Art Anderson

I just received the 2nd round (revised!) test shots for this one, and have permission to photograph and post up pics, so just be patient! Art

Clear yellow over chrome plating equals polished brass, Atmobil. It always has for me. In fact, that is how it's done with model car kit plating where brass parts are needed. Art

I wondered about that from the pics ICM has on their site. Easy fix though! Airbrush with Tamiya Clear Yellow--polished brass. Art

IIRC, it was Jake who built that one. BTW, it's not a '32, but a '29 Model A Phaeton body on '32 Ford rails. Art

GREAT NEWS! The ICM Model T's are in-country. Ordered two of the kits yesterday, from Squadron. Art

Ahh, but GM's convertibles all had a much shorter windshield than did sedans back in those days--AND those early hardtop bodies were nothing more than a convertible body with a fixed steel top welded in place. Art

Since Chevrolet, Pontiac and the Oldsmobile 88 series for 1950 were all GM A-bodies, it should work! Art

Well, the companies in question here are definitely not in the Fortune 500 category--in fact every US model kit company would be categorized as a small business. Art

I think David would answer "When it's ready". Nuff said? (I personallly think it's going to be sooner than later--after all, the kit was first announced not all that long ago. Art

harry, one only has to look back at the debacle of the once-vaunted Accurate Miniature to see what happened with their fantastically tooled, intricate model kits in both aircraft and automotive subjects for the answer to your question! Art

Actually Bill, the cutting of tooling is still the biggest check that has to be written, from what I have been told numerous times. Art

Truthfully, much of this talk about "pittance wages" in China is almost jingoistic. For just the last four years alone, manufacturing's MINIMUM wage in the provinces that harbor the bulk of Chinese industry (and that list includes the province where the bulk of model kits and diecast stuff is made!) has risen 22% in 2011, 20% in 2012, 17% in 2013, and 13% this year--on top of similarly rapid increases since about 2003-04. Now, by any stretch of the imagination, those are HEFTY pay raises. The bigger fly in the ointment is the currency rate of exchange for the Yuan VS the US Dollar--that the Chinese government keeps artificially high in THEIR favor. As for the other countries in the region (except for South Korea, Taiwan and Japan), no other country yet has quite the technical ability yet to win any serious business such as we're discussing away from China or the other three. Even the Japanese model companies do their own kit designs and tooling domestically, while farming out production to places such as the Phillipines and Thailand. In addition, energy costs in China are also, by comparison, far higher than in the US--most smaller Chinese factories, such as the ones making toya and hobby products must maintain their own backup sources of electricity themselves, given the inability of the state-run utility companies to keep up with demand. In addition, shipping costs have risen on a skyrocket over the past several years, due to high crude oil prices (thos container ships burn a LOT of oil!), which has lead to a slowing down of cruising speed across the Pacific--what was 12-13 years ago a 10-day voyage from Shanghai or Hong Kong is now a full month--which cuts fuel consumption significantly, but leads to higher wage costs attributable to longer crew times at sea and longer turnaround times for the ships themselves. So, it's not as cut-and-dried as most people want to believe. Art

FWIW, that steering wheel as originally produced by Sheller for Duesenberg was either black bakelite or black "hard rubber" (the latter being most common on cars of that year) and neither would have been a high gloss finish. However, in the quest for concours honors, most of the wealty owners of such cars as Duesenbergs tend to "over-restore, over-finish" every aspect of their pride and joy. Art

To you, perhaps, but likely not the larger, overall market. Art

Scott, what perhaps I did not emphasize strongly enough--having looked at many 3D printed tooling mockups is: The process works very well for reasonably flat items, such as a floor pan, engine blocks and such, but where it begins to fail from the standpoint of critcial reviews is with body shells, particularly in horizontal surfaces which aren't flat, but have slight arches, curves and the like. By the time we get to see those, they have been smoothed out by hand, sometimes rather heavily painted in a grey primer--all of which can make some very visible shapes and contours quite difficult to judge for accuracy. It does take a lot of care to evaluate 3D printed items like axles, drive shafts, exhaust systems, suspension parts--but with an understanding as to how the real ones should look they can be reviewed quite successfully. In a very real way, 3D printed model parts can often look like an architect's 3D model of a proposed building to be set on gently rolling ground. If you've ever seen one of those (we have a 3D campus diorama here at Purdue (originally created in 1958 and updated regulary since) that uses 3/32" birch plywood layers to create land elevations, their edges curving to the contour of the actual land surface--it takes some study to understand the contours of the land surface. Art

RICH!! That car is going to kick some SERIOUS (well, you know the word). Can't wait to see how you finish it all out! Art

