Art Anderson

Gunze Sangyo kitted both the MGB and the TR-3 (even did a TR-2!

Tom, Seriously, this stripping job (twice on two models at the same time!) was the first time I've stripped any model car bodies in at least 25 years. So, I went with what I could find on a Sunday afternoon. Art

Ron, excellent point made. There probably is no model car kit that is 100% perfectly accurate, due to the very nature of how model car kits are created. I would suspect that Tamiya car kits, for example, suffer from the same problems (remember the hue and cry over their pair of Jeep kits back over 20 years ago? Those drew a fair amount of criticism on this continent, because we in the United States can SEE Jeeps almost daily, practically any place in the USA), but so many of their model kits are of cars seldom if ever seen widely in the US. Not many of us have had more than a passing glance at most exotics, and certainly rather few of us have ever seen an F1 car up close and personal. Over on the aircraft, armor and naval ships side of the plastic modeling hobby, the same is also true--again, very few modelers of those subjects truly have real-life, up-close-and-personal experience with any of those subjects. So, almost all of us have to rely on photographs or drawings of the real thing (and photography doesn't always tell the truth, and the only drawings worth more than the paper they are printed on are original manufacturer's or naval shipyard drawings--anything else is a latter-day interpretation of the real thing, frankly!). In my past life, I have had to work with automaker's 3-views, and for the most part I found them of little absolute help, beyond establishing the overall silhouette shape--those drawings seldom ever show the subtleties of surface contours, contrary to this forum's popular opinion. Photographs? Perhaps great, once in a while, in my product development years, have I gotten hold of pics of any car that told me EXACTLY how it should be. Creating a model kit out of "whole cloth" is perhaps the ultimate in scratchbuilding--not much room there for "kit bashing", again--in my 12 yrs of creating masters for resin-casting and then casting them--I've been there, done that, gotten the tee-shirt. In my almost 3 years developing (as was the plan) accurately done "1/64" scale diecast miniatures of real cars (even a few 1/24 scale diecasts, and a couple of 1/18 scalers in the bargain!), I had to deal with a ton of stuff, including miscalculations of this or that shape or contour. In addition, I have seen how it was done, nearly 40 yrs ago, at AMT Corporation. Further, I get periodic calls to give up most of a weekend, run up north, help evaluate Moebius tooling mockups, and get the call to do a lot of that via email--so I DO have a good bit in my resume' on this issue. In short, any model kit, of any subject, and indeed our attempts to build them accurately, are subject to the same "interpretations" of any skilled artist who paints by hand, in oils, a picture of a famous person, a well-known scene or object, or carves same in marble or any other carving medium--all the way through the process, it becomes simply one person's view, one person's interpretation of the real subject. In result, to pontificate, to shout from the highest altitude that such-and-such is either perfectly correct, or totally wrong is often merely a matter of that individual's perception, and may well not, were it put to the test, fit into any "mold" created off the original. Bottom line? If a particular model car kit doesn't meet one's personal opinion as to how it should look like, be it shape, or some small detail--why not exercise what most here on forums such as this claim to be your knowledge and skills, show the rest of us exactly how you see it should look like? Endless carping about "this is wrong", "So & so" knew how to get it right", all the missives that I've seen in almost 10 yrs of watching these forums, does nothing to advance the art of our tremendous hobby--rather it drags us down into the same gutter as the flood of political mud that I see over on Facebook. End of reply to Ron's excellent post, and my silly rant here. Art

Chevrolet Motor Company was founded on November 3, 1911, by Louis Chevrolet, William C. Durant, William Little, and Edwin R. Campbell, in Flint MI. In 1912, R. S. McLaughlin from Canada (CEO of General Motors Canada) joined the company. Durant had joined up with William Little, owner of the Flint Wagon Works in 1910, and brought Louis Chevrolet into the company (Chevrolet was a race driver who had raced Buicks as a promotion during Durant's first stint as President of the then fledgling GM). 1961 was correctly chosen as the "Golden Anniversary" (50th) of Chevrolet. However, the first car designed for the newly formed company was designed and built in 1912, largely engineered by Louis Chevrolet. Art

