niteowl7710

Well that car pictured is actually the GT4 car...which would be in the same IMSA support series with the Mustang which operates separately from the 4 class IMSA Weathertech races.

There is no Mercedes counterpart. The M8 is BMW's GTE/GT-LM platform that raced in FIA-WEC and IMSA. The FIA program was dropped after last season, but the IMSA program is still going as the M8 retail car is a strong seller in the U.S.

Testors never made anything, it was all kits that were repackaged from other manufacturers. The 90s Testors kits were tooled up by Lindberg for the Testors label and all of that along with the Hawk, Pyro & Palmer stuff that Lindberg owned is over at Round2.

Revell's US Facebook page posted today that the U.S. & Canada were supposed to getting their line of paints and supplies (which includes the enamel and acrylic paint line) "soon". How soon depends on how far along they are to meeting the California labeling requirements before they made today's announcement.

LHS says they're getting a shipment of the "new" '67 with the utility box "bed" in on Tuesday.

LHS got some in today...let the frenzy begin.

Eighty81 a few years back did a resin casting of the N.A. spec SR5 body and pile of resin bits (sold separately) that convert the Aoshima AEs to LHD.

My point was that Tomy is currently actively using the Ertl brand in that diecast farm toy space. I doubt they have any interest diluting the brand by having Round2 sell a thousand 45+ yr old tractor kits. If they believed there was a market for them they would run them off via a contractor and sell them under their own business.

When Round2 was leasing the right to produce the AMT/MPC stuff it was from RC2. Everything was then sold to Tomy (of the toy and video game fame from Japan) and Round2 purchased the model tooling directly from them while they kept all the diecast and farming stuff (Ertl had a wide ranging diecast farm implement line). If Tomy thought there was any profit in running that stuff I'm sure they would have found someone to do it by now - it's been 12 years. Considering what John Deere wants to license stuff these days, I'm not sure many here would tolerate the sticker shock involved. Also those reissues of the Tractor & Backhoe were 21 years ago, that's kinda stretching "quite recently" a bit.

Yes true the parts themselves aren't new-new they've been available from Ebbro if you know where to look since the 4L came out, but this is the first time they've come with the rest of the model.

This one is $52 before shipping from Japan directly. The cheapest Heller one I see on eBay is about $45 shipped. The Ebbro one also build a slightly later variant than the Heller one.

The new parts would be the body and the first parts runner below it with the ribbed side cladding, wheels, and different dash & steering wheel. Of interest they didn't chrome the front/rear bumpers and door handles as those don't appear to be chromed on the 1:1 GTL. Also they ungated pretty much everything on the runners so you can build any era steel roofed 4L - the original kit has a open roof with a cloth top.

In conjunction with this release Hasegawa announced yesterday morning for September releases their Div III, JTC Touring Car version of this kit. This is an odd duck to me, as it's answering a question nobody asked, and Beemax already answered. Now Beemax's kit was a 1988, and this is nominally a 1989, but comparing the CAD drawing to the existing model kit nothing is directly jumping out to me other than the location of the fuel filler, and I just bought this livery from S.K. Decals last month. I trust Hasegawa will do more with this kit in terms of other JTC team variants, but it's still very odd to see them directly repeat a kit that isn't even 3 years old and BeemaNuNu just announced a 1989 24hrs of Spa reissue of their AE92.. Whereas the Starlet and Isuzu Gemini were both used in the earlier days of JTC and appear to both be engineered in such a way (with bare floors with separate back seats) that race variants would be possible.

Hasegawa put out a better image of the flyer that's behind the test shot in the photo, and it's showing a December release date. So this will be their new tool kit for the Fall, announced here because the All Japan Model & Hobby Show held in Tokyo has been canceled for 2020.

Yeah I saw there's a prototype for the GR Supra in the 1/32 line at the stuff that was at Shizouka Square. If it makes them money, more power to them, it's just left them kinda lurching in 1/24. I know they're playing in 1/72 military stuff as well. Things there just haven't been the same since Nao left, then supposedly the main 3D guy bailed midway through the Pagani development. I kinda wish if they're going to give up on the Super Car thing - instead of relabeling it into a new boxing style and series they'd finish up the Zonda and put it "to bed" already. I know that some of the Lamborghinis did in fact not move well, and their choice of making the racing Murcie an R-SV rather than an R-GT (and the resulting sales disappointment) is what killed off their entire plans to do a Lamborghini racing line. Which sort of snow balled and compounded and took out the McLaren F1 "Short Tail" in the process - which is a shame considering what a dog's breakfast the Fujimi kits are, of all the McLaren F1s. Every time I have a conversation with the people at BeemaNuNu about doing a Huracan/Huracan Evo GT3 kit, I hear the same lamentations about how poorly that R-SV sold, as if the success or failure or someone else's lack of foresight dooms everything related to it. But then we've seen that repeatedly within the U.S. too as any sales failure of a kit usually dooms the entire genre (modern pick up trucks are still haunted by the trifecta of 1997 F-150s) for a few decades.

