Art Anderson

PVC (vinyl) can be very successfully painted with any of the water-borne acrylic paints sold by Folk Art or Apple Barrel, as unlike enamels, they will dry readily on PVC, and unlike lacquers, they tend to stick to soft PVC pretty well. With narrow tires such as motorcycle tires, I'd suggest mounting the tires on the wheels first (a thin band of CA glue works for me on this), then painting the tires your desired color. Art

FWIW, car and motorcycle tires weren't actually white back then--they only appear that way in photographs due to the still primitive camera's and film of the day. Rubber tires were originally made with gum rubber (you know, the kind that comes from trees on rubber plantations) which is a creamy color when dry, and turns a buff color when vulcanized (think the buff colored sidewalls on 10-spd bicycle tires). Just a thought for your accuracy. Art

Hmmm, scale, dimensional and proportional inaccuracies all the way back then, in the "Golden Age"? Who'd have thunk it? (tongue in cheek!) Art

Harry, There is a WIDE difference between constructive criticism and the outright vituperant comments I've seen whenever someone puts up pictures of any test shot model kit. Perhaps there's a bit more "leadership" needed? Art

The only difference between Bonneville and Catalina/Ventura is the overall length (Bonneville was built with an extra long trunk--otherwise, the body is the same as any other full-sized '61 Pontiac. Bonneville has a longer wheelbase (the rear of the frame is extended farther aft--forward of the middle of the car, dimensions are the same for all full sized '61 Pontiacs. Art

I have the stuff on order from C1 in the UK (missed their table at NNL-East until after they'd sold out of the metalizer), but from all descriptions I suspect that the metalizing powder somehow becomes rather embedded into the painted surface itself, which could well mean stripping the body (or parts) with whichever stripper works with that paint, and repainting. Just a couple of pennies worth.... Art

Now, IF ONLY Revell-Germany would do this very same subject in 1/24 scale!!!! Art

I suspect that was a big part of the equation for Revell-Monogram at the time. Not only was the parent corporation Hallmark Cards, but R-M was placed within the Crayola Crayons group (like what kind of message about model cars being kid stuff did they not kowtow to?). And yes, I'd be VERY sure that there was a rather closely defined budget in place, PLUS an overwhelming need to please the Nabobs at Walmart down in Bentonville AR, to meet their then-quarterly store resets (if a vendor misses a re-setting deadline with any outfit that large, they stand to lose a pretty big sale (Walmart used to by model car kits by the 10's of thousands!), and quite possibly future retail space within the stores themselves! There's another pressure-caused motivation to "get the product out the door ASAP", perhaps regardless of whether it meets general expection of consumers (of such are product recalls often generated!). That goes right back to a phrase I wrote earlier today: "....time is money, and money is time...." Unless one has been in a miniature/model kit product development situation (and I have) at some time in their working lives, it's surely difficult to understand, to comprehend. I do tend to believe that in the case of Revell-Monogram and that aforesaid Dodge Charger--there had to have been a lot of red faces, along with "under the breath" mutterings along the lines of "WE told you it wasn't ready!!!!" somewhere along the way. With larger model kit companies, the top floor corner office must get more and more distant, aloof, with each passing year, or so it would seem. Art

Monty: "I've noticed that you like to try and hide behind that "automotive modeler vs kit assembler" line, but did you honestly expect anyone, including the "automotive modelers" to just accept the Charger for what it was, let alone try to fix that roof? " Nowhere in any discussions have I ever denigrated anyone for being merely a "kit assembler" as opposed to a "modeler"--but that is a comparison that does get tossed around an awful lot. But, let's face it: While message boards and forums such as this one are well-populated with highly knowledgeable modelers, they are pretty much the very top reaches of a much larger pyramid--behind them are hundreds of thousands of model car builders who really don't get as deeply into scale modeling as you or me--or for that matter perhaps most who make up the content of MCM Forums. Those tend to be the ones who enjoy model car building, but may well not be all that concerned with the finer points of accuracy--and that's an observation, not a criticsm--most all of us have spent our share of time at that level as well, your's truly included. As for the Lindberg Cutlass 442 in question, that kit was tooled in China, and apparently not enough followup happened on this side of the pond to catch that hood discrepancy before kits went into production, ultimately landing on store shelves here in the US. I would chalk that one up to inexperience on somebody's part--after all, truly professional, experienced model car kit development people aren't exactly growing on trees. Along that same line, I would wonder if the Revell-Monogram Charger roof you mention (and I do have one of the inaccurately done kits in my stash here still!) may well have happened at a point in time when that company was going through some transitions--lose an experienced pattern-maker here, a knowledgeable product development guy there, and such glaring errors can, and do happen. Both of these are issues that any model company has, and will face periodically. It's to the point that any model company (or representatives therein) probably should no longer show even a nearly finished test shot of a kit, lest the public who sees pics of such seem to automatically assume that what they are seeing in test shots will be exactly what they will find when they crack open the box of any newly issued model car kit--the criticism of such test shots has gotten to that level of vituperation, frankly. Art

