Art Anderson

As for the "nasty" sprue attachment points on chrome parts--that is an engineering compromise, just as are mold parting lines at the ends of those 50's and 60's era bumpers which both wrapped around to the sides of the car, and then were finished off by extra stamping operations, to rounded, semi-bullet shaped ends. There often is NO WAY other than putting the sprue attachment where tool designers put them, IF you want the part to come out of the dies, and still be attached to a sprue, for both plating and packing in your kit. Sorry, but somethings are pretty much out of reach for the engineers who have to make injection molding tools work. As for fan belts and the like, again--how many parts do you want in a kit, and how much do you expect to pay for such kits? In addition, how fiddly do you want the kit to be? Meaning no offense here, but there are model car kit builders, and then there are car modelers, if you get my drift--not trying to be insulting, but some things get compromised for cost reasons, and it's costs that drive the price you pay at the cash register, always has been, likely always will be. Art

Junkman-- As for why window frames aren't molded to the clear "glass", just how finicky do you want a kit to be? Bear in mind, with most diecasts having separate chrome window framing, if you really look at that, those frame parts are WAY to heavy (large) to appear at all scale like (unless one goes to high-end 1/16 scale). Tool them into the edges of the glass pieces, and the risk becomes having optical distortions showing the framing, regardless of painting. foiling, etc. OK, so make the "glass" scale thickness? Well in order to do that, the clear plastic would necessarily be .005" or thinner (in 1/25 scale, .005" equals 1/4 inch on the real size ruler), and that would mean either vacformed windows, or "you curve it yourself wraparound 50's-60's windshields. Again, one of the compromises I was alluding to. Some things are best compromised for the success of the average guy who buys and builds model car kits--leave the really SERIOUS stuff to the more advanced builder (Mr Obsessive comes to mind here--I've known Bill for perhaps 15yrs--he certainly qualifies) and Mark Gustavson, who once used microscope slide cover siips (really thin clear GLASS) to make the side windows and vent wings for a model of his restored 1957 Fairlane Club Coupe. Art

Both "Mints" have been known to close out unsold stuff, used to be they sent it out to retail stores specializing in bargains--but I haven't seen that happen much in the last few years--8-10 years ago, when their business pretty much tanked after 9/11, yeah. Art

The smallest collets (collet is what they are called, as opposed to chucks FWIW) go down to infinity, meaning they should be able to close completely without any twist drill inserted in them. I have found, over time, that the infinity collet can gather dirt or modelbuilding debris in the slits chat are cut in them, at 90-degrees crossing at the exact middle of the collet when viewed from the end. Debris, even rust can happen in those slits, keeping them from being able to close completely when the threaded collar that tightens them is screwed in until it stops. This debris or rust can be removed, by taking the collet out of the pinvise, and a piece of fresh, stiff 400-grit Wet-or-Dry sandpaper (used DRY please!) is slipped through the slots, from one side of the collet to the other, and then pulled/pushed back and forth (when you've done that to one side of the slit, remove the sandpaper, and flip it over to get the other side of the slit, then repeat this process for the slit that crosses the first one you cleaned. Every time I have done this (and my oldest pinvise is probably 35yrs old now), when I put the smallest of numbered twist drills in the thing, tighten it down, it holds the drill bit very tightly once again. Art

Some essential body parts for the original Ala Kart that was doubled with the '29 A roadster were removed from the tooling back in the late 1960's, at a time when old show cars such as Ala Kart had lost, seemingly, their market appeal as model car kits. That happened a lot back then, at a time when almost nobody ever expected to see the return of adult modelers who'd been model car builders as kids in those years. Bear in mind, in the 1960's, nostalgia for most things out of the past was pretty much limited to antique brass era cars and the cars of the Classic Era 1925-48, antique furniture, old coins and stamps, and a few of the early toy train sets from the 1920's through the 30's. Almost no one back in that decade ever really gave thought to the idea that come 20, 30, 40,50 years later, the model car kits produced in that decade would appreciate to almost insane values today. Art

