alan barton

Anyone know what that body is? I'm guessing a Dodge body by Budd but it is simply a guess. It wouldn't take a lot of work to to convert a Model A coupe into this body style - cowl doors, windshield opening and swages removed from rear quarters would be a good start. Cheers Alan

That is stunning - I am going to have to pinch that idea. What a beautifully simple conversion. It is satisfying to see that the exhausts on the nailhead help divert your eye from the AMT 32 Section job. Wheels and tyres look great also. I have Vicky bodies, I have 29 hiboy frames - this will happen! Cheers Alan

I agree with everyone here, the Revell 29 and 32 series kits just might be the greatest hot rod kits ever! The range of options and degree of swapability is a godsend to hot rod modellers. I don't believe engine choices are a big deal with a hot rod because you can put whatever you like in one No-one seems to have mentioned that both series included modern automatic transmissions - another bonus seeing as how most kits over the years have either included a four speed or heaven forbid, the old 39 Ford 3 speed crash box. Again , so nice to have options. The coilover rear ends ( and to a lesser extent the airbag rear end in the 32 series) finally gave us some well crafted modern hot rod hardware to fit under any rods. There is no shortage of Revell buggy spring and rear crossmember parts out there if you need to backdate. Now I'm fussy about my roadster bodies because I drive a real one. The AMT body is definitely the more accurate one but after all these years the swage lines are getting a bit soft on the rear quarters and the tank to cowl line is a nightmare to try to make an inny instead of an outie. At least the rear wheel arches are simpler to fix, just glue some short strips of Evergreen into the slots and they look great. The Revell body is very good as well as being nice and fresh. The HUGE advantage over every Model A kit ever made by anyone is the brilliant windshield frame and posts. No-one else ever got this right. It is easily adapted to the AMT body and makes a huge improvement. The radiused rear wheel wells are frustrating because practically no-one in the full sized rodding world does that. If the Revell designers really wanted to have those raised arches on the channeled car, they could have simply moulded in a cut line on the inside of the quarter panels ( remember when AMT and MPC used to do this?) and then included the raised arches as part of the channelled car interior panels. Would need no more plastic and no more parts but would have made the kit even more versatile. The other bit that I can't understand and can't think of a reason for is the 30 style firewall in the 29 body. I always thought Revell was simplifying their moulds by using one universal firewall but when the coupe turned up we saw that wasn't the case at all. The firewalls in the roadster and coupe kits are entirely different yet both based on the 1930 design. I will again go out on a limb and say that this has NEVER been done on a real car! Why would you - you just lose engine room in the already tight confines of a 29. These things aside, they still get my vote. I have 6 roadster kits, two coupes and will probably buy more. Cheers Alan

Hey Jim, another option for a coffin shaped scoop would be the body from a Hot Wheels Rigor Motor 1/64th toy. It was Mattel's take on Grandpa's Dragula from the Munsters TV show and it has some nice detail. Love the insanity we are seeing here - don't stop now! Cheers Alan

Go for it! Just a thought, could you graft the last half an inch of the Riv body onto the back of the Deora to keep the Buick theme running right through? I reckon that lean could really go with the flow of this design. Cheers Alan

This is one of my favourite types of model and you have done a great job. You have proven conclusively just how important it is to fit appropriately sized wheels and tyres to the cars in the Motor City Stockers series. The ones AMT chose did the models no favours at all! Go easy on the weathering - this could easily be a new car to the track and I love the way it looks now! Cheers Alan

