niteowl7710

Tamiya's easily. Aoshima's curbside R34s have EVERYTHING molded into the chassis pan almost. Fujimi's R34 is a lower detail SnapTite kit, and their NiSMO version is in name only.

Well you could re-release the convertible, but they "destroyed" the regular Corrado tooling when they made the convertible. It's the same fate suffered by the BMW 850i.

But what "rights" to Testors have to the vast majority of the kits they made? There are only a handful of things, the Boyd Coddington stuff that Lindberg later do reissue generically. that they actually "made" themselves. Everything else they offered was simply a purchase of bulk kits from Union, Fujimi, Italeri, SeVille, etc. Even the modern Dodge Chargers that were released under that weird Lincoln Mint line were produced by Lindberg post RPM ownership by J. Lloyd for Testors.

Pretty sure the Smokey & the Bandit T/A still has the "PC" incorrect GA State Flag on the decal sheet though, it's just not on the box art anymore.

But that would say something like "Cooperation Italeri" like it does with the ICM Ford, or "Reissue with new parts" like it does with the AAR Cuda...I would think.

It would be great if you could pivot a company like Revell on a dime, but it's more like parallel parking an aircraft carrier. There are a lot of "legacy" expenses that have already been paid before the sale and consolidation took place and it would just be fiscally irresponsible for the new owners (even imaginary forum ones) to scrap all the in-progress projects and start from scratch with new ones. Aside from the part where starting from scratch would leave the company with no new kits to release in 2019 until very late in the year, if at all.

The whole idea of assigning skill levels is just silly. I can't believe the old Monogram 1st Gen Mustang is as complex a kit as the 20xx Mustangs. Meanwhile the Audis are Level 3, but the new Ford GT which has 88 parts and metal axles/very little suspension is a Level 4...because you have to glue the body together, paint a tri-tone and decal it?

What does 3 mean over there? When they realigned the U.S. "Skill" Levels to the 1-5 style Europe used Skill Level 3 covered anything that was pre-painted regardless as to the kit's part total wound up being.

Keep in mind it's a Europe facing release list, has that kit ever seen the light of day overseas? They have all of this "free" tooling, might as well run some of it.

Not being my area of expertise, is there anything about making the current kit into an AAR that would require them to tweak the body cavity mold (eg new side inserts)? From a quick glance it seems like the differences would all be covered with engine, hood, etc inserts leaving the body to soldier on unchanged.

Yes it is, I mistyped that and fixed it, but not before you managed to quote it.

It's after New Years in Germany, so the list is out, and the Hannant's one was correct. Nothing new or added to it, at least in terms of automotive. So you bullet points at least out of the German side are the new tool tractor (which will be SnapTite like the Porsche Junior), the new tool Land Rover Series III, and a modified reissue of the '70 Cuda with new pieces to make it into AAR trim. EDIT - The "1966 Chevy Custom" in 1/25 seems to have been replaced with a 1956 Chevy Custom in 1/24 which would be the old Monogram Street Machine/Drag kit.

It's not that your idea is bad, it's just not how tooling is cut and engineered. If you were to look at any modern Tamiya kit with its 2-3 HUGE runners of parts...well that's how everyone else tools their stuff too, except it's cut up to fit in our smaller boxes. A great study on that would be comparing any of the original "big box" Revellogram kits ('59 Caddy, Impalas, 60 Impala, 50 Ford F1, 65 Impala, etc) and compare it to the modern variants (like the '66 Impala) or any of the current reissues and you can see how those big sprues are chopped down to seem like much smaller, more modular pieces. So the only efficient way to create a "uniform" SBC would be to also tool up a SBF and maybe SBM all on one tooling and then release ongoing kits featuring those engines or gating off the other engines to just run the specific one. Otherwise you're wasting "real estate". The issue a universal engine also cause is creating a modular way to mount them into everything, how you address different oil pans and exhaust manifolds, etc. When you start puzzling over the many ways a SBC is dressed from its inception to modern times it becomes somewhat pointless to have a tool that just consists of an engine block and cylinder heads with the rest of the engine being application specific. Also due to the way the body tooling is designed there's no way to put other stuff like wheels into that piece.

Well it turns out (remember it's the "missing number kit") the Ford GT had been in development for something like 18 months by the time it finally officially broke cover at Tamiya Fair. It's presumed they wanted to make it accurate to the actual production street car, rather than the early auto show prototypes.

For anyone looking for a different building option for this kit, Shunko Models (Japanese decal maker) will be offering two sheets in January to use with the new metallic red/blue colors being offered by Splash Paints and Gravity Colors. One sheet is for the U.K. based team that ran in WEC, and the other the U.S. based team that ran in IMSA/Weathertech. Both sheets offer the 2018 24hrs of Le Mans sponsorships, in addition the specific team sheets will offer a secondary continent specific option. Team U.K. will offer the 6hrs of Spa-Francorchamps which the #66 car won the LMGTE Pro Class. Team U.S. will offer the 24hrs of Daytona option which the #67 won the GTLM class.

The rest of my Christmas stuff has filtered in. Shipment from HLJ, and a pile of liveries from S.K. Decals

Also since this kit was only released the one time, I think you might be misremembering how good it was the first go around. It's not like the tooling has been worn out be repeated reissues, it's always been mediocre 1970s MPC subpar execution. How is it insane that "yours" is molded in silver, when it says MOLDED IN SILVER right on the box top?

I'd rather support the manufacturer than someone bootlegging the parts.

That's all fine and well, but there's a reissue of a certain AMT Dodge, the "newer" AMT Ford F-Series, and a plethora of other places this bed could find a home with some work since that type of utility box still soldiers on pretty much unchanged other than LED lighting and newer style slam-locks to this day. I could see buying a couple of the bed for other ideas, but I don't really need another of the other F-Series kits since I have 5 of those kits as it is. Otherwise I suspect a glut of F-Series kits with no beds will be filling the vendor tables and trading section here.

Some Civics off the SAL Donkey Some Decals from SpotModel

We'll see what they have to say when it get closer to the kit being reissued. When the restore/reissue something that's "historically significant" they tend to make a big deal out of it in the literature. If it's a straight reissue of how it's been the past several times it will just mumble something about vintage box art and new decals.

Tomy kept the Ertl brand and still uses it to produce all manner of diecast farm implements. It's been 10-11 years now, but I distinctly recall Round2 saying they didn't get anything from that Ertl farm line, including the plastic kit tooling. So presumably Tomy still has it hidden away somewhere if they didn't scrap it.

I wonder how long it will be before Moebius or Burkett sells the bed itself. The thing is also a drop fit onto the LWB '67-72 Fords as well, I have to think once the initial run of kits has sold out, there's a pile of money sitting there waiting to be spent on that bed as a stand alone.

Round2 doesn't have the licensing or tooling to those old Ertl tractors.

I bet it's the wagon, it's been a little while since that was out last (6 yrs), and I don't think it was ever released in Europe.