Dave Metzner began this thread with a pretty courageous post, frankly. And, a lot of concerns have been expressed, but something occurs to me that has yet to be discussed, and that is (to use an oft-overused phrase that I believe is very relevant here) the "learning curve". Every modeler who has, is or ever will read this forum has gone through a learning curve to get to where they are today. And in the very same way, every person who's ever worked in product development in the plastic model kit field has gone through perhaps an even steeper learning curve! I've been on this planet over 70 years now, and have been building model cars for 62 of those years--I think I've seen a lot of "water flow under the bridge" in this hobby, and the industries which supply and support it. Down through those years, I've seen my share of failed model companies, lousy kits (FWIW, Premier/Palmer WAS a company operating completely in the US!), great kits, and kits which fell somewhere in the middle. I've been privileged to see a lot of the inside of a plastic model company (AMT Corporation), done considerable product development (resin cast aftermarket, AMT Corporation, Playing Mantis, a brief stay at RC2, and a volunteer in assisting with Moebius product development)--and believe me, there's very little that surprises me anymore. In that, I've seen development people come and go, learn and grow in their time in the industry as well. And, I've made my own legions of mistakes as well (had some successes too). In the highly technical industry that the model kit business has become over these past 10-15 years, with the rise and almost tsunami of digital tools and techniques, it ought to be realized that there are some qualities that any person working to develop a new model kit--at any stage of the game--simply has to have, in order to be successful, produce a sucessful product; that next model car kit that will light hot fires. The time was (and not all that long ago, frankly!) when the development of a new model car kit could be done in much the same "time honored" way as real cars were developed (the styling, the body shapes, which are the two first characteristics that grab out attention as a general rule). That meant an old-time draftsman or two doing the drawings necessary for the old-time wood-carving pattern maker to be able to hand-carve each and every part of the proposed new model kit. It meant having old-time tool & die makers, working with both ordinary lathes and mills, as well as 3-dimensional pantographs to cut detailed cavities in steel dies with what really were highly sophisticated Dremel Moto-Tools (given that they were using high speed rotary milling cutters) to create the dies necessary to mold that new kit. It also meant all of those craftsmen having both the KNOWLEDGE of the real thing, along with the PASSION to apply that knowledge to the end product. That all went away in just the past 15-20 years though! Now, it's very much all digital. From simple CAD, to 3D CAD and 3D scans of the drawings the latter technology can produce--reviewed and critiqued all along the way. Finally, 3D rapid prototyped tooling mockups, to show the product development folks back in the office what the proposed model kit will look like (as the engineers see it). It is at this stage where the heavy lifting really begins though. The designers sitting at their keyboards, wiggling their mouses back and forth/fore and aft may well be highly skilled at what they know how to do--BUT, do they REALLY know the subject matter they've been assigned to create, in order to create realistic parts that will pass modelers' collective scrutiny? Do they have the KNOWLEDGE of the actual subject which can be invaluable in creating accurately scaled and shaped model kit parts? And perhaps most importantly, DO THEY HAVE THE PASSION to learn what they don't know about the product under development inside and out, front and back, up and down, side to side? All the technical skills are but mere tools of the trade, no more and no less than the draftsman's T-square, triangles, French curves, dividers and drawing pencils. In the same way, all the digitally created tooling mockups and the equipment that will make not only those, but the final tooling for that new kit are nothing all that different from the skilled hands and blades of the old-time skilled artisan craftsmen who used to sculpt tooling mockups from raw blocks of wood, nor are they completely divorced from the old fashioned tool and die makers who used their skills and knowledge to guide their hands and the cutting tools they maneuvered. The same goes for those few people (and in the US, there likely aren't more than perhaps a dozen people across the country who do this very work) who do all the reference and research for new model kits, gather dimensions, find and go out and photograph and measure the real vehicle, then work to guide the people doing all the drawings, scans, tooling mockups and the tooling itself. This kind of work demands as much, if perhaps not more--it is THEY who must KNOW the actual subject "over, under, around and through", and HAVE THE PASSION TO USE THAT KNOWLEDGE to the best advantage, the best result possible. Where say, Ford Motor Company might invest a billion dollars to develop an all new car, no model company likely has as much money to invest in new tooling as Ford would spend in one minute on a totally new product. Model companies almost never have anything that even looks like a bottomless bag of $$ to spend on a new product. And, last, but often more important than any of the above, is the ability to communicate across 13,000 miles (that's roughly 13 time zones folks!), from one culture to another-in-so-many-ways-different than ours what needs to be accomplished. While over time, any group or team working on projects like the model car kits we love to buy and build will grow and learn, there will always be the time when some part of that team changes, someone goes away (by whatever reason or means), and thus the learning curve gets reset to 0 once again, at least in the area affected by that turnover. If an entire "cog" in all this "machinery" is taken out of the picture, that learning curve can be pretty rough indeed In the end, any company striving to succeed in what is a very tough business will get that kit right enough (as a general rule) to the point that the vast majority of model builders will enjoy it (keep in mind, this and every other model car forum on the Web is but a microcosm, perhaps not even a good statistical sample of the entire model car building community out there!), the more skilled builders will see improvements that can be made and do them (and others will fret because they lack some of those skills)--but if the kit is good enough, it will go forward, and generate the income necessary to pay for all the efforts to get it to market which will provide capital for the next one down the line. And, the learning curve (which I know Dave Metzner and I both have experienced in a very real way!) will continue it's upward trend. And all of what I have said is likely very true with each and every model kit manufacturer on the planet. Art

