niteowl7710

Doubt it, the C8.R is done, IMSA already made the switch and next year FIA/WEC adopts GT3 homologated cars as the replacement to GTE/GTE AM. Going forward the C8 will become a GT3 platform and be sold into all Series as a Customer Racing race car much the same way the upcoming Mustang GT3 will be. THAT would be the thing to kit because unless it's a complete dud as a GT3 car it will have much wider adoption Internationally in Customer Racing than it ever got as a pair of IMSA Vettes and a pair of FIA/WEC Vettes.

I'll agree to disagree on that. Just Google Image searching '71 Mach 1s I can only find one or two that have white walls equipped. The majority, even the ones with the Ford Pie Pan hubcaps have either white letter tires or black walls. The Whitewalls seem to be more an artifact of the movie car than reality, if anything (as someone else mentioned in this thread earlier) it's more disappointing they aren't including full Mach 1 stripes than not Tampo printing white walls when I'm guessing the majority of customers aren't necessarily going to specificly build the 007 car. Edit - I don't have to guess at all, someone posted the decal sheet in the other thread about 2024 Revell kits and the white walls are clearly on there.

I suspect they'd be decals the way the tire branding is being handled.

It's this kit - Ford 6-Wheeler Pickup, Revell 6415 (1981) (scalemates.com) It's a line of Fords that had a short bed, a flare side bed, and whatever that faux fantasy dually was supposed to be that were done in 1981. I don't believe any of them have ever been reissued, the Ford F-150 Ranger Flare Side that exists in Revell box in the past decade is the Monogram kit which was tooled up in 1980 way back before they were merged together.

I'll wait while you try and push a semi off the road with any passenger vehicle. But there are more Polar Bears with a ram bar than without...

Let me say I'm rivet counting to the extreme and I know it. I do appreciate you getting Round2 to do this project and will be supporting it with my hobby dollars. If a point arrives where the RWD wheels can be included this is the example of what the dress RWD wheels look like. Much like the AWD ones they're hubcaps that fit over the steelies.

No the "Polar Bears" are low profile traffic and Commericial Vehicle Enforcement units, so they don't have roof lights or the big ram bar...mostly...because if you did around you can find white Chargers with the ram bar set ups as well.

There was a show, vendor tables were set up in the normal fashion, although about a dozen of them were unoccupied - an entire row more or less, which really should have had the tables picked up or something as it looked bad. I believe the club itself had a shake up of people and it's possible one of them was the Vendor Coordinator? They had flyers for 2024.

The AWD Hemi Pursuit lasted until 2022, it was dropped from the Civilian car after 2015 I believe. It's also my understanding that these last CHP Chargers are V-6s as that's the only way the 2023 AWD cars came as the production ended. There aren't very many of them, most of them are assigned to the Academy for Driver Training. Most Police Chargers are V-6s in actuality, they vastly outsold the Hemi Chargers regardless as to how many wheels got power. My understanding is also this new kit doesn't actually have the AWD added to it, so it's a RWD Hemi car with wheels that didn't come on it. CHP did use RWD Chargers in 2021, but they are equipped with the requisite RWD steelies.

Revell just reissued the T3 last Fall in an Euro box in the non-Westfalia version.

I'm kind of wondering if that Charger Pursuit parts has parts added to it to convert it to AWD because those are the AWD wheels it's got on it. CHP just started getting AWD Chargers in 2023, not 2021. It's more right than wrong I guess, but CHP has never used the Setina ram bar with integrated lights, they've have LEDs set up at 45° angles for about 15 years now (they go back to the Crown Vic Police Interceptor days)

You'd have to hope so. It would be somewhat...short sighted...to make a whole new tool of something basing it on a specific vehicle and then not tool up the parts to match said vehicle. You can always come back later and release a bigger wheel/tired "Custom Off Road" Blazer later. In fact I'd expect it since very few if any kits are one-off use items.

The Diamonds are Machever kit is already out in Europe, so the North America box oughta hit within 3 months...or one would hope anyways. Wouldn't surprise me if there isn't a totally different kit based off the tool by the end of 2024 unless they choose to space it out further.

You tell me...

Yeah apparently you can only post 7 photos (or that was my limit this morning) per post...so it wasn't a nice build up of stuff like I was planning and so I had to split it up.