I had to strip a pair of Hudsons a couple of weeks back (painted, stripped, repainted, then had to strip again!), used Purple Power for the first time. I used one of those polyethylene plastic 2-quart pitchers with the tight fitting cover, filled it,dropped the bodies in. The enamel paint (Scale Finishes) came off in mere seconds, the Tamiya grey primer (original reason for stripping, Scale Finishes enamel did not adhere to it!), so I just left the bodies and hoods in the PP for several days, then took them out, scrubbed the offending primer off in about 10 minutes per body and hood. I had to strip the bodies after their second paint jobs (this time, a clear coat crinkled the paint), took the same time, same pitcher full of PP, and it took the Duplicolor red oxide primer off in about 24 hrs (some scrubbing was in order there). This is the first time I've every used Purple Power (actually, it's been probably 35 years since I'd stripped any model car bodies), and am pretty much sold on the product. Art

Check me if I'm wrong, but those steelies sure do look to be "reversed rims". Art

In times past, I've made Indy car windscreens, small air scoops, that sort of thing on the Mattel VacUForm, but that those are about as big a part that can be made well on one of those. For a full body shell, in 1/25 scale, you'd need a very large, commercial sized vacuum forming table, and the surface detailing will not truly be there, not to the level which we like. That said, smaller street rod, race car body panels can be made on a machine no larger than 9" X 12". Art

Ford introduced the first factory assembly-line produced pickup trucks in 1925, and the AMT kit represents this one very well, especially considering the age of the kit tooling (first produced in 1961). The AMT pickup box is a pretty good representation of the actual unit, wood flooring with skid strips is reproduced on the top side of the floor but not on the underside. On the real pickup box (and very traditional for at least 60 years--with a few notable exceptions) the wood flooring is visible from underneath, the boards being milled so as to link together edge-to-edge. While I didn't find any images of what the front wall looked like, I suspect it was smooth, as it is a very small pickup box by today's standards. Here is a picture of an original, unrestored '25 T pickup box: http://www.mtfca.com/discus/messages/80257/92534.jpg Art

An interesting blending of a '29 coupe body with a '32 5-window roof, upper A-posts and windshield! Art

I like to think that model building is NOT like being 10 yrs old, and having Mom remind you that you are to clean up your plate before eating dessert, and leaving the table before finishing your supper is NOT an option ("Shades of the 1950's!"). Our's is a hobby where we pretty much can start something, like starting with the salad that Mom put beside my dinner plate 60+ years ago, but if I want to skip to a really fun part of the project, I can (with caveats and limitations of course!) and it can become like eating dessert first. And, unlike dinner where the food will spoil or at least lose some of its appeal if left too long, the rest of that model project banquet will still be there when I am ready to taste the next course. Art

The Hubley 1960, 61 and 62 Fords were 1/24 scale. Art

FWIW, ENTEX was never a manufacturer of model kits, but rather, a US importer of model kits from several different mft's. Most of their kits were those done anywhere from the late 1950's to perhaps 1978-79 or thereabouts. I'm pretty sure Fujimi's Dino 206 was a later kit than that. Art

Those were the JoHan "Gold Cup" series of kits: Chrysler Turbine Car, three 1931 Cadillac V16 cars, and the two Mercedes Benz 500 K's

With several thousand model car kits in my stash, I've seen just about every defect one can think of--the vast majority of them in older kits, bought years ago. Realize that no matter the venue, no matter the country of manufacture, these can happen, and have since the beginnings of plastic model kits. However, in my experience, warped parts are FAR more prevalent than short shots. even missing parts. In the 8 years that I owned my own hobby shop here in town, I never refused to replace a missing part from a kit--I never had a problem returning those to my wholesalers for credit. I used to track defective product compared to products sold, and guess what? About 1/10th of one percent (of course, I held onto what few defective kits I had (used to simply replace the part in question, retain the now-incomplete kit for perhaps a couple of months) just in case there might be another instance of a defective or missing part--only on a handful of occasions did I have to "rob" that kit for another part to placate a customer. While the instances of such defects were pretty scarce, defects were scattered across virtually all makes of plastic models. Short shots (where the mold cavity doesn't fill completely, leaving a gap or a void) can be very hard to see in the production process, unless it involves a section of a body shell, chassis or interior--the smaller the part that's short-shot, the harder it is to see, even at first glance by discerning modelers. A missing part, particularly a small one, can happen at almost any stage of kit production--again very hard to spot in the production process, although with more and more newly tooled model kits coming along--the concept of a fully framed sprue (in which all the parts and their attachment points are surrounded by an outer sprue "frame". That right there has been a huge step in reducing the missing parts problem. Warped or broken parts, most notably body shells, hoods and chassis (be those engraved detail plate-style or the more modern frames separate from floorboards) can happen at any point in the production, packing and even in the shipping process: Cram too many parts in a kit box, or not taking time to develop a packaging sequence which doesn't put major parts under stress or strain. (I'm sure there are more than a few of us older modelers who still remember the original issue AMT 1959 El Camino with its crushed top). In the case of the mentioned Elky kit, that resulted from too many parts being stuffed into the then-standard AMT Annual Series model kit boxes--simply not enough room in one of those for what was perhaps the most complex and highest parts count kit done by AMT to that point (1964). The solution? AMT went to the wider box used by such as the '25 Model T Double Kit and the '29 Model A Roadster/Ala Kart Double Kit: Problem pretty much solved. While that El Camino has suffered from squashed roof posts, that is nowhere near as seemingly universal as it was in the summer of 1964. Art