No, Ford's last true roadsters were 1938's. The '37-'38 Ford roadster still used snap-in side curtains (one of the marks of a true "roadster" body) but used the same fixed windshield as found on Ford Cabriolet's and Convertible Sedans. By contrast with a roadster or phaeton body, those latter two body styles mentioned had roll up side windows, the Convertible Sedan having a removable upper B-post "extension" to support the middle of the top and provide a window "channel" for the rear door glass, as well as a rubber weather strip for the rear edge of the front door glass when raised. Art

Some of that "wrinkling" seems to be the adhesive used with BMF. To counteract that, I use pieces of cotton tricot cloth--something every one of us likely has--it's the knit cotton that 100% cotton T-shirts are made from! I use only 100% cotton for polishing out BMF trim on a model, as pure cotton doesn't scratch, while Cotton/Polyester blend Tshirt knit almost always will. In the outside chance one doesn't wear 100% cotton Tee's, there is a solution: Walmart etc. sell small bags of scraps of fresh cotton tricot cloth--for dusting cloths! Perfect solution. Just run those through the washing machine to get the "sizing" out of the cloth, they do the job. With practice, I've found that I can generally buff out BMF trim on a body shell to the point that it's pretty danged smooth, and of course, quite shiny. Art

Perhaps I can illustrate: Nearly 40 years ago, I made the acquaintance of a man who was a model kit pattern-maker for Monogam Models. I'm not going to identify him (that's not necessary), but he was one of the most meticulous modelers I've ever known. In the early 1980's J hit on the idea of creating a series of 1:43 scale Indianapolis 500 winning cars, to be cast in that new-fangled medium, urethane resin. Over the next several years, whenever we'd meet up, he'd show me progress on his first master (1957 Belond Exhaust Special), and it looked PERFECT each and every time I saw it. J wasn't quite satisfied with it, however--pointing out this or that miniscule detail that he didn't like. On and on it went. I last saw J at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in July 1994, during practice and qualifying for the inaugural Brickyard 400. "Is that Belond Spl" ready for casting up yet, I asked. "No, not quite, perhaps in another couple of months" came the reply. However, he passed away not too long after that last meetup--that 1:43 scale project and his dream of a line of 1:43 scale Indy winners unrealized. It's quite possible to create that perfectly accurate, awesome model car kit, but time is money, and money necessarily will be limited in every model company on the planet--that's a fact of business life. So, at some point in the process, someone necessarily will step in, call a halt to the perfection of a new model kit, and have it sent to tooling. A successful product development team will do their very best within the limitations of both money and time, to get that model kit to production with a minimum of niggles, but to achieve absolute perfection--most generally that just isn't possible (not to mention that what may well look right to one modeler here will appear to be a glaring error to another one elsewhere). I would submit that even Tamiya doesn't always get it right--weren't there a lot of disparaging comments about a pair of Jeep vehicles they did in 1/24 scale more than 20 years ago? And, who's going to take any model kit of an exotic sports car, go seek out the real one, and compare that model with it to find any mistakes? Not many, I would submit--no, absent any glaring mistake(s), we tend to accept it as the model kit it is. Perhaps that's the difference between being an automotive modeler vs a kit assembler (no criticism whatsoever of anyone reading or posting in this thread, OK?) Art

Well, that is a Fleetwood town car--you COULD have painted it all white, like Joan Crawford (yeah, Mommie Dearest!) had her's done! But, I like your choice of colors far better. Nice piece of work there! Art

Time was, when we were all kids, we could build a model car faster than we could scrape up the $2 for the next kit. Somehow, now that we are all growed up, that situation pretty much reversed itself--far easier to have the $20-$30 for the next kit, yet we've not started on the last one (or any number of kits before that last one!) is even opened up! Art