Lastly a new series of kits featuring a Stranger Things licensing. New Part added to exist tooling, and then...oh what's that a 128 Part New Tool '85 Blazer...

Not shown here, but there appears to be a North American sized box of the DB-5 Goldfinger kit along with one of the Diamonds are Forever Mustang. Also the C8 Corvette...make that Corvettes now exist in plastic. A Convertible joins the already announced Coupe. Massive parts count including the engine and both LHD/RHS options.

So scrolling through the FB this morning and came across a sideshow video showing Revell's display at the NY Toy Fair last week. There's a few dooseys in here that I can't believe haven't been brought up anywhere yet. Might owe to the fact that much like the Las Vegas show, the NYTF isn't open to the general public. Most of these are already known in a general sense, but have nice minty fresh box art and some unexpectedly have new tooling added.

I have no doubt the basic CAD data was shared, but it's a whole new body tool. Think about where mold/parting lines run on a car with a roof, and then realize that those areas don't exist on a Convertible so it's not a matter of adding a different top insert as there's no "side" (B Pillar, C Pillar) for it to meet up with... Also adjusting the front fender shape might also throw off the fender opening relative to how the wheel sits in it centered and since they were recycling the chassis and running gear out of the Convertible it had to stay as is to make sure it all matched up, otherwise you're now talking about tweaking at minimum the front suspension geometry or maybe even the front half of the chassis plate...and then the parts don't fit the Convertible's oblong wheel openings anymore...and now you're sinking money into new side inserts for that. It's a run away loss of profits.

The 71 Coupe was something done afterwards in terms of the tooling, there was never a roofed car baked into the original tooling. So doing a '71 Convertible would require making an additional insert with the 71 Upholstery Pattern on the Convertible specific door panels. Which granted wouldn't be the world's largest investment, but I'm not sure they'd necessarily sell well enough considering the pace of the 1972s. The only one of those that really moved quickly was the one with the Linda Vaughn figurine that also happened to have the correct grilles to do a Cutlass Supreme.

Says Wes Hurst, that's Wes' Model Car Corner the guy who paid the freight to release the SJR (Jim Rogers) designed and produced Asphalt Modifieds last year and more recently the race car trailer. If someone here is a member of his group and can actually use a pause button with more efficiency that FB Live is most likely posted there. I'm not joining his group just to take better screen shots.

...there already was a Convertible version. Three of them. This is kit is based on the '72 Convertible kit with a new body, glass and interior pieces.

The only thing Okey has the "rights" to is the name and tradedress of JoHan. Tradedress being the logos and labels of the company. Otherwise he physically owns a pile of scrap steel, which I suspect these many years later is now utterly useless more so than it was when he got ahold of it. Okey has been flying very close to the wind for the entire time since he spent all the money to get what he got and I wonder how he's managed to preserve and protect that tooling from rusting away into the netherworld. Not that it really matters since none of it is complete to begin with and he doesn't seem to be in possession of the few pieces that were run last for the production of the Testors kits.

I'd wonder what "Steve's" all-in cost is though, as the industry standard $250k for a new tool (which was back in 2018 and Covid and inflation have done a number on certain costs) is the whole thing, not just the tooling steel. It's the R&D (be it 3D scan of a kit, 3D scan of a 1:1, or the old measuring with a black and white graduated grid), conversion of the data to CAD, someone who takes the CAD and splits it into a model kit by separating the CAD into pieces and designing all the parts runners and how the parts are alloted to them. The tooling steel, cutting the tool, EDMing the tool. Artwork for the instructions, box art and decals. Producing 5-8k sets of instructions, boxes and decal sheets. Producing the kit (injection) and production & packaging the kit. Trans-Pacific and then Intermodal U.S. Shipping Costs. Oh yeah and of course licensing.

Model kits and associated paraphernalia are classified as "Toys" by the Federal Government for Customs purposes. There are no Customs Duties on anything that falls under the umbrella of "Toys" regardless of the country of origin. Some of the larger overseas sites and especially eBay will collect your state sales tax, but there's no other charges beyond the kit and shipping. The only minor caveat to all of that is if the value of the imported good and shipping exceed $800 on a *singular* shipment you will have to file a Certificate of Self Importation with U.S. Customs & Border Patrol which is a single sheet of paper swearing you are importing the items for yourself and not for commerical resale.