Jimmy Flintstone does a resin 5w coupe. I showed my build in Under Glass last year sometime. It is a reasonable effort, not perfect, it is chopped and needs some reworking of window openings and gutter lines. There has never been a styrene 28/29 Model A coupe and there have been almost no diecast ones. I have a 1/43 scale stocker in brown and black, can't remember the manufacturer, and Maisto did a channelled rat rod style one in 1/64th scale as well as a larger version in 1/24th but again, not perfect. I have a stock bodied 29 A roadster hot rod in my garage and an IKEA flatpacked 29 5 window coupe down the side of the house so I can give you some insight as to what is necessary to build a styrene version. First, you will need the cowl, front doors and some of the roof from an AMT 28 Tudor. A fairly rare kit but you might find a glue bomb. Next, you will need the quarter panels and trunk area from an AMT 29 Roadster but they will be far from a direct fit. Here's why. The passenger opening on a coupe 1/4 panel is exactly the same size and shape as the opening on a roadster panel. I've checked it by mocking up the 5w quarter window with the roadster 1/4 panel. It's a match. Because the coupe uses the longer Tudor doors, you need to first take a horizontal slice on the quarters from say just below the swage line to remove the passenger opening. You will also need to make a vertical cut down through the upper trunk lid line to separate the piece from the body. Then you would need to shorten the quarter panel approximately 4mm back from the rear door line. Next, you would need to cut the quarter panels free from the trunk and beaver panel before realigning the 1/4 panels up to the Tudor body. You would then carefully reattach the passenger opening onto the top of the two, now shorter, quarter panels Coupes and roadsters use the same trunk lid but the beaver panel is significantly shorter on a coupe so the trunk lid needs to be moved further around towards the bottom of the car. Re reading this shows I am struggling to explain this clearly!!!!! Both the beaver panel and tulip panel on the roadster are wider than coupe ones. Having done all this work, there will be one aspect that would be very hard to fix. If you get to see a square on side view of both the roadster and coupe bodies, you will see that both the profile and the swage lien on the rear of the body drop significantly more quickly than the one on the roadster. I'm not saying it would be impossible to do, just very challenging. I have all the parts to do it plus the desire to have one in my collection but it hasn't happened yet. Greg's idea of combining a Monogram 29 pickup and a 30 coupe is feasible and has been done before. The late Chris Dansie of Queensland Australia did a lovely one some years ago BUT there are a lot of differences between the lines and contours of a 29 and 30 coupe. It all depends how particular you are nailing the details of a 29. Best of luck, Alan

Wow! I cant imagine how much work that took! This looks like it is as close to totally scratchbuilt as you can get with a kit. it is a credit to you. I wonder how many others ever got built? Cheers Alan

Hi guys, I'm going to have to dig very deep in my memory here and others on here may be able t help. They definitely came off a Monogram Camaro that I bought in the early eighties. This was a red car with very street machine style graphics and I THINK but cant be sure that it was called Street Stalker. It was the Gen 2 body with the sloping front and full wrap around rear window, say 77 or so? Maybe someone else can fill in the gaps. Those wheels always struck me as looking like Borrani wires. The wires in the sidemount spares are something else, I am thinking Monogram Deuce roadster, the yellow edition with black flames on the box art. Hope that helps a bit Alan

The AMT tub can be built up into a nice model but it definitely has a lot of issues. The tapered section that all AMT 32s suffer from, a very toylike windscreen and the whole kit dates back to 1959 origins which means it doesn't have any where near the sharpness of a modern era kit. The MPC 32 tub is also rather toy like and to my eyes is too narrow at the rear. The cowl is too square and the firewall is all wrong and it also has a toylike windscreen. Some years ago, I did a body conversion for a friend who owns a real 32 tub street rod. I grafted the rear doors and tub of the AMT body to a Revell cowl and front doors. As I recall I cut the revell body from the lower corner that touches the front of the rear fender, diagonally forward and upwards toward the rear of the front door. This gave me as much as possible of the good Revell body and just enough of the AMT body to make it a tub. I recall that it worked out really well but it was long before I was taking photos of my models. Fun fact - the AMT body is actually Australian. It was reputed to have been scaled from LA Roadster club member Dick Scritchfield's rod. Dick had purchased the body from Australian Custom Rodder magazine publisher, Eddie Ford. The most obvious difference is that the Aussie body is one piece while the US body is three piece like a Model A. Here's the AMT kit I finished last year. It uses the old Monogram 32 roadster windscreen. There is a thread on it here that you might like to search for.

