fumi

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.

Not exactly synthetic, but biodiesel has been in use for quite a while.

If you must buy within the US, I have been using Model Empire (http://modelempireusa.com) for quite a long time and their price on import kits seems to be reasonable. You can also find good deals on Star Models. I think Steve deals in used kits so sometimes the kits are opened with parts cut out, you might want to ask him about the kit's condition beforehand. http://resinrealm.net/Star/STARModels.html As for paint, if you are just starting out you should probably stick with hobby paint for now. I prefer acrylic because they are easier to clean up.

People can opt not to work, but without legitimate reasons they won't get paid. I think it holds true for most societies. The government has not fixed salary since the 70's, after Mao died. Factories and office jobs will pay more salary than people can make in farming, so the young people rushed to the cities to work in them. Foreign companies who set up office in China will pay a salary several times more than the local companies, so the brightest and smartest people go work for them. It is just that the salary is still lower than in the West, even with all the increments over what the local companies can afford to pay. The one child policy has its consequences, and the people are feeling it now. Without it the consequences would have been much worse, though. It is reforming, albeit in a slow pace. The numerous revolutions in the last century from an empire to a republic to communism showed that abruptly changing the form of governemt did not work well in China. It had actually pushed back progresses. In reality China is moving past the "cheapest production" stage. The salary has raised to the point where industries that require intensive labour and little input has become unprofitable, especially for garment. A lot of those factories have relocated to Bangladesh, Burma and Vietnam in recent years.

Yes, some companies have copied Western designs, and the market has told them to either clean up their act or get lost. Doesn't this answer your original statement of "how China respects copyrights"? China didn't really become industrialized until the 80's, when businesses from Hong Kong started moving their factories across the border. It spent the 80's and 90's making garments and small electronic goods for foreign companies. It wasn't until the late 90's that indigenous brands started to become mainstream in the white goods market. For the automotive market, the indigenous brands are still fringe players and I don't see this to change any time soon. It might have a lot of factories, but as far as industrialization goes it is at around the same level as Japan was in the late 60's to early 70's, though it is catching up rapidly.

Essentially what Japan went through in the 60's, or Taiwan and South Korea in the 80's. Japanese cars in the 60's and the early 70's looked just like scaled down versions of American cars, before they went on and developed their own designs.

And how many of those cars you quoted, all were from the last decade or older, are still in production? Shuanghuan, which made the X5 and the Smart lookalike and the majority of the "clones" you mentioned, is winding down its passenger car business. Lifan, which made the "Mini clone", has revamped their entire car lineup. The rest are either car show specials that never went into production or are long gone from the market. The market has been changing so rapidly in the last couple years that it has largely stamped those clones out. Companies that cannot cope with the changes are forced out of business. As for the Dongfeng Mengshi, AM General could not sell the Humvee to the PLA under sanction so they sold parts for 100 vehicles to Dongfeng, with full understanding that Dongfeng will produce the car indigenously from then on. A civilian version was devised to skirt the sanction, but was never sold to the public.

Other than a resemblance of the headlight and grille area most of them don't look even close. In the case of Tongji Auto Roadster vs Audi R8, I can't see any resemblance at all. And how old are these? At least the Shuanghuan Laibao SRV was from before year 2000. The Geely Merrie 300 Mercedes lookalike was never produced. The current BYD F6 looks nothing like the one in your link at all.

Wrong. China has been part of the Patent Cooperation Treaty since 1993. http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ShowResults.jsp?lang=en&treaty_id=6 You can't obtain patents for pirated copies. Of course, pirates wouldn't bother with patents in first place. Patents also need to be applied in each country where protection is sought. A lot of the troubles stem from cases where foreign companies did not bother to apply the patents in China, and someone else took the design and applied it for themselves. I suggest anyone not familiar with patent laws in China to read up on it instead of making things up. And foreign companies do win patent cases in China, if the patents were applied properly. http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2013/05/07/design-patents-in-china-applications-infringement-and-enforcement/id=40026/

Generally for items that are officially exported there should not be too many difficulties. The problem starts when the products are meant to be for domestic consumption only but "somehow" got leaked to the outside world. Hence the official classic Italian sports car kit made by a respectable model company, which was never supposed to be sold outside of Korea. One side note for Academy. They started their business making clones of Tamiya kits in the 80's, down to the mistakes and wrong scale, and went on to become a respectable company on military subjects, like the ground breaking full detailed Tiger I kit in the 90's. That's why they never released that Israeli Centurion they promised every year in their catalog and modellers asked for every year back then. It was based on the inaccurate motorized Tamiya Cent from the 70's, just when they were ready to release it in the early 90's they have become respectable in the military modelling world, and they were not going to tarnish their reputation with that abomination of a kit. Entirely different cultures do make things difficult a lot of times. In my experience working with Japanese is even harder, when what they tell you may or may not be what they actually have in mind, and you are entirely on your own to decide which way it is. They will say things they think you would want to hear, and they expect you to be able to tell they don't really mean it, just like they do naturally day in and day out. But back to the generic 1/35 boxy pickup trucks and SUVs for military dioramas: these companies consulted with their lawyers and made sure their kits are generic enough to not raise a problem, and no car company in their right mind would make a fuss over some model cars supposed to be used by insurgents and suicide bombers that may or may not resemble their products. When Meng makes the F-350, they obtained a proper license from Ford.