And, just to mention--with a company such as Round2, they are dealing with a lot of model kit tooling that's 40-perhaps 55 years old now--and a lot has happened in the meantime. The idea that one can simply pop any old model kit tooling into the injection molder, press the start button and out come fresh styrene model car kits--would that this were true. But, it's not. For starters, any tooling properly stored has to be laboriously cleaned, to wash completely away the Cosmoline or whatever greasy rust-preventer was used when the tooling was last placed into storage--that stuff gets into every tiny passage, every nook and cranny of the actual tooling surfaces, and if not thoroughly washed away before injecting molten plastic--VERY imperfect kits, with veins of dark brown grease throughout the sprues and parts. Then, all surfaces need to be examined closely--are there now surface defects (anything from tiny rust pits to perhaps gouges from the improper use of hand tools used to remove a stubborn model kit part (if you ever saw or built AMT's Kenworth W-900 conventional tractor in say, the late 1970's (think "Movin' On") you'd have noticed numerous raised, sharp "bumps in the roof of the cab--I was told at the time that a foreman on the night shift very early in the production of that kit (which came out in 1971, faced with a partial cab stuck in the mold, took matters in his own hand, with a hardened screwdriver and a hammer to "chisel' the offending plastic away so that he could keep his production numbers up. My informant related that he no longer had to worry about "production numbers" but rather finding a new job somewhere else. If there are surface defects, can they be repaired, or not? If they are really small, chances are they won't be. Next, are all the alignment pins (those that ensure that both halves of the tooling are in alignment) straight, and not excessively worn? If so, they need to be replaced, and the bores in the opposite tool much also be checked for wear, and this corrected at the same time, so that new alignment pins can be made to the correct oversize, then pressed into their half of the tooling. The same checks have to be made to the body shell tooling, which generally is made up of six moving tooling sections--and they have to fit as advertised, lest there be unacceptable flash and/or misaligned surfaces. This is perhaps the most exacting, and yet frustrating part of the process, for both the toolmakers and the end users, who are us. Finally, all those absolutely necessary (but to us modelers, often exaperating!) "ejector pins" have to be checked, for absolute straightness and any undue wear--any that are bent, or worn, will have to be replaced, and their locating and recieving holes reamed to a minutely larger diameter for precision. All of this requires time, and perhaps the most expensive workers in any injection molding factory. Finally, the size of a production run plays a big part in how all this tooling setup process affects the retail selling price. The larger the production run, the smaller the added cost per kit will be--basic math there. With a new kit, the expected first production runs will be larger than those for reissues--again this will be based on past experience, and good accounting in the office, but it all affects costs and ultimately, the selling price asked. Of course, the costs for new decal sheets, instruction sheets, and box art do add in there, and the costs for those may well be larger than the so-called average inflation rate since the 1960's (not everything we buy has seen the same rate of inflation--some more, some less, and some about the same as the average. And finally here, licensing--while not huge, licensing royalties are in many cases a higher percentage of the model kit than they were 40-50 years ago--and that simply has to be dealt with, not much room for negotiations there either. All of this simply is part of the equation. Art

John, Pretty much Dave Metzner is the whole team! I, along with a few others, are there to lend a helping hand, if and when we are called upon. But, it's Dave who really does all the "grunt work", day in and day out. I was more than happy to do this bit of work on a test shot of the Ventura, in hopes that it would help expedite things past the inevitable language, even cultural barriers. Art

It shouldn't be any surprise that, at least prior to 1958 or so, Revell was the biggest supplier of model car kits--they having begun with Highway Pioneers kits designed by the Gowland Brothers (a pair of British WW-II veterans), and those little 1/32 scale kits were seemingly everywhere in stores, from hobby shops to dime stores to even drug stores and supermarkets back then. Ideal Toy Corporation dabbled with model car kits beginning about 1954, but save for their smaller scale (perhaps 1/18 or so?) kits such as a Rolls Royce Silver Wraith and the almost unknown Spanish Pegaso GT coupe, their kits were large and much too expensive at the time for most boys to afford. Monogram even beat AMT to market with model car kiits, they began with Kit PC-1 in 1955 or so. AMT did introduce model car kits of a sort in 1954--those being merely unassembled flywheel versions of their promo's, in 3 car sets ( I received the 3-car set that included a Studebaker Starliner, Ford Crestline Convertible, and a Pontiac Star Chief HT). Product Miniatures also got into the game in 1954, with an unassembled '53-'54 Corvette promo to be assembled (4 screws, a windshield and the taillight bezels being the only parts I remember having to assemble on the model). But, for the vast majority of us model car builders in the 1950's, AMT became the ultimate "game changer" with their first series of "3in1" kits, and pretty much the others fell into line, or gradually faded away. Art

A very sketchy "history" frankly. The real history of any model company would make a decent sized book, truthfully.. Art