Couldn't agree more. Might have to order one myself! Cheers Alan

Wow, if this is the future of modelling then sign me up! That is a stellar effort. Like Cluade said, would make an awesome Bonneville powerplant. 21st century Chrisman coupe, anyone? Would you be able to estimate the amount of hours you spent producing the drawings. I was an old school t-square and set- square kinda drafstman in a former life and I am curious - I can see hundreds of hours here. The results are definitely worth it!!! Cheers Alan

Wow, a really stunning build and you have achieved a beautiful balance. For someone who fears final assembly (apparently!) you have done a superb job of getting that undercarriage looking clean and symmetrical. I think the high gloss clear is a great idea because I always find that no matter how careful I am polishing vintage bodies, I always seem to get a rub through. The multiple window mouldings and body swage lines just about guarantee it! This is a credit to you, and Dennis for his fine mastering. Cheers Alan

"One note here....I strongly recommend that you relocate the grille rearward on the front frame crossmember (by cutting away some of the bottom of the radiator);" I have to agree wholeheartedly here with Tim - on both of my roadsters I also filed the bottom skirt of the grill shell to as thin as I dared so that I could move the whole assembly back a mm or two. It makes a big difference in getting rid of a goofy overbite!

I'm a big fan of box art but wouldn't say it has influenced me to buy a kit that I didn't already want. I love good artwork (as distinct from photos) but the artwork for the Model A shown here doesn't reveal the somewhat awkward headlight placement on the actual kit. If the kit had actually been modified to match the artwork, I would be tempted to buy more as although you can improve the headlight positioning, it is a very fiddly operation especially if you have fat fingers!!! Does anyone know if there will be new decals in this release? Otherwise I will keep working with the six copies of the first release that I have - two built, one WIP and three waiting their turn. Cheers Alan

I remember as a kid reading one of those Drag Racing comic books (Clint Curtis and the Road Knights?) and they featured this car in one of the stories. Ever since then I have lusted for this model. Yours is easily the nicest one I have seen photographed. One of the tragedies of our modern hi-tech drag racing scene is that nobody would DREAM of building such a radical car these days. Regardless of how well it ran it is a solid 10 on the cool factor scale. Cheers Alan

Thanks for the kind words Alan. It has been very satisfying to hear that so many others enjoy my build as much as I do. I dragged out two more frames on the weekend, one to start my George Montgomery coupe that I have wanted to build since I was a teenager and another for an unchopped resin coupe body. Gotta get these Willys outa my system! The unchopped coupe will be getting a Revell funnycar blown Hemi for power and I hope to psych myself up to tackling one of those multi-panelled an striped paint jobs that were popular at the end of the gasser era. Cheers Alan

Jim, the most visually noticeable thing about any nine inch is that the rear of the housing is noticeably oval in shape, rather than circular, and the surfaces that run around this oval are particularly flat compared to the curved surfaces on may other rear ends. The AMT 57 Ford rear end, although a nine inch, does not show this detail particularly well. Another good 9 inch centre section is the one in the late model Revellogam funnycars. The housing is too narrow for most street applications but does have a brace across the rear. Without checking I think the Revellogram Pro stocks would also have a good centre. And Ace and Hakan, I am definitely one of those hot rod guys with a nine inch because everyone else has one! But it looks awesome under the rear of my Model A roadster and forty years ago it cost me $50 so I'm good with that. I did manage to spectacularly break an axle once with a resultant loss off wheel. I was taking my engine builder for a run to show him what a good job he had done. This was a very mild 307 Chevy from an Australian Holden Premier, nothing like 400 hp, probably just over 200, but it hauled A and was good for a 14 second flat quarter in street trim. I was about to shift into second when she turned into a tricycle! As far as unsprung weight goes, I know you are right but when you have the centre of gravity of an apartment block, it doesn't stress me too much. This car is a daily driver for me and has done over 300,000 miles in 35 years so I love the bulletproof reliability. Oh yeah, the centre is from a 59 Fairlane (your Galaxie) with 2.9 ration and it was last assembled by the Ford guys in Geelong. You can't argue with 60+ years out of a gear set! Cheers Alan