Of course, we are discussing an "apples & oranges" sort of thing here. But I will start with one comment: In all my years of modelbuilding, I haven't seen a model car body with door, hood or trunk lines as wide as 1mm or .040" (both measurements get used to represent one inch in 1/25 scale), at least not since some of the fairly crudely done car kits of the 1950's. If one measures most any model car kit produced by the major brands back at least to the 1858 3in1 kits, I think you'll find that most panel lines on them are about .020" or thereabouts. As for panel lines on model aircraft kits, most of them are probably .75mm, or .015", which seems a bit wide when you think of it, but then, access panels, certainly on WW-II aircraft weren't always perfect fitting, even from the factory. Model aircraft builders have carried on long converstions, often vehemently disagreeing as to the accuracy/inaccuracy of particular plastic aircraft kits for decades now. Little wonder that, given that even with the best of photographic references, even when factory drawings are available (for example, Boeing maintains an archival library of all plans and drawings for their aircraft, as well as from companies bought and folded into Boeing, as does Northrop Grumman and Lockheed). Trouble is, the "planform" drawings may well not accurately show some curvatures, and likewise side profile drawings may not quite have them either--to find the drawings for particular contours and shapes can mean digging through hundreds of pounds of paper. Additionally, photographic references may be very incomplete, particularly of former enemy aircraft (read that Axis powers), whose aircraft industries were pretty much flattened into so much crumbled masonry, twisted steel, and a lot of ashes. While model kit designers and mockup makers have gotten much better at creating more accurate shapes and contours over the years, they still struggle at times. One thing that almost nobody points out with aircraft models that while increasiingly perfect they may be, not until at least the second generation jet aircraft (think USAF Century Series fighter planes here), almost all model kits are far more perfect in their surface shapes than any of their 1:1 counterparts ever were! While early examples of just about every WW-II airplane exhibited the finest craftsmanship their manufacturers could produce, by "crunch time" mid-war, the absolute need to build them, get them out the factory door ASAP meant a lot of ripples in fuselages, even in wing surfaces as "Rosie The Riveter" and her German, Japanese, Italian, British and Soviet counterparts hastened to keep up with the pace of orders for planes to replace combat losses. Just look at any picture of a restored P-38, P-47, or P-51 that is in natural metal, you can see where every rivet in the skin has pulled that sheet aluminum inward slightly--1943-44 production German aircraft, when properly restored, by say, the National Air And Space Museum (Smithsonian) show the absolute crude construction of Bf-109's, FW-190's, even the very high tech Ta-152. Fast forward to the middle 1950's--there is a surface characteristic of every Boeing B-52 Stratofortress fuselage that has never been (to my knowledge anyway) reproduced. You do not see any B-52 without subtle wrinkling of the fuselage skin forward and aft of the wings--they were designed that way, the fuselage is meant to flex slightly, both when on the ground, and when flying, and that wrinkling changes once the plane becomes airborne--nose and tail actually droop slightly on the ground due to their weight, and are actually flexed upward in flight--the fuselage of the B-52 being itself a lifting body--aerodynamically it actually aids the wings in lifting the weight of the plane when in the air! I submit that were these ripples in the skin to be reproduced in a model kit, the question would be: "make it in flight, or sitting on the tarmac. Of course model aircraft kits, with their two-piece (right side/left side, top of wing, bottom of wing) assembly of major portions of a plane, don't have to have some inaccuracies that are inherent in any model car one piece body shell. Because we have come to expect one-piece body shells, the engineering of the tools used to mold those requires occasional built-in inaccuraces just so the solidified plastic body shell can allow the mold sections to slide back away from it upon demolding (ejection from the tooling). There cannot be any raised details or shapes that create undercuts, or those parts of the plastic shell will just simply be torn off in demolding--steel does not move out of the way of plastic. Think of say, a Forward Look Chrysler, Desoto or Imperial--how to get the bottom edge of the rear door window opening (or quarter window on a Hardtop) straight, like it is on the real car, but still have the raised forward part of the tailfins, which start in the same area? Easy to do if you are stamping out sheet metal rear quarters, or making them as separate plastic parts (which modelers have said resoundingly NO to since the early 1960's) Many of the iconic "Annual Series" 3in1 kits of the 60's had inaccuracies as well--due mostly to their producers having only limited access to drawings and photo's of the real cars, which were themselves still in styling development when model kit tooling mockups were being carved out by hand. Take a look at an SMP 59 or 60 Chevrolet Impala Convertible sometime--notice the upward curvature of the top of the windshield and frame--there is a considerable discrepancy, as the real cars didn't have that. Same issue with 1971-72 MPC Impala Converibles--only this time, the windshield frame is that of the hardtop, NOT the upward arching, slightly taller framing and glass of the actual GM full-size convertibles. Now I might submit that the latter situation was caused by MPC's wanting to limit tooling costs by limiting the number of interchangeable cores in the body mold. But in any event, any plastic model kit of any subject will have inaccuracies stemming from the way we humans see things, with our "binocular" vision, where no camera has that ability. A camera lens and the film or the light sensitive plate in a digital unit sees any object being photographed the same way any human sees it with one eye or the other closed--both lack depth perception. Laser scanning can be very tricky as well--what the laser picks up can still result in shapes that are just not quite right, requiring at least some finessing of a subtle shape here, a contour there, in order to get the model to at least appear to be a perfect replica. This binocular vision we humans have can also make the model car kit bodyshell appear to be inaccurate in comparison to the real car, even if one is looking at both the model and the 1:1--our two eyes actually can view much more of say, a 1/25 scale model car body than we will ever see when looking at the full-sized car which is identical to that model. You can test this yourself: Place a Hot Wheels or similar size diecast so that the centerline of the body is even with the center point between both of your eyes--on that little diecast, you can see both sides of the toy, because they are each in your field of vision--but you can't do that with the real car, because it's many times wider than the spacing of the pupils of your eyes. Tamiya put it this way, about 25 years ago, in a great video "The Design and Development of a Plastic Model Kit"--in which they clearly state that "It is possible to make a model exactly numerically correct in all shapes and contours, but it may very well not look right". The video then goes on to show a designer and the mockup maker collaborating on altering the contour of say, the roof of the mockup (1/12 scale wood mockup back then) of their Porsche 911, to make that panel appear more realistic to the human eye. In the 1960's, as model car kits got engines and opening hoods, there was a serious tendency to make engines slightly undersized, the thinking being that given the young age of the bulk of the model car market back then (approximately 9 or 10 to about age 15 or 16 -- when boys started noticing girls and spending their money on real wheels), that making the engines a bit small, certainly in annual series 3in1 kits made them easier to assemble, thus increasing the satisfaction of the young kids who bought and built the bulk of car kits produced back then. The same was partially the reason for "tub-style" interors--ease of assembly by kids, as well as ease and speed of assembly on the lines producing promotional models. Even a "platform" style interior as introduced by say, Monogram in the early 1980's is inaccurate as well--the floorboards of those interiors are above the floorpan depicted on the chassis when viewed from underneath--where on the real car, the floor pan you see when a car is on a grease rack is the same floorboard you put your feet on when driving or riding in it. Again, this type of interior unit was done as it was for ease of assembly. Yet, the first true platform interior assembly goes all the way back to 1955, at Revell, with their neat but small series of 1/32 scale American car kits, and repeated in their 1/25 scale '57 Country Squire and '59 Galaxie Skyliner kits--and in the late 1970's saw the likes of Tamiya, Fujimi and Heller revisit the concept--Moebius kits and a few modern state-of-the-art AMT kits of the past 12-13 years have as well. OK, so longwinded I am, but I think I've given some food for thought. Art

