Art Anderson

Is there truly anything like "traditional" where hot rods were/are concerned? It's often pretty hard to put a term like "traditional" on any type of car that was, at the outset, almost always "home built", as opposed to being done in a professional shop someplace. To draw a fair comparison: Is there any such thing as a "traditional" model car? Think about that for a while. Art

Those so-called "Swamp Coolers" were both an accessory sold in the hotter, drier parts of the US back in the late 40's to at least the early 60's, as a way of providing cooling for cars being driven in the heat of summer. They worked by filling them with ice (some even used so-called "dry ice"--which is frozen CO2) which was packed into them. They worked by the forward motion of the car, which forced air into the front, which blew past a set of tubes, then into the body of the car through a slightly opened window. As the ice, or dry ice melted, it cooled that incoming air. I can still remember seeing, on a legendary family trip from Indiana to southern Arizona, in December 1957, seeing signs at gas stations in the Southwest, signs advertizing those things--rent it here, get it refilled at your next gas station (seems to me that there were rental companies of that sort of thing, who signed up gas stations along major highways out there back in those days), or just return the rental unit if you were on your way back to your more temperate part of the country. Art

It's a long thread in "On The Workbench" Harry. (hopefully I will get it finished this weekend for a final set of pics!) Art

1913 T Runabout was ICM's first Model T kit. Touring is the second release. Art

I just ordered in the 1911 Model T Touring Car--let's see if I learned anything from the Runabout, huh? Art

I believe AMT/Ertl coined that "Pro Shop" name, trying to indicate that those kits carrying that term were aimed principally at hobby shops, as opposed to being something sold to the Big Box stores. Art

The Buick had a longer wheelbase than any Chevy, and certainly by 1962, GM was back to the A-B-C body series. In addition, Buick's chassis was a completely difference design than the Chevrolet "hourglass" frame. Art

Nice build, just one correction though: Your MPC '32 Chevy is a Cabriolet, not a roadster. Cabriolet had a fixed windshield, and roll up windows, where the roadster still had a separate, bolted on windshield, and used snap on sidecurtains. Still though, a very handsome car! Art

We all have latent talent to at least some degree, I believe. Do we all have the skills? Probably not to the degree that each one of us would like, but we probably have at least latent skills (those just waiting to be developed). I heard, many years ago, a great bit of wisdom--that guides me still to this day: "What the mind of man can conceive, man can achieve." Art

On the then-new for 1949 all steel station wagons from Dodge and Plymouth. However, both still offered traditional wood bodied station wagons that year (they were built just 20 miles from where I live, US Body & Forge in Frankfort IN). Pics of those woodie bodied '49 wagons clearly show tailgate mounted tail and brake lights. Art

Bear in mind that back in 1949 (and for a couple decades later), there were no nationwide standards for most all automobiles--rather it was a collection of the laws of the then 48 individual states--which made for a few interesting variations. Art

FWIW, Chevrolet station wagons (very few built, in comparison to Ford, of course) also had drop-gate hinged taillights as late as 1949, and as standard equipment, only a single tail/brake lamp in the center of the tailgate. Chevy did offer, apparently, single filament taillights mounted on either C-pillar just outside of the tailgate opening, apparently optional, as they don't show up in all images of either the Woodie bodied, or Fisher-built steel bodied station wagons in that year. Plymouth and Dodge did likewise through the end of their woodie station wagon offerings as well. Art

I've never heard of the act of driving a station wagon with the tailgate open being illegal--certainly not in Indiana. After all, station wagons were originally marketed as commercial vehicles, and in many states (Indiana was one) could be licensed either as a light commercial car or as a passenger car. And, many were bought with the idea of being able to go to the lumberyard, cart home lengths of wood for home improvement projects, among other things. Art

Skip, which makes my point! GM Styling didn't do station wagon styling (that ever reached the production line) for any B-bodied cars until several years after the '49 Buick. And, only a few of those '49 Buick Estate Wagons were built--all the bodies from one or more aftermarket body companies--so in a way, it was certainly more cost effective to simply use sedan rear fenders such as seen on the '49 Buick. Another thing to consider is, a Buick was a longer and wider car than a Chevrolet or any other low-priced car of the era, and a lot of that added width was in the body sides, outboard of the interior width--which made those wider fenders a lot more practical, thus allowing for the standard Buick fender-mounted taillights. Art

Consider that until Fisher Body Division started producing passenger car station wagon bodies in steel mid-year 1949, all GM station wagon bodies were not only wood, but were always farmed out to companies specializing in woodie station wagon bodies. The same was true of Chrysler, and virtually every other automaker who even cataloged a station wagon. Art

True to a point--however, this is not a Buick-produced station wagon--farmed out on the occasional order for a station wagon. Art

FWIW, Ford moved their wagon taillights out to the rear fenders starting in 1952. Art