Travis, I've seen numerous late flathead Ford V8 powered trucks (from pickups up to 1.5 tons), 1949-53, and every one of them had their engines painted red. Incidently, those were all original, unrestored vehicles. Art

IIRC, from Leo Beebe's excellent book "Ford, The Dust and the Glory", the issues with the 4-cam Indianapolis engine had to do with a rather narrow torque and horspower curve--that engine could pump out about 700hp, but at a constant high rpm range. Art

Two suggestions, Mark! First, consult with your close friend, Tim Boyd on what all it takes to laser scan a real car to make a model kit--not as cut-and-dried as you might think. Second, a 3D scan may or MAY NOT tell all the story, in my experience so far, it doesn't. Take your camera, shoot tons of pictures--film for digital camera's, last I looked, is damned near free!). Last, take a carpenter's rule with you (black out every other inch, makes it easier to see dimensions when that ruler shows up in the reference pics you take!!) A very few of us have been down that very road) Art

Accuracy is as accuracy does, Harry. As long as any reproduction is the interpretation of a human's view of the original, it may well be quite accurate to that person, and whomever is reviewing it, but perhaps not so to someone else. And, therein will always be the rub. I have to wonder, has anyone following this thread ever attempted scratch building a model car, using only photographs, perhaps adequate measurements of the real thing (perhaps not too!)? Truthfully, to participate in the product development phase of a model car kit--or even a diecast model car (I did that for almost 3 years working as a product development/automotive research person for Johnny Lightning 2002-2005) is very much akin to scratchbuilding, except that I was in the position of having to describe to the tooling mockup makers how I wanted the mockup to look, down to the closest detail, the accurate shapes, and proportions (JL "1/64" scale diecasts weren't all exactly 1/64 scale, but had to have very similar dimensions (width & length) and weigh at least to a set standard (after all, we did them two ways: With scale appearing wheels and tires for a replica appearance, as well as free-rolling hard wheels for gravity racing!). All of this had to happen by going through someone (or perhaps several someones!) who were fluent in English, as well as their native tongue (Chinese, and the several dialects therein!). Every word I typed into my computer in English had to be translated by that contact person, into Chinese characters, so that the guys in the pattern shop could understand what was being requested, what was required. All the way along, I (and the two different co-workers I teamed up with in those three years) had to constantly (and diplomatically) make comments about the corrections needed. But, it gets deeper! Tom Lowe (now the owner of Round2) was the owner then of Playing Mantis, parent company of Johnny Lightning, and he decided we needed to do some 1/18 scale diecasts, followed by a set of 1/24 scale models as well. The two 1/18 scale diecasts I had responsibility for were a 1955 Chevrolet Sedan Delivery and a 1948 Chevrolet 1/2 ton Panel Delivery Truck. It was interesting to note that when I got the 2X sized tooling mockups from China, they both were very good, the 48 Panel was as perfect as perfect gets--compared really great with the 200 or so digital pics I had shot of a real one--and believe me, that is a very difficult subject to capture in miniature (there are a number of very visible inaccuracies in the AMT/Ertl 1950 Chevrolet 3100 pickup, if one does serious research!). The '55 Sedan delivery came out, crack out of the box, perfect in every way save for the shapes of the front and rear bumpers--so I dug out about a dozen pics of '55 Chevy bumpers, front and rear, that I'd taken, plus some photo grabs off the internet, and with some cajoling, they nailed it!. Next up was a series of 6 1/24 scale diecast model cars, along with several 1/34 scale model trucks, all done to fit our license with Coca Cola (Johnny Lightning was Coke's preferred diecast supplier for several years back then!). A couple of those were actually quite easy: A 2004 Ford E-150 cargo van, and a 1950 Bulletnosed Studebaker Commander Starlight, with a side dish of 1957 Ford Courier Sedan Delivery. While the E-150 and the Studebaker sailed right along, the Courier had some bumps in the road--Patrick Mulligan (who was the Scale Auto Magazine Editor pretty much right out of college!) could not approve it, as there were proportional problems with the mockup. Patrick did dig into Ford's vast archive of historical photo's, and