Desoto's top line car used the same New Yorker body as the Chrysler C300. However, I bet we see a '55 Imperial first, from a resin caster, given that the C-300 was fitted with an Imperial front clip! Hmmmmmm! Art

However, in say, winter, who wants that huge cold draft coming in through an open window? Hmmm? See my post above, showing how I handled it. Art

My Pace Setup! In this, you can clearly see the "plug" made for the window, which holds a dryer vent outlet, and the dryer hose attached to it (the other end of the dryer hose is clamped to the outlet on the squirrel cage blower atop the spray booth) Art

No offense intended, but I do think sometimes that issues such as this can be over-engineered. To explain a bit here: I work a 'semi-retirement" job as the custodian in the building that houses Physical Facilities at a Big Ten University--engineers? We got 'em in spades there, Civil, Mechanical, Construction, you name it! I see and talk with (briefly of course) most of them as they come into work toward the end of my shift every morning. 3 of them work exclusively with fume hoods in the University's Chemistry and Chemical Engineering buildings (two Nobel Prize winning Chemists have graced those labs with their presence, BTW). Now, I have the utmost respect for engineers--after all, that is what Purdue University is famous for. But, we aren't talking here about chemistry labs, nor are we talking about industrial situations (and yes, in my past life, I was the Personnel Director for a large Essex Wire "Wire Assembly Plant" (we made the world's largest automobile wiring harness back in the analog days, a 75lb harness for the dashboard of the Lincoln Continental Mk IV and Mk V--some 700 circuits, and had a very large "wire striping" operation, which forced me, as the plant's safety officer, to do a crash course in fire safety). But I digress: Most of us modelers aren't so much concerned about fire safety as we are with getting the paint smell out of the house (or in my case, out of this apartment house, which has a common, central heating and AC system for all three apartments). I am more concerned with not making my co-tenants unhappy because I paint model cars in my apartment. Now that said, I am also concerned with fire safety, although I don't do anything that knowingly will cause a fire hazard (being a smoker, I do that outdoors only, NEVER inside). The other issue is the dust resulting from spray paint overspray--that stuff can get everywhere. Now, years ago, my parents never questioned that, I build models in the basement (albeit in the furnace room, with a red hot coal furnace to boot!), and my now ex-wife understood that, and she tolerated it as well. But I don't any longer. My personal parameter is: I do not want even a hint of the smell of lacquer thinner in the air in my apartment, lest that filter downstairs to the older lady who can complain about anything, not the least of which is even a molecule of paint smell. And I do not want the overspray dust either. To that end, one year ago, I sprang for the Pace Peacemaker booth I now use (and if anyone wants to know, I had not painted a single model car since early 2005, when I was in another apartment, used my old Badger spray booth (more an air extractor than a booth) hooked up to the dryer vent! Even so, I don't want to do anything that would be a fire hazard in the least, so both the old Badger thingie, and this Pace were bought, simply because of their squirrel cage blowers--those are as explosion proof as explosion proof gets. But in the bottom line, it's the removal of the odors, and the elimination of overspray paint dust that personally I want--I hated cleaning that stuff up as a kid, when I used to use rattle cans of Pactra Candy Colors in the furnace room of my parent's house. But, in the end, all "engineering" aside, it's the final outcome that works for me--I chose to let first Badger, and now Pace, do that for me, and I think with great results. I met Mr Pace personally at the IPMS Roscoe Turner Contest last February in Indy, when I took delivery on the Peacemaker--that guy knows what he speaks of (and he's a sheet metal guy, not a degreed engineer, BTW) and his products speak for themselves. Again, not trying to denigrate engineers, nor their profession, but sometimes "engineering" can get in the way of reality, in the way of reason--and from all the discussions of model spray booths both in this forum, and the others I frequent, that is my opinion. Let's face it, folks, sometimes, good old Anerican "Shade Tree" Engineering has it's value, and with some deference to the best types of electric motors, and the best types of blowers, I think that still holds very true. Art

OK, I'm the one who produced that dually Ford bed, for the AMT '92 Ford pickup kits. The dually Fenders were cut from the Monogram '91 F-350 Duallie, and grafted to the AMT Box. The wheels were taken from the Monogram F-350, but I wanted more industrial truck tires for the conversion--they came from one of the Lesney/AMT 1/32 Scale Ford L-series COE tractors (made one time, in 1980-81), and are Goodyear OTR truck tires, which fit the 1/24 scale Monogram wheels like they were made for them. Hope this helps! Art Anderson

