fumi

Replicas and Miniatures of Maryland also sells the DeSoto grille, as well as the bumpers.

You can also get them from Steve Kohler at Star Models. He posts pics of the real kits on his site. http://resinrealm.net/STAR%20Models/index.html Star Models' home page: http://resinrealm.net/Star/STARModels.html

There are a lot of books and magazines on the history of Japanese scale models if you know the language.

I highly doubt that was the case. At the beginning, way before Tamiya entered the smaller scale car model market, the competing scales were 1/28, 1/24, 1/21 and 1/20 among the Japanese kit makers. 1/28 and 1/21 soon fell out of favour, leaving the market divided between 1/24 and 1/20 (although it did not stop the manufacturers from rebranding their 1/28 kit as 1/24, especially after mergers and buyout of molds from bankrupted kit makers). By the 80's the market has pretty much settled on 1/24, with LS and Bandai as the last holdouts for 1/20. After Bandai stopped making model cars and LS went out of business in the early 90's, 1/20 finally died off as the general car model scale in Japan. Tamiya started out with 1/12 for their detailed car kits, and scaled down to 1/20 in 1977 with the Tyrell P34, and to 1/24 in 1978 with the Porsche 935. By that time the Japanese market had already settled on 1/24 and 1/20, and I don't think there would be any Monogram influence that late in the game.

Model Car Garage seems to have a photo etch set in their pipeline judging from their preview pictures on Facebook, you might want to wait a bit.

You might also want to order some pre-drilled distributor caps for 6 cylinder engines from RMCM along with the side drafts. Fujimi did not include any.

From the blog it says 1/24.

Just saw it on Facebook. Ebbro will be making the Citroen DS19. http://ameblo.jp/ebr1998/entry-11968951605.html

No seat belt material included, but seat belt templates are printed on the instruction. I used Tamiya masking tape for seat belt back then. Now I generally use pre-cut after market materials from Tuner Model Manufactory.

Do American model companies have local contacts in China to coordinate the different tasks and parties involved? Aoshima has long shifted their production to China and they don't seem to have that much trouble with quality or proportions. I believe they send their staff over to look over production issues.

Is it possible to register your GTI under, say, your mom's name and have you as second driver for the insurance?

Allegedly the square light late version is on the pipeline. I wouldn't be surprised if Hasegawa releases the early version down the line. The bumper and mirrors are already tooled, and the instrument panel is designed to accommodate gauges of different model years. All it needs is a new grille and square gauges insert for the instrument panel.

I assume you live in the US. There is no customs for model car kits.

In the December 2014 issue of the Japanese "Model Cars" magazine, there is an interview with Mr. Ano, the tooling designer (who was also the project champion) of the Sunny Truck, and Mr. Yamanishi from Hasegawa's project development team. Ano has pitched the project to management for 3-4 years, each time it was rejected he would polish up the proposal, and at last it was accepted. His original plan was to have a full detailed kit with separate chassis and body parts that allow it to be built as a long or short body, and engine detail. The long/short body option was rejected due to the complexity of the parts involved, and the engine was dropped due to tooling cost. Instead Hasegawa has designed the kit to be easy to build with minimal parts, to broaden the appeal to not only regular modellers but also to owners and fans of the Sunny Truck. The vote for long and short body was split pretty evenly. Ano himself prefers the short body. In the end Hasegawa decided to choose the version that would have appealed to most people based on the number of actual cars sold as well as the number of cars still exist, and the long body was picked. For anyone who would like to convert it to the short body, the wheelbase difference is 230 mm (2530 mm for the long body vs 2300 mm for the short body) and the bed length difference is 290 mm (1960 mm vs 1670 mm). So you will need to shorted the body by 9.58 mm in front of the rear wheel arch and 2.5 mm behind the rear wheel arch, and adjust the chassis accordingly. The reinforcing ribs decrease from 8 to 7 for the main truck bed side panels and from 4 to 3 for each side access panels. The number of hooks on the truck bed decrease from 5 to 4 on each side.

People are still building "tuners", they are just not going to the traditional shows. From my own experience in the 90's when the sport compact scene was picking up, people who brought their import models to the shows got lumped into whatever group that was not rod, custom or muscle car. Usually it meant lowriders and slammers. Most showgoers were indifferent to them and some sneered at them about "Jap C*ap" or "cram a V8 into it". There was no chance for them to win, no matter how well they were built, because they were in the wrong category. It got off-putting enough that they stopped going to the shows and formed their own groups, and it stayed that way. So I think it is nice for people like Tom to bridge the gap between the two groups, to bring more modellers together despite the different genre they build in. As for tuners being a fad that went out, yes the copied Veilside bodykits and scissor doors are out, but they are only a very small subgroup. Less people in North America are tuning Honda than before, but that's because Honda hadn't sold anything sporty and affordable since 2003. Their place have been taken over by Golf GTI and Mazda 3 and WRX, and soon the FR-S and Focus/Fiesta ST. While the stereotypical "tuner" has faded out, the actual scene is going very strong.

Hobby Search: http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/list/1832/0/1 HLJ: http://www.hlj.com/scripts/hljlist?rel=nav&GenreCode=Aut&MacroType=TirWhe&Scale=24 These sets go out of stock very soon, if you want the really popular sets you will need to pre-order them.

It's more than that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia_Tax

Comparison of the F-40 kits: http://modelcarshirobom.syanari.com/040-f40/f40-comparison.html It is all in Japanese so it might be difficult to navigate if you can't read it, but there are plenty of pictures as well. From the third picture with the overhead view, the order is Tamiya, Fujimi, Italeri, Protar, Fujimi LM.

On the original body the crease on one side is faint and the other side is almost non-existent. On the real car the creases are quite pronounced so it is going to need some work to sharpen them up.

Something to do with the Jeep license I believe. In their military product lists all the 1/35 Jeep kits are removed, even the product number disappeared. For their new 1/48 series they made a "1/4 ton 4x4 light vehicle" instead. For Mercedes kits, the SLK and the 2 SLRs are current, and the 3 AMG kits gained a 89xxx limited edition series number and were last reissued in 2008. The rest are technically still in the catalog, but are unlikely to be reissued.

What about a Pantera? http://www.hemipanter.se/

It is for the instrument panel. http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/image/10262555z3/70/3 Step 5, part G9.

It's still in their catalog. They don't show the engine in the car kits/auto kits pages. You need to click the full price list to find it.

Another source for the Lotus Twin Cam would be the Tamiya Europa. They are pretty common and are themselves perfect candidate for engine swap.

For fourth gen Mustang I'd stick with Revell Monogram. While the AMT ones appear to be more detailed, there are quite a lot of fitment issues and the mold detail is quite soft. The body in the original issue I have also warped quite badly. The Revell Monogram version is far more buildable.