CorvairJim

Make sure you bolt them down good and tight, Eelco - I wouldn't want anyone falling out when the doors fall off!

I think I've got the idea now. It's not so much "Kill the zombies" as "I OWN THIS ROAD, SUCKER"!

May I offer a little constructive criticism? The track of both models looks too narrow to me. Would it be possible to put spacers behind the wheels so that they come closer to the fenders? Other than that, they're gorgeous!

Hold on a second there! I'm 1/16 Cherokee, so I'm a foreign model made here in the U.S. with some domestic content!

That's true. They proved it a couple of years ago on "MythBusters". That black BMW is one of the sadder examples of the breed that I've seen, since it looks like the owner really seems to think that he improved his car. Kinda of like this guy... One thing that the yellow Roadmaster has going for it: The Buick portholes are on an actual Buick this time around!

So Ron: What is it with you Kiwis? You have your seasons all mixed up, you drive on the wrong side of the road, then the Aussies decide to follow your example! (Tsk, tsk... ) Anyhow, my window A/C unit crapped out at the end of last summer and I haven't been able to afford to replace it yet. I have 4 or 5 CBP's that have been on hold for a couple of weeks now. Tomorrow, they're forcasting temps possibly as high as 110 here in the Philly area, depending on which news outlet you pay attention to. 110 would shatter the ALL-TIME HIGH TEMPERATURE for Philadelphia since they started keeping records on such things in the 1870's by FOUR DEGREES!

That Buick conversion looks SWEET! Just the way GM would have done it if they had the guts to try to sell something like that. They did a couple of prototypes based on mating an El Camino with a Pontiac LeMans front clip, and this works just as well to me. (Hmmm... I just came into an 80's El Camino glue bomb, and I have a Monte Carlo that could offer up it's higher-line-than-Malibu front clip... I wonder... )

Still no A/C in my workroom. Still about 110 degrees up there. Still no progress to report. Still getting further and further behind in 3 or 4 CBP's...

I'm not familiar with Car Wars. I went to the website you gave us and couldn't find any pics of the type of cars used. How do they differ from the ones in the good Doctor's CBP?

Being an air-cooled car nut, I know the car fairly well. This week's Mystery car is Porsche 356/2-055, a purpose-built aerodynamically-optimized factory lightweight race car. It featured an all-aluminum skin over a production 356 shell and underbody. This example, one of roughly 50 built between 1949 and 1951, won it's class at the 24 Hours of LeMans in 1951, at an average speed of over 140 km/h. It was driven in the race by Porsche's French distributor Auguste Veuillet and co-driver Edmonde Mouche. This car continued to be successfully raced through 1955. It's been beautifully restored to the condition you see in Harry's photo and is now on display in Porsche's museum in Stuttgart.

It looks great in black suede, but I agree - stick with your plan. The cruiser skirts go perfectly with the lines of the body, flowing down at the same curve as thew quarter panel. I'll be watching this build... and the black-primered followup!

Bart's suggestion of the "Chrome Nubbies" would be the perfect solution to your wiper hole problem. I have to agree with John; it's a great looking model, and I'm not even a Ford guy. I'm a dyed-in-the-wool Chevy man, but like you, I'll look at any well-executed model. (Your T-Bird is surely well-executed!) Like you, I sometimes build models other than my favorite brand. My most recent completed model was a Dodge, and I have two more Mopars on my worktable at the moment!

She's a beauty. Ordnarily I'm into stock and SHINY, but in this case I'll make an exception. You were almost uncannily true to your reference photo!

I've been planning a series of bone-stock 1966 Chevys to compliment the replica of my (former) 1966 Corvair Monza that's currently in the works. Looking at your flat-out incredible model inspires me to do a couple of them - one as an all-out performance big-block 4-speed car and the other as a straight-6/Powerglide "Secretary Special". As I recall, in 1966 you could get any engine you wanted in your Impala SS. from the basic 230 straight-6 up to the fire-breathing 427. I have at least one of each of the following from 1966 awaiting either building or restoration: Chevelle coupe and wagon, El Camino, Nova SS, and a restorable Corvette annual glue bomb to go with a few other Corvair glue bombs. I only hope that they come out somewhere close to as nicely as your red beauty did! (I still need to find a pickup truck or two... )

Too bad this model was never available in 1:24/1:25 scale. I don't build in smaller or larger scales, since I like the uniformity of size of my models on display that having them all in the same scale provides. This is one model that might persuade me to break my self-imposed rule - it's a gorgeous car.

