Art Anderson

In a very real way, wax is was. I almost always was a newly painted body shell before final assembly! Art

Well, an easy question to answer! With the Stutz Bearcat, as with most any brass era car, the radiator shell would have been brass, whether "brass", nickel plated, or painted (all three finishes were available in the era of the MPC Stutz Bearcat) the radiator core would have been black, coated with a thin coat of back tar! That was very common back in the day, in fact. a black tar spray was used alll te way into the late 1950's (even later I think into the 1960's) on radiator cores. Art !

I beieve a Ranchero is a given.'nuff said. Art

NOT the issue! My experience and my comments regard ONLY my experiences with it as regards model car parts. Art

Yup, ALL the way back to the late 1970's, in fact! Art

Bondic is water-clear. Art

So far, only a rumor. ICM's next 1/24 scale model car kit is a 1914 Model T Ford Chemical Car (Model T Ford runabout carrying a massive soda-acid fire extinguishing system. Art

Truthfully I know of no resin caster doing that pickup box as a free-standing conversion part, given that AMT 1960 Ford F-100 kits aren't at all plentiful. Perhaps when and/or if Modelhaus can see their way to open up their website again (they are literally swamped with orders since they announced their upcoming retirement this time next year--they might still have molds to do one. Art

"Cling" wraps are nothing more than thin clear vinyl, with a lot of the softener "PVC Monomer" in them to make them as flexible as they are. Trouble is, that gives Saran and other clinging food wraps the same ability to ruin a painted model surface as the dreaded "PVC Tire Disease". Sadly, the PVC has pretty much permanently softened the paint wherever it's been in contact with it. Art

Were I a betting persson, I'd say that the interior was a metallic very light silver-metallic or pearl. Art

You won't find a color chip for the "Ice Blue Pearl" that Ford styling used on the Futura, as it was NOT a production car color in 1955, plain and simple. What Patrick Mulligan of Ford's licensing arm came up with for the Johnny Lightning diecast Futura was 1964 Ford Skylight Blue ( http://www.autocolorlibrary.com/aclchip.aspx?image=1964-Ford-pg01.jpg ) which appears a bit darker than it actually is in this jpg of the Ditzler color chart, oversprayed with pearlescent clear as on the actual Futura for its 1955-56 auto show career. I sent a chip of Skylight Blue to the factory which produced virtually all Johnny Lightning diecasts back in the 90's-2004, with instructions to overcoat it with pearlescent clear--and then sent Ford one of the test shot Futura's--it was approved in a heartbeat (and back then Ford's licensing people were pretty demanding!). They went on to tell me that the "Skylight Bue" of the early 60's was inspired by the paint on the Futura of 8-18 years earlier but without the pearl coat. Since almost no one knows or remembers exactly what shade of light blue was on the Futura, I'd say they came pretty close when they helped us out at Johnny Lightning. Art

As built, the Lincoln Futura dream car was painted "Ice Blue Pearl" which Ford's historical people described to me as being what became that really pale, almost white color of blue seen in 1963-64 across the Ford line. That was coated with clear lacquer having ground up fish scales in it to give the pearlescent sheen. All the known color photo's of the Futura from Ford's archives show the car as being a pale green, like the Revell box-art, but I was told that was due to yellowing of the original transparency either during, or after the fire that destroyed the Ford Rotundra in Dearborn in 1955 or 1956. It was Barris Customs who painted the Futura bright red for a Hollywood movie. Art

Revell did, in a very accurately done, detailed 1/32 scale kit, a 1932 Duesenberg SJ Phaeton, back about 1955 or so. Art

I've mixed that color using Testors green with white to lighten it up. If you go looking at images of '49-53 Fords (cars had the same engines as the pickups, in the same colors most all of those years, you should be able to find a decent color shot that you can use for matching the color. Art

The Italeri '33 Cadillac is incorrectly labeled by them--that is a convertible sedan, not a Phaeton. By definition, the Phaeton body style (often called a "Touring Car" as well) was a completely open body, with folding top, and used snap-on side curtains, with no rollup windows.