Thanks Steve! I will use that photo to correct the mouldings around the front. At this stage I only have the custom grille for a 63 to fit into the front but I have til July to find a 61 - I do have a childhood build of the 61 convert so maybe I should resin cast that one? In the diorama it will be standing on it's nose as the rear axle leaves the building , cops at the wheel and a bit of smoke and dust from underneath. Looking forward to it - it's been fun so far! Cheers Alan

The green of shampoo - smooth as!!!! There was a very cool 29 roadster on the Aussie rod scene back in the nineties and the guy had the paint matched to a shampoo sample, and had SHAMPOO for licence plates. Cheers Alan

Yeah, definitely a big fan of the restos! Tom, that 57 custom is exactly the combination of parts that I used on my very first 1/25th scale build, after graduating from 1/32 scale Lindbergs, Pyro, Aurora and Airfix.. Many of the hot rods in my collection are restos as it was the only way I could afford a copy, especially in the eighties before all the re-issues. My latest build is for our annual club diorama. We are going to do multiple themes of American Graffiti. I had been given a gluebombed AMT Galaxie - the body, hood with a hole, and the complete weirdly painted interior. I have no idea what year this Galaxie is because Every single chrome trim, body line or moulding had been filed from the body!!!!! It could be a 61,62 or 63 - the experts here may be able to tell. I have a mint 63 chassis that will go under it but as you can see, i have started roughing a 4 door Town Sedan roofline so that I can do the iconic rear-axle-ripped - from - the-police-car-scene. Got a long way to go but near enough WILL be good enough for this project and I don't have to pay eBay prices to get started.

Duke, I have built two of these roadsters, on here somewhere, and you are absolutely correct about the headlight posts looking goofy. However, it is a fairly simple if not a little fiddly fix. You take a small, square file, and file the chassis mounting notch back on those posts as far as you dare, and upwards a bit as well. That's all it takes and it makes a big difference. While you are at it, you need to get a coarse file and file the back of the lower surface of the Model A grille. to paper thin. The limitations of plastic moulding means that the grille is over an inch thick if it were scaled to full size and that pushes it way too far forward.. Probably wouldn't hurt to give the front surface of the crossmember a shave as well! If you use the headlight posts from the kit, modified or not, you really need to use the smallest of the three headlight options. All the lights and lens are beautifully moulded and very useful but IMHO way too big for a Model A hiboy. Hope that helps Cheers Alan

Thanks for that, Tim. As a keen dirt track modeller, this is one I have never had so it will be a welcome addition to my sedan racers. Especially interesting to see the amount of detail in the chassis - with a bit of work to the front end it should look very satisfying. With all the wonderful decals Round 2 has done of late, it is just a pity that they didn't come up with a new, era correct set for this release. That old Modified Stocker sheet is getting pretty long in the tooth, and just how many "Tinys" can you have driving your race cars anyway? Thanks again, Cheers Alan

Thanks guys for the kind words. It was nice to do a straight forward model for a change. I did notice from the photos that I neglected to detail the rear wheels so I will get onto that. I would also like to add C/G class designation and some sort of artwork for the grille insert but just haven't found the right design yet. And Paul, all early Australian Willys had coachbuilt bodies, probably by Holden but perhaps Richards, I'm not certain. In the 33-36 range, we had roadsters, phaetons, roadster utilities and four door sedans also, very rare, a sports coupe. There has been a hot rodded one on the Australian scene for decades now but I know of no others. And that is not that unusual here in Australia. Our market was so small that some bodies were produced in tiny numbers. A good friend of mine has a Holden bodied 39 Willys coupe. It is noticeably different in shape to its American counterpart. According to Holden build statistics, it is either 1 of 1, or 1 of 2 ever made! We are not sure as we don't know which specific body style his is identiefied as. Put it another way, in Australia in 1939, there were exactly THREE Willys coupes manufactured. Makes a 32 roadster look kinda common, eh? Cheers Alan

It is easy to imagine this one in real life Marcel. The colours, the proportions and the detail are all perfect. Combining the chop with the channel works so well. Cheers Alan