Chuck Most

Never had any issues with the Lean Burn Mopars myself, but I had family members who LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVED their 350 diesels. (And by loved I mean loathed.) My neighbor had a Cutlass Ciera with the V6 diesel and he never had a problem with it, but the 350s seemed like a 50/50 shot as far as dependability went.

Hey, that gives me an idea.... Post-apocalyptic General Lee. I might just build one of those, if for no other reason than to troll Danno!

Arrrrrrrrrrghhhh! Danno got in before I could post "Wait for it.... wait...for...it...."

For some reason I thought it was an E-type Jag, but now that it's been positively ID'd as a Vette it's so obvious!

SC Rambler, if the tooling is as bad as last go round. That's about it for me.

Simple fact is, not everybody is going to buy five or ten of the same kit. BUT, and this is an extreme case- one guy might buy 20 of one kit, then that would compensate for the guys who bought one or none of the kit. I've done that (though never all 20 at once), and I know a guy who literally has a 4 x 8 storage shed crammed floor to ceiling, wall to wall with nothing but Kenworth truck kits. I do think many of us (if not all of us) are guilty of buying multiples, but the thing is, not everybody is going to buy a kit of a 1956 Whachamacallit no matter how nice that kit may be, because it simply isn't their thing.

Weird this came up- I was just thinking of making a trailer load for the '65 Chevy dually I've had on the back burner earlier today, so I can finally call that 'quick project' a done deal!

I think what really killed SATCO's product line was that the LHD versions they did sell had the poorly done resin parts. Add to that the fact that SATCO never was very good at following through on new product, and I think those aspects created the lack of interest in their subjects. And if interest was lukewarm to begin with... well, there you have it.

LeBaron? Maybe. I'd prefer an earlier, RWD model, but I know some would be falling all over themselves for the K-Car convertible version. Bustleback Seville? Not for me, but that's not to say nobody would buy one. Plodge Granfifthlomat? Sign me up for any of them. I'm sure the cop car guys would love a Dippy sedan. How many movies made between about 1978 and 1992 did NOT have a fleet of these things as cop cars? AMC Eagle? I'd be in for one, but I think that one might be a bit too hip for the room, even now. The last Hurst Olds? If you ask me, any good kit of a G-body GM coupe would sell well. I'm convinced the only reason these haven't sold well in the past is because the existing kits are a- unfortunate products of the era which produced them (MPC Monte Carlo... and it could be argued that one is the 'wrong year' by many anyway) or b- pure junk (Trumpeter '78 Monte Carlo). Now, the later Monogram Montes did fare pretty well, but they were better kits than the MPC. I'm still a little miffed at Revell for never releasing that '87 Cutlass from a few years back- the tooling for that could have made a pretty cool little Hurst/Olds replica.

Ford never worked out the bugs with the EEC III engine management setup, from what I'm told. When I bought my '81 Lincoln Town Car in the late 1990's, my auto shop teacher (who had been a Ford/Lincoln/Mercury tech at the time) was mortified. He told me the system was no good when the cars were new, and he doubted that 18 years and 74,000 miles had done much good for it. Mine also had issues with the electronic dashboard. Sure, much of that could be attributed to a nearly twenty year old car simply showing its age, but he told me that when people asked him about buying a new Lincoln (or any other FoMoCo product of the era), he specifically told them to avoid ANYTHING with the digital dash. GM seemed to stick with junk (or at least questionable) electronics well into the '80's. Anybody remember Vic? You know, the 'Visual Information Center' used in certain models of the Olds Toronado? Just about all the magazine reviews of the era on that car reviewed the car itself favorably, but reccomended you steer clear of any equipped with VIC if you were interested in buying one. And don't get me started on the talking Chryslers...

A bit off topic, but I wonder- the tires on the Monogram Black Widow reissue are very nice, but a bit too large for most applications, diameter wise. I'd love to see them tool up a set of tires like that in a size more close to what's used on the existing Deuce kits.

I goofed on the year- mine's a '70 as well. Must have been thinking of the Revell kit. Mine's molded in white, but has the barcode. I think that came in the late '80's, a few years before Seville took over.

