Art Anderson

Keep thinking, and you will discover where this body shell came from!

Uh keep working on the derivation of tha coachbuilder's name--you'll slap your forehead when you stumble on to it! As for color, not finalized, but I am leaning toward Clay Rust, which was a Cord 810 color, but still good for 1932.

Le Rouge? VERY prolific body builder!

And, soft aluminum in the bargain! Art

This is a resin body I cast about 20 years ago, under the name All American Models. The body was mastered by the late Lee Baker, of Chattanooga TN. It will be a non-supercharged Model J--a few engine modifications had to happen there!

OK, here's some food for thought: 1/72 scale seems to have begun with WW-II "recognition" models of aircraft, used widely in both the US and the UK to train anti-aircraft gunners and spotters as to "Friend or Foe". 1/40 scale was chosen by Revell for their military vehicle and artillery kits, as they could fit the kits into their then-standard series of model kit boxes. 1/48 scale became a popular scale for model aircraft kits, beginning first with Lindberg and then popularized by Monogram. Foreign kit manufacturers, seeing the sheer popularity of Monogram's military aircraft simply followed that company's lead 1/43 scale model cars were first introduced to match the scale that diecast toy car mfr's such as Corgi, Dinky, and Solido were producing--and the scale stuck around. 1/32 scale is the scale first used for plastic model car kits--Hudson Miniatures plastic antique cars, and of course, Revell's Highway Pioneers. It became a somewhat popular aircraft scale by the early 1960's, with Monogram leading the way with their Grumman F3F carrier-based biplane fighter, and some tank kits followed soon afterward. 1/25 scale makes a lot of sense, as in this scale, 40-thousandths of an inch is one scale inch on the model. 1/24 scale was popularized by Monogram, probably given that there designers and pattern-makers were comfortable with 1/48, and 1/24 is simply twice that size. 1/20 scale has had a small following, popularized by MPC's founder, George Toteff who supposedly wanted a line of model car kits in a larger scale, but not as large as what others were doing 1/18 scale has had only a handful of plastic kits produced in that size--notably the Tamiya McLaren M8A kit. 1/16 scale was popularized by Revell, who wanted to do larger scale model car kits, but not so large that modelers would only buy one or two due to space considerations, as well as cost/price. 1/12 scale came into its own when Tamiya introduced their line of Formula 1 kits in this scale--again as a way of producing larger, much more detailed kits at the time. 1/8 scale happened simply to grab attention, and Monogram's 1/8 scale model car kits certainly did that in spades in the 1960's. Art

Perhaps not, considering that at the end of the 1954 model year, Chevrolet had several hundred unsold Corvettes. Of course, any debate on the merits/demerits of their not doing that Corvair dream car as a production model would be, at best, academic. Art

Before the advent of commercially produced tow truck bodies and cranes, virtually all tow trucks were conversions of passenger cars, often times conversions of larger luxury cars. By the mid-late 1920's, those carmakers having also a 1 1/2-2 ton truck line did tend to offer at least some sort of more stylish version of their trucks to dealers, who then could go to a specialty maker of tow truck cranes to complete the project. Cadillac and Lincoln even went so far as to provide dealers with complete drawings showing how to modify a sedan body into a tow truck cab, Lincoln even supplying the bed to match the lines of a Lincoln, for several years. Art

That goes for 1954 and 1955 as well, as those were continuations of the original 1953 (1955 getting the first Chevrolet 265cid V8). 1956-62 Corvettes could be had with a lift-off "hardtop" that latched down pretty solidly to the rear deck and windshield header, and with their rollup windows really could pass for hardtops even though the hard roof wasn't permanently a part of their body shells. Art

Those are the chromed "open steel wheel" wheel covers which were an optional wheel cover for Comets in 1965--they are pretty correctly done in the kit! Art

That stuff is DEATH on aluminum. Art

I see that offset printing is still being used, upon searching.