For starters, I can't see how the particular spray booth in question here will do any more than remove the particulates (the solids in paint--the overspray droplets that dry into dust that settles everywhoere), while returning the air exhausted from the work area in front of the filter DIRECTLY back into the operators face. To my way of thinking, that simply means it's only going to do half the job--nice to have the overspray dust filtered out, but without removing the vapors (and their smell) from where you are working, you're still right back to square one--those living in the house with you are probably going to be very disappointed that they still smell your paint. With that in mind, it's little wonder that there is such a disclaimer as regards hazardous and flammable fumes! We all want something for less (less is more, cheaper is "better" huh?) but not pulling the fumes of lacquer or enamel paints OUT of the house isn't going to keep a spouse or, in the case of apartment living--the neighbors any happier--trust me on that one! Yeah, a Pace Peacemaker is a lot more expensive, but it is a ONE TIME BUY (of course, you do have to replace the filters, but they are commonly available furnace (HVAC) filters, and are inexpensive to boot. To set up a Pace when you don't want to (or can't due to landlord considerations) cut a hole in the exterior wall of the house or apartment) it's still quite easy to set up! Position the spray booth as near a window as you can. At most any lumberyard or home improvement store, you can buy either a partial sheet of plywood (at least 1/2" thick) or particle board (think unfinished utility shelving here--it works just fine), a clothes dryer vent and flexible duct, and a hole cutting saw (this later isn't exactly cheap, but they last forever). Cut the plywood or particle board shelf to the size of the opening when you open the window (I live in an upstairs apartment, with modern insulated sash windows), a sash window will hold the panel in place when you lower the sash down on top of the panel (or "plug" if you will). The hole saw needs to be the same diameter as the dryer vent, of course (the total cost of the particle board, dryer vent/hose kit, and hole saw was less than $50). Once made, set in the window, spray booth turned on, it is virtually whisper quiet, totally vibration free as well. The "proof is in the pudding" or so the saying goes! My downstairs neighbor is a neurotic older woman, who's very prone to complaining about the slightest thing--and guess what? She's got no clue that I shoot lacquer right over her head, she neither hears it, NOR smells it (If her nose picked up even a hint of paint smells, she'd be on me and the landlord in a NY minute, trust me!). As for the "explosion proof" issue: Pace uses a squirrel cage blower, you know, the thingie with a rotating turbine that looks like the paddle wheel on the Delta Queen. This is the same type of blower that is used on EVERY gas furnace I have ever seen, and with it, the electric motor is ENTIRELY outside the stream of air (and whatever flammable fumes are in that stream of air), which makes it about as explosion proof as you can get. In final analysis: I've been using my Pace Peacemaker (next to the largest size they make) for about 6 months now, and trust me, absolutely no paint fumes in the house, absolutely NO overspray dust (even used it when mixing and applying polyester--catalyzed putty--putty on a Moebius 55 Chrysler 300 to show the toolmakers what the roof contour needed to be--not even a hint of that "body shop smell"!). The price last February, was a sale price--Pace has been known to run specials from time to time--right at $250. However, bear in mind, Pace makes their booths in galvanized sheet metal, based around a common size HVAC filter, AND a top quality squirrel cage blower-----ONE TIME BUY that likely will outlive most any user of one. I for one trust that Peacemaker is the correct term--if it keeps my persnickety, crotchety old bat of a neighbor lady at bay, oblivious to my model car hobby, then in deed it will keep the peace. Note: I do not work for Pace, nor do I work for anyone selling them--I AM MERELY A VERY HAPPY OWNER AND USER OF THEIR PRODUCT, and my endorsement of Pace spray booths is purely voluntary, based on ownership and use of one--OK? Art

Actually, there are two sets of frame rails, one outboard as you see in the pic, an another rail on each side, inboard of that. Those bodies were so stoutly built, as well as being completely unitized, that wrecking yards would pretty much refuse to take them for scrapping--as their early, somewhat more primitive crushing equipment simply could not crush a Step-Down Hudson. Art

As the late Tom Carnegie (legendary Indy 500 track announcer) would say: "Aaaaaannnnnd....itsa neeeewwwww traaaaaaaaack record!" (or at least a paraphrase) Art

Soon, very soon I suspect.

Harry, but people do just that. As an example, check the "review" if you can call it that, of the reissued Revell Captain Hook tow truck--yeah it's an oversimplified kit, but one that fit the bill quite well in 1977 when it was first issued. Art

Ahh yes, pre-internet. BUT don't believe for one minute that we had no competition back in the day--because we did! Every dime store chain, drugstore chain, even supermarkets cherry picked model kit lines to stock in their toy aisles. Then comes along KMart and the other mass-retailers, and it was even more so a lot of the time. And,while we didn't have internet competitors, there were a myriad of mail order outfits, lead by Auto World (the original one run by the Kovaleski family), America's Hobby Center, Polks Hobbies in NYC, Bernie Paul in Philly (the guy behind Associated Hobby Mfrs-AHM). Add to that nearly every hobby shop had to contend with garage and basement operators, who came and went like birds with the change of seasons. And, the fatality rate for hobby shops for decades was one of the highest in the retail industry, mostly due to a combination of inadequate capital, coupled with the tendency of hobbyists to start hobby shops, which tended to reflect very directly the hobby interests of their owners, often to the detriment of other product lines they could and should have stocked. Art