In all this discussion, the idea that somehow, older model car kits made in the "analog" era somehow were so very accurately done--in particular JoHan. Now, while John Hanle, owner of JoHan was himself an excellent pattern maker, there are inaccuracies in some of his kits: The JoHan '59 and '60 Cadillac 6-window sedans are a prime example of what I'm saying: On those body shells, the front clip and rear deck both are too short proportionatly, while the roof is right on the money for length front-rear. In fact, every Cadillac promo from about 1955 to the end of JoHan's Cadillac promo's in 1979 is either seriously smaller than 1/25 scale (NO WAY is a Chevy Impala larger than a Cadillac, if you plese!) But, the real kicker is that the bodies are also a full 3 scale inches too narrow (.120" in 1/25 scale). Why? Because of a General Motors requirement that all promotional model cars fit in the same size boxes, regardless of their relative size in perfect 1/25 scale. Then there are the SMP/AMT 1959-62 Corvettes--all of those suffer from a pug-nosed appearance, and a front valance that is badly misshapen. The AMT '53 Corvette glue kit (circa 1975) is also way off the mark--all of this in spite of GM tending to be very particular about Corvette--one of the General's signature car series. There's also the SMP series of 1960 Chevrolet 3in1 kits--ever notice the "sad mouth pouting" grille shape? How about the far too prominent character "crease" atop the belt line from headlight to the beginnings of the horizontal fin shape. Ever want to build, straight from the kit box, a completely accurate 1940 Ford Standard Coupe? It cannot be done "out of the box" with the otherwise excellent Revell '40 coupe, simply because the entire interior is that of a Deluxe series (Standards have a different instrument panel, and a 3-spoke steering wheel). The same thing with the almost iconic AMT '39-/'40 Tudor sedan: While the kit gives a correct '39 Deluxe grille, but then a '40 Standard hood (much taller, more agressive point up front than the '39, plus prominent stamped shapes on the sides and DOUBLE chrome spears. Inside, instead of a '39 instrument panel with a correct 3-spoke steering wheel--1940 Deluxe interor. Wheels in the kit are 1940 through and through, but 1939 was the last year of Ford's "Wide Five" wheel and brake drum with artillery spokes. Oh well. Art

TSP (trisodium phosphate)? Look no farther than for a box of good old "Spic & Span"! That's a TSP cleaner. TSP was banned from laundry detergents in the US about 40 years ago, due to its wide usage, but TSP should still be available just about anyplace as a household cleaning product--not nearly as much of that gets into waste water as laundry detergent. And, no--it is NOT necessary to soak a resin kit in TSP--just a good washing with it, then rinsing off will do the trick in getting rid of any mold release. Art

The Panel Delivery kit does not represent a factory vehicle, according to the late Bill Harrison (known to older modelers in the San Francisco Bay Area for his extensive collection of 30's and 40's car reference materials, and an intense knowledge about them!), that was either a custom-bodied commercial vehicle done for whatever reason, or a restoration that didn't completely follow factory practices. It's wise to bear in mind that in the 60's, 1930's mass production cars (save for the Model A Ford) were just "old cars" in the antique car hobby, at best AACA still tended to consider them to be "Special Interest Cars"--their focus still was on cars of the brass era back then. In addition, where a '32 Ford was pretty much an all steel body by then (some structural wood still remained in Fordor sedans though), Chevrolet by reason of Fisher money being second only to to DuPont in GM--Fisher having been the largest body company of all) Chevies were truly "lumber wagons" (where a '32 roadster trunk/rumble seat lid was an all steel part, the '32 Chevrolet roadster deck lid was made up of over a dozen wooden parts covered only by a sheet steel panel!). That alone meant a very small survival rate for Chevrolet cars of those years. With that in mind, it's amazing to me that MPC's people managed to find either car for the purpose of research and reference for these model kits. Art

I've taken to drilling and pinning just about everything I can--I simply use K&S .020" brass rod and a #76 drill in my pin vise. A suggestion when using brass rod--when you cut it, take the time to "dress" off the cut ends with some 400-grit sandpaper--yes it can be tedious--but it does make the whole process a lot easier come assembly time. Art

Well, it wasn't a very big car in 1:1 either. Art

I think it was purpose-built as a sprint car, which wasn't uncommon a few decades ago. Frank Kurtis even built several roadster midgets in the 1950's. The idea behind these roadsters, as well as the larger AAA/USAC Championship roadsters was to give extra weight bias on the left side of the chassis by moving the engine to that side a bit, then making the driver's cockpit on the right--for pretty much the same reason as "weight-jackers" are used today on many oval track cars--make the weight distribution more nearly equal on both sides of the car in the turns at speed. Art

No matter, really. I'll probably be robbing '32 Fords for the grille shell in any event. Art