I would wonder if offset printing supplies are even available anymore, given the immense changes in say, small jobs printing, what with digital technology.? Art

Tom, come to think of it, you keep referring to "developer"? Offset printing sheets are created by a photographic process, in which a photographic emulsion is coated onto the thin sheet aluminum, then exposed in the same manner as black & white camera film is exposed--it's developed in the very same way, after which the undeveloped emulsion was washed off in I believe, water. The only thing left on the bright (?) aluminum surface would be the developed emulsion, which is essentially permanent, hence no developer should be present. In the printing process, the ink is picked up only on the lettering and/or graphics imprinted on the aluminum. Harking back to a previous reply that I made, I used left-over-to-otherwise-be-discarded offset printing aluminum sheets for such as firewalls and instrument panels for 1050's and 60's Indy roadster models that I built (I built over 100 1/24-1/25 scale models of vintage Indy cars just from 1969-1981, and used a fair amount of old offset aluminum "stencils", for both engined-turned finished panels and POLISHED aluminum as well--with no problems whatsoever. After all, the images on those plates are only lightly etched into the metal, so you should be able to obliterate that with a Micro-Mesh Polishing Cloth very quickly, then following that up with a fine polishing compound to get as bright a shine as you want. Assuming that you are planning on mounting the aluminum panels on some sort of smooth "buck", this method should work, I would think! Art

The Moebius SWB F100's with the 300-inch six are exclusive to Model King at this time, therefore the number of kits produced is in his hands--in other words, they are a strictly limited quantity. Moral of the story: When you see that Model King is getting an "exclusive" such as these and you WANT one--do not dilly-dally around. Art

Bill makes a very good point. To add a bit, "parting out" model kits for sale is not at all a new phenomenon: It's been going on as long as we've had model car shows & swap meets frankly. 30-35 years ago, there was a pair of Chicago-area modelers who regularly toted a Cadillac hearse (Yes, a Cadillac hearse) loaded with boxes of.........model car parts. I don't think they ever got wealthy off of that, but for every critic of what they did, there were more that jumped at the chance to go through their stuff for that set of mags, that elusive engine, so on, and on and on and on. Art

I've done that in the past,with excellent results! Art

Ahh, but 1942 was a major facelift on the 1941 model! The sheet metal introduced for 1942 is identical to what was produced from 1946-1948, only the grille. hood trim, and taillights were different--and those are made by Ken Kitchen of Kitchen Table Resins.

The Futura was painted a very light blue pearl. The "green" color on the box art, and in existing photo's from that period was the result of degradation of the original color transparencies. Art

Those kits came out about the time I opened my own hobby shop The Modelmaker, and frankly they all laid eggs sales-wise. 3-4 yrs after they were droped, there were hobby wholesalers still trying to get rid of them. Such experiences bode very poorly when reissue kits are being considered, frankly. Art

Yeah, not too many offset printers out there anymore. My mom was the secretary of a rather large church here 1956-75, and when smaller offset printers became available, the church bought one for printing bulletins and their weekly newsletter. Offset used a photographic negative on thin, hard aluminum sheet having the text and images as etchings in the aluminum which picked up the ink, tranferred that to the paper. Once the print job was done, there was no further use for those sheets of aluminum, so I was able to cabbage onto them whenever I needed a bit of thin aluminum. Art

Tom, correct me if I'm wrong, but are you asking about an offset printing master? If so, back in my model Indy car building days, I used old offset printing masters as a source of very thin, somewhat hardened sheet aluminum for race car firewalls and instrument panels. I used to just simply sand the sheet clean and smooth with 600-grit sandpaper, to get that rolled, satiny finish. Art

It may, or it may not. However, I've been using gap-filling CA's for now 30-years, with BSI's accelerator, and have yet to have a single model car built thus come unglued. That also includes dozens of fabricated masters used in resin-casting, which had to withstand sometimes incredible stresses when removed from their inner "core" mold sections (those that broke apart tended to suffer breakage of un-bothered styrene sections at a frequency equal to or even greater than, CA glued joints. Art

The side window shape was corrected when AMT produced the 1957 Cameo & stepside. Art

Ordinarily, licensing for model kits (and diecast models) covers a set number of kits as a guarranteed amount, but more than likely a kit that is discontinued was dropped due to flagging sales, to the point that it makes no sense to mold up more at the time. Relax, because if the particular subject has any "legs" at all, it will return! Art