But only if mirrors were a part of the original car, either by factory spec or by government requirements! Art

From everything I've heard said, and what little written information I've seen over the years, double-sided factory produced whitewalls went away with Pearl Harbor, and when whitewall tires returned to the marketplace in 1947 (For whatever reason, virtually no whitewall tires were available in 1946) they were white on just one side. Art

See my post about chassis color. Most often, if the chassis was painted a color other than the standard maroon, it was painted to match the color choice of the customer.

Duesenberg Inc.'s engine color from their beginning in 1921 through to the end of Model J production in 1937 was "Apple Green" which is only a shade or so lighter than Testors #1124 Green. The exhaust manifold (on both supercharged and non-supercharged) was porcelain-coated in a matching Apple Green as well. All the various cover plates, along with the oil pan, were left as cast aluminum, and were polished. A note on Duesenberg chassis color: The frame rails, major crossmembers, springs, front axle & spindles, torque tube, and the rear axle housings were painted in maroon (with the chassis number--prefix J from 1929 to the end) hand painted in yellow on the outside of the left frame rail just below the firewall. There were numerous aluminum alloy castings on the chassis which were left unpainted by the factory. A buyer could order his chassis to be painted in a color to match at least the fenders and running board splash aprons for an extra charge, but many historians question just how often that was done. Art

FWIW, WalMart pretty much dropped model kits right at 10-years ago, as a regular feature in their toy departments. This wasn't just a single product area move, but part of a system-wide reduction in the square-footage allotted for their toy department in general (BTW, the same thing happened at Target, K-Mart, Meijer and numerous other regional Big Box chains. With WalMart, it was simply a matter of how much salable merchandise could be stocked in a specific length of store gondola's: The space allotted, say, to 3 1:25 scale model car kits can hold up to 36 (3-dozen) blister-carded items, which would sell much faster, generate more $$ for the space (think real estate space there). Another issue (and I lived with this on a daily basis while doing product development at Playing Mantis Johnny Lightning diecasts, just down the hallway from Dave's office in Polar Lights): WalMart expects the vast majority of their vendors to produce what THEY want, deliver it exactly when THEY want it, and more importantly, to guarrantee the sales of their products at WalMart. That meant that at the end of a specified period, WalMart could return any unsold product to the manufacturer, no questions asked, Now, think about it--if you are a model kit manufacturer, producing model kits for which you really do not know just what the sales rate will be for sure--would you take a deal like that? More and more, products that once seemed to be "staples" in the toy departments of Big Box stores have ceased to be stocked, for that very reason. Incidently, it's for this very reason that such chains such as the former Kaybee Toy & Hobby stores existed--that company made a career out of taking on unsold merchandise returned to the various manufacturers by the likes of Walmart. Today, outfits like Ollie's, Big Lots/Odd Lots, along with just about every dollar store chain thrive on other companies' unsold merchandise. I mentioned that WalMart and other chains like them, expect new product ON THEIR schedule, regardless of the development process. For most Big Box stores, "resets" (that changing of store setups, product mixes, etc.) happen but two times a year anymore (it used to be 4), January and July--meaning any newly released product is expected by them to be in their warehouses at least a month before--miss that date, no sale, period. So, it really should be no wonder that most model kit companies simply ignore the likes of Walmart. Art

Seriously speaking here: Any more, these days, it's a pretty rare thing for any model kit manufacturer to hang it all out on a new kit subject with just one version possible. The economics of developing, tooling and producing a new model kit just don't allow that to happen, profitably, very much these days. Art

David said it all in words I could never improve on! So take it to the bank guys--the man knows whereof he speaks! Art

This reminds me of the USAF Minuteman railroad launcher I saw at the USAF Museum back in June 2013! The concept was, Minuteman missiles that could be moved around the US at random, in ordinary freight trains, and if called upon, could be launched, without the Soviet Union knowing just where they came from: Art