I've used Fotki since I became aware of it, about 12-13 yrs ago--prefer it! Art

My answer is: NO. Why? If for no other reason, while we're all human beings, many of us related, we ARE all different--we tend, each of us, to see objects somewhat differently--What's perfectly accurate to you is not to me, and vice-versa--at least in our perception, the message each of our eyes send to each of our brains. A much wiser man than I, who remains anonymous, wrote a famous poem "The Blind Men and the Elephant", in which 6 blind men traveled to "see" an elephant. Each one reported what he "saw", by using his hands to feel the pachyderm (which in metaphor, could be 6-sighted men viewing the elephant with working eyesight), and each one reported a finding completely different from the other five. Add to this mix, for the sake of argument, the complications of "visual perspective" (The inevitable difference in looking at a car in real 1:1 life-size vis-a-vis a scale model), to our equally inevitable differences in interpreting exactly what we are looking at) and you have the makings of an argument. No mater how numerically "perfect" a model car body might be, inevitably there will be those who swear that it's innacurate beyond belief. Now, I'm not excusing seriously visible screw ups--not at all. What I am pointing out is that no matter how hard a model company's designers/mockup makers/toolmakers work to create an accurate model--there will ALWAYS be that faction who, to their eyes, see it as horribly wrong. And no, I am NOT making excuses for shoddy work--just pointing out a fact of model car life that I have lived. Art

I have to confess: Growing up in Indiana, almost in the shadow of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, we teenagers and young adults of the late 50's to the early 60's viewed F1 cars as being merely rich boys' toys, the stuff of "Teddy Teabagger" drivers. I think this video shows just how wrong we were back then! Art

At the very worst, to do a short bed F100 of that era is very simple! The standard kit from AMT (which has been reproduced in resin) is the 8' bed, where the short bed is 6 1/2 feet long. In 1/25 scale, the easy unit of measure is the millimeter: That short box F100 was 12" shorter forward of the rear wheel arch (12" shorter wheelbase), and 6" shorter out back. In 1/25 scale, 12mm shorter forward of the rear wheel arch, 6mm shorter behine. Very simple razor saw work. Art

LIght green Art

MPC promo's were all made in ABS plastic (as were AMT promo's from about 1962-onward, JoHan from (I believe) 1963. While ABS can be glued to ABS with liquid cements (they did that at the factory in promo-production frequently!), ABS doesn't bond well with polystyrene this way. CA glue would be a very good, and fairly reliable alternative. Art

I was in "Hobbies & History" at Lebanon IN Saturday--hoping to find a Monogram Duesenberg kit for a pending restoration of a 40-yr old build (they didn't have one). This shop is HUGE, 15' ceilings kits up to the top--an eclectic mix of newly produced ones (got the Model King '70 F-100) along with several old OOP kits. But, they had a dozen cans of Tamiya TS-13 (they had 8 when I left!). I suspect that Kalifornia, where Tamiya USA is located, keeps giving them fits over this and that with paint. Art

The 1966 movie "Grand Prix" was filmed in large part by camera's mounted on a modified Ford GT-40 race car. That same camera car was used for on-track filming of the 1968 film "Winning" (Paul Newman & Joanne Woodward, Robert Wagner, with a very young Richard Thomas (remember the scene in the little town of Elkhart Lake WI where the beer can went into the street-corner mailbox?) I saw a day's filming of "Winning" at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in early August 1968 (got to do that by being in several crowd scenes!) By the time they were filming "Winning", that GT 40 chassis had lost most of its bodywork,and at various times when they were making scenes on the Speedway that day, the cameraman's position changed--still marvel that he was gutzy enough to do what he did at 120-130mph out on the racetrack! Art

Oh, and the MPC Gangbusters '27 and '28 Lincoln kits, with their "working" steering gear setups! Art