Critiquing any model kit is something all of us do, be it under our breaths, or out loud at club meetings or here online. However, to simply criticize any model kit coming out of tooling cut decades ago because it's "not up to (modern) national standards" is at best lacking in some intelligence, and at worst, disingenuous. I still remember, a decade or so ago, when AMT/Ertl brought back the AMT 1962 Buick Electra 225 HT kit. Now, they brought it back pretty much exactly as it had been produced as an annual series 3in1 kit IN 1962. Now while older builders were thrilled to see an old friend back (where were YOU in '62?), younger builders, not having experienced what was "state of the art" for 1962, in their efforts to critique the kit, wound up often bashing it to the point of exposing their own ignorance. Had AMT/Ertl felt there to be some requirement that no such older subjects be produced once again unless tooled to 21st Century model kit standards, more than likely the 1962 Electra 225 tooling would have been left on the shelf, and no money spent on totally new tooling--that's the way of it when reissues of older, less popular subjects are considered for reissue--VERY seldom do the toolmakers revisit an old, former subject in the form of cutting new tool steel--the investment vs return generally won't support such a decision. It seems to me that anyone reviewing, critiquing if you will, an older model car kit that's been reissued, simply needs to learn a bit about such old kits, and understand fully that things were done decades ago that made perfect sense at the time (be they simplifications for kits meant for young kids, or were there limitations of technology back then which didn't really allow for some of the fine details we have come to expect from today's "state of the art" in kit design and tooling?) Doing that shows that a critic or reviewer has done nis/her homework--and if not, shouldn't such uneducated reviews be given failing grades, or at least an "incomplete". Somehow, I think so. Art

Actually Harry, my experience with the hobby, and hobby shops (and the industry as well) has been much different! How many modelers are aware today, that the industry which supplies and supports our model car building addiction actually had it's beginnings in 1931-32, known today as the very depths of the Great Depression? Yes, those were the years when the likes of Berkeley Models, Lindberg, Walthers had their genesis--albeit in model airplanes and trains. In 1932, one Michael Trost started what became Trost Modelcraft & Hobbies, one of the very first hobby shops and wholesale hobby distributors anywhere around, on the SW side of Chicago. By WW-II, there was a small, but growing industry supplying mostly wood kits for aircraft, ships, and trains, with some cardboard and a few rudimentary pot metal parts and details thrown in. It wasn't until the waning days of WW-II, of course, that any of the model companies we've come to know from the 50's out to today began though--and that corresponded closely with the rise of plastic injection molding. Just what year was it that AMT Corporation (along with their kissin' cousin SMP) introduced 3in1 Customizing Kits of model cars? Try 1958, and what was that year known for? RECESSION, a recession which brought back memories of the early 30's to many of our parents! And yet, somehow, we kids found the requisite $$ to buy up $1.29 AMT kits, plus enough change for a tube of glue, even a few 10-cent bottles of Testors PLA enamels--and we did it, did it in spades. The plastic model kit industry was on a roll that year--and the party continued unabated through to the early 70's, allowing such companies as AMT, Revell and Monogram to dump several hundred thousands of dollars each into home slot racing sets and the cars to go with them, only to see those products fail miserably in the marketplace by about 1966 or so, and still survive. (Incidently, as a college student working my way through school at our local hobby shop, I saw first-hand the severe dent slot racing put into the sales of ordinary model car kits back then, the first really serious competition experienced, IMO, by the model car kit product lines. And yet, the late 60's were a time of tremendous prosperity here at home. The 70's started out to promise great times for this hobby of ours--in 1970, IMC stood everyone on their ears at the Hobby Industry Association of America (HIAA) trade show that January, at the old Sherman House Hotel in Chicago's Loop--a 1/25 scale Dodge L-700 Tilt Cab Semitractor. AMT was not to be denied--showing finally test shots of their first Semi, the Peterbilt California Hauler (they first pitched at idea to the wholesalers and retailers in 1968, then again in 1969, but to no end), and within a couple of years, a whole line of kits of heavy and medium duty truck kits grew up, from AMT, IMC, MPC and a new kid on the block, Ertl. Now, lest anyone think those trucks were inexpensive to tool and produce--the tooling for each and every one of those kits cost, at minimum, 3X the price of a new model car kit too. All went well until the fall of '73, and the rise of OPEC--OIL EMBARGO. The subsequent ups and downs economically through the rest of the 70's, most notably almost runaway inflation, wreaked havoc on the model kit industry. Early names in the industry, such as Hawk and Aurora faltered, and ultimately both disappeared by the middle of that decade, folded into larger, healthier outfits. Industro-Motive sold off their model kit lines to Testors (Those Famous Fords kits). By the end of hte 1970's, once mighty AMT Corporation skirted bankruptcy when Lesney stepped up, Revell was sold to Ceji, a French toy company. And, something was looming on the horizon to threaten the very existence of plastic modeling: Popularly priced radio controlled cars, and the first electronic games and game systems. But, a funny thing happened on the way to the forum by about 1980-81--adult modelers, guys who'd cut their permanent teeth on model kits in the late 50's through the 60's began seeking out hobby shops, asking a perennial question "Do they still make model car kits?" (if I had a dollar for every time I heard that question 20-30 yrs ago, my bank account would be a lot fatter!). And, at a time when it surely must have raised eyebrows in the boardroom, Monogram brought out several really great model car kits, in the depths of that recession, 1981-82--not perfect kits, but they sure did show the way forward. After several years of rising economics, another recession in the land--1990-92--and when did Revell Monogram start issuing what we consider today to be "state of the art" model car kits? 1991-92. Model building is a form of entertainment, and at that, one of the least expensive forms of personal entertainment there is, unless you compare it to tiddly-winks. It's still very much akin to "beer, the old lady and television", and in buoyant economic times, "wine, women and song" do rise up to compete for our entertainment dollars. But, let things get a bit soft, even a deep recession such as the one we are finally digging out of--and what comes back up? This hobby, of course. In other words, our hobby, as represented here on these forums, is very much counter-cyclical to the economy. Don't write the obituary of this hobby yet folks! The fat lady ain't even zipped up her tight gown, tuned up her screeching soprano, and sung yet! Art