I agree there are too many R32s, but as a race car guy it's incredibly frustrating that Tamiya is sitting on a mound of race car tooling that would sell - most of it doesn't even need decals at this point - and none of it has seen the light of day since it's original runs in the 80s & 90s. Hasegawa & BeemaNuNu are throwing that era racing kits out in all formats and Tamiya gives me turned metal throttle bodies on a Lotus. Speaking of which the Lotus 79 isn't the best example, since it's the same race car, at least with an R30 (despite all the Aoshima kits) there are a bunch of civilian and race R30s, and Hasegawa seems to be able to crank at least 5 variants out of everything even if it means putting a resin chin spoiler in the kit. You'd only need one Lotus 79...maybe two if there's a race specific version, but you can build several Skylines however you'd like. ? Aoshima also gets all my thumbs down right now as they've turned into an even more conservative company than Tamiya in terms of their releases. There have been what...4 new tools in the past half decade, and I'd love to see the sales numbers on that Toyota Taxi. The Pro Box is getting it's 4th kit in October, but how many Mazda Familia Vans did they move? The R34 4 Door gets it's 5th version (if you count the original Custom Wheels version of the 1st releases as it's own kit) as a Police Car in October, and the URAS Type-R FINALLY saw the light of day. I know Fujimi is off playing in 1/72 military land right now, but I'd love to get one of the 3 promised Jimny kits instead of the 14th reissue of the Hustler.

The scooter is a Yamaha Vino for anyone who's interested.

An R30 would also allow them to "dual tool" the kit the way they did with the R31 to allow a JTC version as well. The A60 Supra is over saturated I'll grant you, but then so was the market for an R31 Skyline and they did it anyways. I know it's easy for us to spend their money on our own personal thoughts, but I've never understood why in the military realm they can retool and retool and retool certain (mostly German) tanks seemingly from new companies evert year, but the automotive market goes - Well there's a 30yr old tool of xyz, so a new one wouldn't sell! The American kit manufacturers are just as guilty of that. I know there are arguably more "IPMS" builders, but it's not the order of magnitude necessary to justify having 3-5 new Panzers popping up yearly each one trying to be more complicated or accurate than all the others.

Hopefully this sells well, we get a LHD dash at some point and inspires them to tackle a Celica XX (Celica Supra) there are kits of those from all of the Big 3 Japanese brands, plus the much listed upon MPC kit. But those Japanese offerings are either old and motorized or terribly out of proportion. I won't go off on a tangent about my desire for a M40/50 1st Gen Supra, aside from off scale stuff there's no kit of that at all...Hasegawa brands all of these 80s/90s stuff in their Historic Japanese Cars line...a '78 Supra fits that bill delightfully well.

Well lort knows we've needed a modern A70 forever now. Both the Fujimi (with the exception of the High Mecha kit) and the Tamiya one are both very simple curbsides that leave a lot to be desired in terms of details considering both were tooled back in 1986.

There was a weird Italian connection beyond the sale of ESCI from Ertl and it's dissolution into Italeri because by the time those boxings of the 935 came about ESCI as a name was gone and we got Italeri's (arguably awful) Jaguar XJ220 & Lamborghini Diablo (x2) at the same time But there was one 3 pack boxing of "Super Cars" that was the Jag, the Diablo & the ESCI Countach - the other being the Jag/Diablo and Viper GTS.

As far as I've ever seen (with the usual caveats about not seeing everything) the only kits branded ESCI/Ertl were during a brief period in the early 80s sold in Europe. The ESCI kits sold here were all labeled just as AMT only with those 4 you mentioned being all released at the same time in similar sized "long" boxes and box art styles. If you dig deep enough in the box art vaults you can find co-brandrd Revell/ESCI, and Gunyze Sanyo/ESCI boxing of almost all of their kits and Humbrol/ESCI boxings of a few.

All of the ESCI tooling went to Italeri after Ertl sold it off and ESCI went under 30+ years ago. Italeri has been (and will be) reissuing a bunch of that old ESCI tooling over the past 18 months. Considering the fact that Italeri ran off two trucks and two trailers for AMT earlier, I suspect this is a continuation of that "tool sharing" agreement.

Yeah shipping out of Japan (and most of Asia) is pretty miserable right now. Japan Post will not accept any mail bound for the U.S., Hong Kong Post just started allowing EMS shipments to the U.S. & U.K. - which along with a few other European Countries are the only places you can get things sent airmail. Everything else has to go by boat and shipping times on that seem to be trending right around the 60 day mark. So the only thing available in many cases is UPS/FedEx/DHL, which are of course very quick, and a bit pricey to put it mildly.

And in the "never say never files" that Road Rally MG-B I said had never been reissued was announced this morning for an October release.