found a 4-view set of drawings of the real thing, and that made the Courier possible--many of you have seen those diecasts. Now, bear with me while we "fast forward" to today: No longer are tooling mockups carved by hand by skilled sculptors, no longer are body planform drawings done on a drafting board--no, it's all computerized, down the sculpting (by 3D printing) of the tooling mockups. Now we have a situation! There are, on one end, people who do know what the model should look like--THEY did the research, took the photo's, did the measurements. On the other end, there are digital specialists, trying to interpret that information (and it can be voluminous!) on computers, first to get CAD line drawings, second to achieve CAD 3-Dimensional images, and third, to finally 3D print all the parts for a tooling mockup. Trouble is, the very skilled people doing all that have NEVER seen, nor are likely to EVER see, the actual 1:1 car they are called upon to develop into a model kit! So you ask, why not get someone in the US, WHO KNOWS WHAT A MODEL CAR KIT SHOULD LOOK LIKE!, to do it? Answer, if someone with all that passion, knowledge and skills exists, nobody seems to know who they are, where to find them--AND if they did find someone like that, the costs would be 2-3 times what it is at the present time (and it is all the development and tooling costs that determine, ultimately, model car kit prices folks!) Guys on this very set of forums are b****ing about the price of model kits today, as opposed to 50 years ago! Time was when a hand-carving model car kit pattern-maker was worth nearly his weight in gold! Regardless of Harry P's pontificating, this is as much a matter of artistry (just as with pure scratchbiulding) as any technical exercise. Any competent wood carver can create the casting masters for a cylinder block, a head, an intake or exhaust manifold, or for that matter, anything Tupperware makes--BUT it takes a sculptor to carve, from wood, an accurate replica of all the shapes and contours of a real car, shrunk down to say 1:25 scale. It gets even more difficult when one is called upon to help review, critique. a set of tooling mockups created by 3D printing, and worse yet, to look at the first go-round of a model car kit test shot--it's getting better, but still it is really difficult at times to know just where to begin. Dave Metzner noted in another forum on this excellent website, just how small the staffing is at any model company today, in the area of new kit development--that's a fact of life as it is, not how anyone would want it to be. I know I've given considerable of my time, along with considerable mileage to help him with evaluating tooling mockups--each time we've gotten together to do that, we each learned something--same with model car test shots--some hair does get pulled there as well. Whew! I've blown off long enough here--but please, Harry Pristovnik, get off of your high horse--when I see you scratchbuild something besides a square-rigged Woodie Body for a Rolls Royce, and get it accurate, right, then I might accept you as someone who really knows something about all of this. Until such time, I would suggest you consider moderating your own tone of voice, your rhetoric--"It ain't as easy as you think, Boy!"

The original intent was to use the 255cid 4-Cam Ford Indy Engine for LeMans etc., but it lacked the power to do the job needed. Art

Agreed, a '60 El Camino would probably sell pretty well. Art

NIce pics, but not a single Indy Roadster in the bunch--lots of gorgeous AAA/USAC Kurtis Offy Midgets, and several 1950's early 1960's USAC Sprint cars though/ Art

For what it's worth, laminated safety glass predated the Tucker by 20 years, Ford having introduced that on the very first 1928 Model A's, with universal industry adoption within just a year or so after. Seat belts were around before the Tucker, having been introduced, but not required, in race cars as early as 1932 or so. Disc brakes, in 1948 were an iffy thing--they never really worked all that well until the introduction of power brake boosters, even though Crosley had them by 1949. Art

Obviously Harry, you've never been a model kit pattern maker, or you would not make that statement. As one who has considerable experience in model product development, I am here to tell you that any model car is the result of a human interpretation of what the person(s) involved see, in the same way as any artist or sculptor. Depending on the level of skill and artistry, the result can vary, of course. But remember, in 1965 or so, when the Predicta kit was being tooled, model kit pattern makers were still learning and honing their craft. Period. Art