Guess I hadn't considered the retail cost- I was just kind of assuming an MSRP of around twenty bucks or so. Kind of scares me, the idea of Trumpeter selling 5,000 of any of its car kits. Moebius? Hoping they sell 15,000 each of their current and upcoming auto kits.

That's another thing I've never seen a specific figure about- how many sales means it's a hit? How many is the break-even point? How low do sales have to be for a kit to be considered an epic fail? And who really knows how many active modelers there really are. I don't recall seeing 'model car building' on any census form I've ever looked at.

You do know that faulty Cadillac engine came out in 1981, right? 1981 isn't the '70's. Not that it matters too much, but I don't think the '80's were much better than the '70's as far as automotive quality, yet those vehicles don't get heaped with the same amount of scorn for whatever reason.

Hey, if you already have the Turbine and Cutlass kits on your pile, I'll gladly take 'em off your hands. I have neither of those in my stash, they'll be tossed on my pile as soon as they're available.

And, just coming from the viewpoint of a guy who was born three years after the '70's ended, let me just say this- I've only heard hear-say about how terrible cars of that era were. But you know what? Cars of the earlier decades really weren't that much better from a quality standpoint. Mile-wide panel gaps, ill fitting body panels, mismatched paint with dirt flecks in it, questionable engineering... none of this stuff began (or ended) in the '70's.

x3 Can't say my heart is aflutter for a '71 Riv, but a Connie Mk III I can totally get behind. And again- I'd be happy to see reissues of existing kits. Wasn't there a Volare Road Runner at one point, and a late '70's Pontiac Lemans? Heck, what ever happened to the Pontiac Ventura based on the AMT '69 Nova tool? As far as as 'safe' subject goes, I do see the logic there, but still there will come a point when every possible first-gen Camaro, tri-five Chevy, Mustang, Corvette, and Deuce that can be kitted, will be kitted. Where do you go from there? Now, as far as I'm concerned, subjects like the '50 Olds are fantastic choices. I really think that kit will do well, and if it's sucessful it could open the door to all sorts of other possible early '50's GM products based on that kits tooling. Then again, it might just mean a few variations on the '50 Olds kit. There's certainly room on my self for several variants of a '50 Olds, that I can tell you. Moebius could spin quite a few late '50's kits off their upcoming Chrysler tool, given that kit does well. I think it will. At the other end of the spectrum, you have a kit like the Hudson Hornet by Moebius. Using that tooling means you can only make more Hudson variants (which Moebius is already set up to do with the upcoming Tim Flock '52 stock car and the convetible version of the '53). I'm still not as convinced as some that selecting a Hornet as a kit subject was as bold and brash as some think. For a newcomer to the car kit industry, perhaps, but the fact is the Hornet has been on the most wanted lists of a lot of modelers for a long time. So I guess I see the good and the bad. I'm glad to see that the kit manufacurers are taking a few chances. I'm glad to see that the new tool stuff coming out isn't all muscle cars, and the rest isn't barely-rehashed reissues. But I do hope the manufacurers don't stay stuck in a pre''73 world forever. There's still quite a bit of earlier stuff that would do well in kit form, but ignoring entire genres and generations of vehicles because those subjects haven't done well in the past does not seem like a great idea to me.

Cool- that works too! I'm thinking of doing one chopped with slanted b-posts and custom side trim. If I get really ambitious I might section one. Not sure how workable that would be on a 1:1 Hudson being a unibody, but in scale I figure why not give it a go?

The more of these I see built up only guarantees that I'll be buying several of these kits!

No, sorry- its been years since I've looked at an Orange Crate kit. Thats the one Deuce kit I don't have an abundant supply of on hand. That's another thing the good old days did have over today- I get that tire markings are a thorny subject, but could we at least get something that kinda/sorta looks realistic? Pleeeeze?

Nice save. The paint scheme, the side pipes, the wheels- just looks perfect on that body.

Why???? Don't they AT LEAST have something close already in the tooling banks?

I do have to give Revell a little credit for at least trying- the last couple of Deuce kits were a bit closer to being traditional, at least as far as looks go. They're still modern street rods under the skin, but Revell does seem to know how to make them look good.

If you need some people to storm their office building, sign me up!