I've got several DVD's of early racing--my favorite being one filmed in 1946 at Indianapolis, for Firestone (for decades the only US tire maker doing racing tires). It's all in color, professionally filmed and produced, complete with a lengthy conversation between Wilbur Shaw (winner at Indianapolis in 1937, 1939 and 1940) and the winner of the very first 500, Ray Harroun, who was sitting in the very Marmon Model 12 "Wasp" race car he drove to victory in 1911 (The Marmon Wasp was owned by Howard Marmon all the way from 1911 until his passing in 1943, and the car eventually passed into the hands of Anton Hulman Jr--owner of IMS from 1945 until he died in 1977), becoming the linchpin of the Speedway's fabulous collection of historic race cars. And for those who question the color of the Marmon Wasp--it was, and always has been, painted a bright yellow!. Anyway, that video is just too neat for words: Art

The term "Station Wagon" (or for that matter, "Depot Hack") refers to the original use of this body style, which stems all the way back to horse-drawn vehicles: A wagon purpose-built for hotels and resorts to meet, and transport guests from the local railroad passenger station to their lodging, and back again--EXACTLY what hotel "shuttles" do nowadays! Very quickly though, this style of horse-drawn wagon became very popular with the wealthy, particularly for their summer estates (even winter homes in the "sun belt"), hence the moniker that Buick put on them: "Estate Wagon". Britain's landed gentry adopted this style of vehicle (from horse-drawn to motor cars) for all manner of country estate uses, from a passenger vehicle, to those purpose-equipped for servicing their sports of hunting, fishing, and chasing foxes on horseback with foxhounds. While station wagons were made on many different automobile chassis from perhaps 1910 or so, it was Edsel Ford who kicked off the idea of building station wagons right there on the assembly line, when he commissioned his stylist, Robert Gregorie (who styled virtually every Ford car from Model A through 1948), to design and get built, a station wagon on the then new 1928 Model A Ford chassis--for use on Edsel's newly purchased New Hampshire summer estate (which today is Martha Stewart's home!). Edsel liked that car so much, that he decided it would be a viable product for Ford Motor Company, and put it into production for 1929. The car was a success, in that from that point forward, Ford produced and sold hundreds of them yearly, with the real popularity coming with the "Baby Boom" years which followed WW-II, with families of multiple children. In all this, not until Willys in 1948, did any other automaker produce station wagons on their own assembly lines--GM and Chrysler continued to send partially completed chassis out to independent body companies for station wagons until 1949-50, when they shifted to all steel passenger car based station wagons (Chevrolet's claim to having produced the first steel station wagon in 1935--the Suburban--is a bit spurious, given that it was truck based, and ignoring the simple fact that all 1935 GM bodies still had a whole bunch of structural wood in them!). An interesting thought is how Ford came to clam the nickname "Wagonmasters"--consider that from that first 1929 Model A station wagon, through the end of true "Woodie" wagon bodies from iron Mountain MI at the end of 1948 model year production, there were more than 57,000 wood-bodied station wagons built just here in the US--and Ford produced over 50,000 of them! Even in 1949, when Chevrolet introduced their first all-steel wagon body (produced simultaneously with their wooden station wagon), they managed to eke out slightly more than 9,000 wagons total, while Ford Motor Company (both Ford and Mercury) wagons totaled more than 50,000. Even when, by 1957, the Chevy Nomad by the end of it's 3rd year of production was far surpassed numbers-wise, by the 1957 Ford Del Rio alone!. Art

Of course, put the taillights way out at the rear corners of the body--where they stand to get knocked off frequently? Art

Real car, for many reasons which I will not enumerate just now. Art

Did you not forget the '34 Ford Tudor Sedan from 1985-86 (and its '33 Ford Tudor street rod variant? Art

First released in late 1962/early 1963. Art

What almost everyone misses here, is that parts packs, if they are even a viable model product, virtually have to be their own tooling. Almost invariably, even the chrome parts trees are part of a much larger tool which is set up to produce all parts of a model kit that are to be molded all in the same color, type and grade of polystyrene. To simply "remove" this or that part or parts from that kit chrome tree would add far more cost (and ultimately retail price!) than would ever be acceptable. Trouble is, as well, parts packs have seldom ever been particularly successful, save for say, Pegasus wheel & tire sets (also similar sets from other sources), which stem from the long-standing practice of Japanese model kit mfr's, who "farm out" those to smaller, independent "job shops" scattered throughout Shuzoka City (arguably the "Detroit" of Japanese model kit manufacturing). While it's true that for us, most of us who read and participate in this and other online model car forums, subscribe and read the model magazines, we are the more serious, dedicated of all model car building enthusiasts--but we are but a tip of a much larger, and I suspect, much less-dedicated population of model car builders. That said, while we here tend to have the skills and abilities to adapt almost any model kit engine to practically any model car chassis ever injection-molded, I suspect that the vast, unseen and unheard from more casual builders see something of that sort as too far off the charts for their skils and/or tastes. That therein, would seem to be a very difficult nut to crack, and I suspect that most hobby wholesale houses and hobby shop owners surely are aware of it. Art