Having read a couple of books on the story of Tucker, both Preston Tucker, and the car, a few things stand out: For starters (and importantly, I think) Preston Tucker, by 1946, had a considerable reputation as being more than a bit of a huckster. He first seemed to appear on the automotive scene in the early 1930's, and for the 1935 Indianapolis 500 Mile race, recruited the famed, but vastly reduced-in-circumstances, the legendary Harry Armenius Miller, who headed up the company responsible for so many fabulous 122 and 91 cid race cars of the 1920's, to design a new car, front drive, using modified (read that hopped up) Ford V8 engines. He then managed, through Edsel Ford, to convince Henry Ford to bankroll the project--which resulted in a team of 11 Miller-Ford front drive race cars for the 1935 "500". They were a dismal failure, the only cars to make the race all went out with steering gear seizure, due to Miller's insistence that the small, very precisely (read that very tight internal clearances) built steering gears be mounted within an inch or so of the left hand exhaust header--they got so out as to boil the grease out of them, then seized up). That experience soured Ford Motor Company and the Ford family on racing involvement for another 20 years, 29 years in the case of Indianapolis racing. Henry Ford was so incensed that he had his company take possession of the Miller Fords, which got locked away, none of them reappearing until 1941, when the Winfield brothers Bud (carburetion expert) and Ed (camshaft design) managed to pry one loose for mounting their new Winfield Supercharged V8 in--that engine being renamed the Novi in 1946. During WW-II, Tucker ran a contract machine shop in Ypsilanti MI, built up an armored car with an electric turret carrying a pair of machine guns, for which he made outlandish claims of ground speed, as well as the turret being the best ever designed. The movie hints that the US Military used Tucker's turret in bombers, both USAAF and US Navy, but if one looks up the specifications for any US Military aircraft equipped with any sort of swiveling turret, nowhere does the Tucker turret come to be mentioned. Following VJ Day, Preston Tucker became one of many who could readily see the huge market that existed for new cars--by then the average age of cars on American roads was an astonishing 15+ years, brought on mostly by the Great Depression (which while formally ending in 1933, had its effects on public confidence economically all the way out to about 1940 (when the US morphed into the "Arsenal of Democracy", then followed by 3 1/2 years of no new automobiles being produced, due to the total war effort. Trouble was, by 1945, Preston Tucker didn't have the money to start up a new automobile company on his own, and was pretty much "persona non grata" in the financial industry--hence his feverish drive to promote his "ideas" to the general public at large. And frankly, many of his sales pitches were the stuff of fraudsters, shysters, whether or not he was that himself--that's what raised a lot of eyebrows. Instead of starting out relatively small (arguably a questionable venture at any rate), Tucker went way beyond what any other startup in the auto industry had ever done, from a cold beginning (by contrast, Henry Kaiser was a known entity, had an enviable record of successful ventures--from Hoover Dam to the building of hundreds of Liberty Ships and the shipyard they were built in, from scratch) to be a major automaker overnight. It got to the point that he was selling dealerships in Tuckers before the first samples were even assembled--anyone wanting to become a Tucker dealer had to buy a boatload of Tucker accessories ahead of car production, and pay for them in cash (a local acquaintance of mine here inherited a 2 1/2 car garage full of that stuff (anyone want a radio with antenna for a Tucker perhaps?) when his father took a bath on those parts. With all of this, it took only a second-rate muckraking columnist in New York City, Westbrook Pegler, and a Michigan senator who may or may not have had direct ties with any of the Big Three automakers, to derail the man's ambitions, and while he was absolved of any criminal wrong doing, it is pretty evident that Tucker Motors would not have survived the end of the postwar seller's market anyway--non of the surviving "independent" automakers did, save for American Motors the rest (Studebaker, Packard, Hudson, Kaiser-Frazer, Crosley and a half dozen or so mini car manufacturers were all gone from the US scene by the end of 1963. How could Tucker have survived in the long run, as thinly capitalized as it was when for example, GM spent almost 10 times Tucker's capitalization just to restyle their 1949 car lines? Art

I've done this on a few occasions over the years, and decided that "Never again". I have simply told anyone since who has asked, that when I decide to start on a model project, it's my hobby, my relaxation (?), my own passion. For those reasons, I simply decline, end of that conversation. Now, that said, I have given several pieces away over the years, to a relative or two, as well as a couple of friends, AFTER I've had the fun of building them, and had no further wish to display them, or take them to shows--but that is the extent of it. Art