Methinks a lot of over-engineering is going on here! Almost any squirrel cage blower is more than enough! My Pace Peacemaker is not that huge, and yet, it's blower pulls every last bit of paint fumes out of the apartment, to the outdoors (through a very fine air filter, I might add!). In the bargain, it's more than whisper quiet, so much so that the old lady who lives downstairs doesn't even know I build models right above her bedroom! Art

The basic premise of "Out of the Box" or Box Stock classes began in the late 70's in IPMS, as a way to encourage newer, less experienced modelers to come in, to enter regional contests, even the IPMS Nats. The IPMS rules were very strict, prolly still are: Build the model exactly to the instructions, no added details whatsoever, not even drilling out the tailpipe, no wiring, no PE, no added details unless described in the instruction sheet/booklet. That meant the cleanest of builds, the very best of paintwork and danged little else unless ideas are presented in the printed kit instructions. I believe GSL still adheres to that formula. I had the privilege, in July 1985, of having the very first model car to win this class at the IPMS Nationals at Indianapolis IN--Monogram 1969 Pontiac GTO Judge, painted in factory match yellow. That car beat out aircraft, armor and ships for the award. While my scratchbuilt early 1960's fully detailed AJ Watson USAC Dirt Track Championship Car won Best Scratchbuilt and Best Model Car (got beat by ONE POINT for Best of Show), that OOB win meant much, much more to me. Basically, the class as originally devised means just that, take the kit parts, and do the very best you can--at most contests I have ever seen, even judged, this is a class where a gnat's eyelash can make the difference. And, since most contest organizers require that entrants display the instruction sheet with the model, there is generally very little room for fudging thngs--either the model is OOB, or it is not. The best of clean building, the best of paintwork, best of any surface detailing with paint or BMF is where it's all at. (some contest organizers do modify this concept, but what is the purpose of that? Either it's box stock or it's not, period!) Art

No, I am one of those "on the perimeter" in these two Moebius car kits--Dave Metzner is the man on the point--he's the one who's doing the hard work, digging up all the stuff, fighting with the tool shop and so on. Please give Dave your kudo's, he's more tnan earned them (oh, and buy a lot of the kit--he'll appreciate that too!) Art

If you mean wire wheels, there ARE wire wheels as an option in the kit--and they are gorgeous! Art

autocolorlibrary.com should have color chip chart. Art

What, just a homer, no Grand Slam? Hmmmm. Art