interesting (for those interested) story is what was done to some of the Aquilons in Brazil after Chrysler had taken control of Simca. They developped an Ardunesque hemi head OHV upgrade, which was available as an option for the Esplanada. Yeah, this is what you get if the Mopar guys tweak your Flathead.

That ambulance looks like a typical no brainer. I bet that would sell well even in Europe.

The Flathead V8 also was alive and well in Germany until 1961. Ford Werke AG used a version of the 239 in their FK (Ford Köln) Series trucks.

The French built three Ford Flathead V8s. One of them was smaller than the smallest US version, another one was bigger. Let me explain. In the immediate post war years, Ford USA unloaded its small car project onto Ford SAF, who produced it from 1948 as the Ford Vedette, with the pre war 2,158 cc (132 CI) 'Aquilon' V8, a locally built member of the Flathead family, which was a carried over from the pre war Matford V8. They also produced a truck range, called Cargo, with locally produced 3,923 cc (239 CI) and 4,184 cc (255 CI) V8s, also members of the Flathead family. Some of the 3.9 litre engines were also fitted to luxury versions of the Vedette as the 'Mistral' V8. All these engines follow the US design principles, but contrary to them are 100% metric and there are numerous other differences to make them sustain 'European driving habits' according to then Ford France director François Lehideux. In 1954, Simca took over the Poissy plant of Ford SAF, where the Vedette and Cargo V8s were built. The Poissy plant was integrated into the Simca operations and the Vedettes and Cargos were now badged Simca. The Vedette was also built in Brazil, where it lasted until 1969, as the Simca Esplanada, complete avec Aquilon V8, when it was finally replaced with a version of the US Dodge Dart, after the Chrysler takeover of Simca. In France, the Aquillon was retired with the demise of the Vedette in 1961. By this time, the Simca Cargo trucks were largely fitted with diesels, for obvious reasons. Only one model, the Simca Marmon 4x4 truck, which was exclusively built for the French and some former colonial armies, soldiered on (oh, the pun!) with the 4.2 litre Flathead V8 until production ended in 1973. Some of these Marmons indeed remained in military service into the 90s and many decommissioned ones are still used or in preservation. All the while these Marmons were phased out by the French army, I bought up crated 'surplus' engines, ultimately ending up with about 50 of them. Pretty much all of them found their way into Flathead powered hot rods in BeNeLux, the UK and Scandinavia.

Some of those Pyros are very charming, though.

That Cobra art is so hideous that I'd love to see what the stuff advertised on the side of the box looks like. We're building up quite a horror cabinet here. Fantastic!

Is anyone from the Italeri brass reading this forum?

Apart from that newfangled tosh, I'd buy them all.

WHERE DO I SEND THE CHEQUE???

LOL, thanks! I guess it depends on where you grew up. Those Renaults were rather ordinary subject matter where I'm from. But those Talbots sure were posh anywhere and I hadn't even heard of a Peterbilt before Convoy came to the cinemas.

She must be in her Sixties by now...

Isn't Newt still alive and well? Why not just shoot him an email and ask him?

I think we all realise this and thus are just dreaming here. But don't you think that at least some of the '50s waftbarges would be strong sellers? I mean, these cars have cult status the World over and not only with geezers. Also, wouldn't it be feasible to issue variations of existing kits? This would save a lot of the dev and tooling costs, the latter of which must be a fraction of what they used to be anyway due to high tech. I mean, Moebius did some milking of their Hudson stuff, but why do they deny us one of the wonderful sedans? Cue Miss Daisy tie in here. Just another example are the '59 Revell Chevies and Caddies, which are always popular. What would it take to do a Biscayne 4 door sedan, ideally with police/taxi gear, or a Series 60 Fleetwood Special? And what about a '60 Caddy? Couldn't the AMT '57 Chrysler be morphed into a DeSoto, or New Yorker, with relative ease? What about a Revell '57 Ranchero? I'm only asking here, really, but I can't imagine it would take the World. Also, there are some epic rods and customs out there, which IMO is way too little refected on by the model industry. Europe is a different kettle of fish altogether. Car modelling never was as popular as it was/is in the States or Japan. Europeans love to collect their little diecasts and plastic modellers are frowned upon (it's nice to belong to a minority tough) unless they do war stuff or assemble buildings for their model railway layouts. I think even truck modelling is more popular over here than car modelling. Thus car model kits will never be high on the priority list of European kit manufacturers. But exactly this opens a door US companies don't seem to realise - expand the business with export sales. Looking at the US trade deficit and stagnant or even reclining sales figures over there, this would be something I'd definitely look into. Regarding ROI/profit - I think people are prepared to shell out for 'special' stuff. See Ebbro.

I had some new kits arrivage. Also got me an auxiliary body sans hole in roof for the 'trelle: And this long awaited reissue: And another.

But the box art is quite cool. We aren't criticising kits in this thread, we are having fun with atrocious box art.

Another no brainer for RoG or Hasegawa:

Heller should follow through with the Estafette that was already announced. Since the recent bust/takeover, there hasn't been a word of it.