Thanks, Jairus. My Cobalt SS was my first brand-new car, and it WILL be my last. We've bought a couple of new cars for my wife over the years as the main family car, but that was even before we got my Cobalt. She's going to have to make do with used from here on out too. Her current car, a 2005 Chevy Malibu Maxx hatchback, only has about 80,000 miles on it, so it's got plenty of good years and miles left in it. And that car has been paid off for a few years now. An addendum to my prior post: Don't get me wrong, even though I'm 'stuck' with a 6 1/2 year old car that is finally close to being paid off, I do enjoy some of the amenities it has. The AM/FM/CD/XM radio unit, for instance... Oh, yeah, I installed one of those in the Corvair - under the dash using existing screw holes. And I really like the air conditioning too... But wait, open up the vent windows and kick panel vents in a Corvair or virtually ANY car from the 50's or 60's and you just don't need a/c unless you're trapped in bumper-to-bumper traffic, in which case you'd be likely to overheat your engine if you're running your a/c full time anyway! Then there's the sunroof. I love the sunroof in my 'Balt on nice sunny days when it's not sweltering hot... but a Corvair convertible in great condition, with an entire roof that goes away - not just one small panel - would have cost half as much! The power steering and brakes are nice to have in a 3,000 lb car... Don't need 'em in a 2,600 lb Corvair. Not much weight over the front wheels so steering is nice and easy even at parking lot speeds, and the 4-wheel drum brakes lifted directly from the Chevelle parts bin are perfectly capable of hauling the car to a stop from 60 mph in 144 ft. - with 1960's technology brake shoes. (Period road tests listed the 1965 Corvair as having the 3rd-best braking available in America, behind only the Corvette - by 3 feet - and the Porsche 911 - by a single foot! Jaguar, Ferrari, Aston Martin, Austin Healey, Triumph, MG... All worse. Most of those cars have 4-wheel discs... ) With modern brake linings and tires, braking distances today are even shorter. Most cars from the 70's and 80's have all of the 'modern amenities' that 21st century American drivers have come to expect, with the possible exception of easily retrofitted sound systems (A note to Harry: I'll try to make sure that I buy AMERICAN sound systems for any used cars I buy in the future! ). OBD II diagnostic systems are great for modern cars where an ordinary shade tree mechanic doesn't have a clue which computer system crapped out this time around, but those older cars generally didn't have computers in the firt place, or if they did, there weren't nearly as many of them! I read somewhere that my Cobalt SS has more computing capacity than my home computer, and needs it to run properly. Scary.

A little web exploration came up with these hits that you might find interesting. The first is just a great photo of the front of the dealership as it appeared shortly after they went out of business: http://www.flickr.co...ski/6963365669/ Here's an article thast was run in the Chicago Tribune back in 1986 about the man himself, the rather flambouyant Mr. Zollie Frank: http://articles.chic...alerships-pinky

I happily drove a succession of 100% American Corvairs for nearly three decades. I bought a brand new (Lordstown, Ohio-built) 2006 Chevy Cobalt SS in September of 2005 because I couldn't bear the thought of putting my nearly rust-free 1966 Monza through another winter of Pennsylvania road salt. I liked the idea of having that new-car warranty, something I'd never had before. Besides, doesn't everybody deserve a shiny new, bright red sport coupe with a slick-shifting stick shift and a sunroof at least once in their life? Bad mistake. Shortly after buying the Cobalt, our household finances went south in a big way. My overtime, which had been averaging 8-10 hours a week, completely dried up. My wife went out of work on disability, and our employer, the U.S.P.S., decided to fight paying her for it. She only was able to go on full disability retirement about 4 months ago. Anyhow, the payments on the Cobalt were driving us to the poorhouse. It got to the point where we were three months behind on our mortgage. We were so upside-down on the Cobalt's note that selling it wasn't an option, so I had to take up a friend of mine on a standing offer he had given me on my Corvair. In 20/20 hindsight, what it boils down to is that we just should have saved the money that the Cobalt cost us and gotten another good-running Corvair as a winter beater! Older cars are dead-simple to work on, and they attract all sorts of attention. For the price of a 4-6 year old Focus, Corolla or Sentra, you can get an above average, good running, clean, and solid (although maybe not show-quality) "nice" car from the 1970's or 80's. Something along the lines of a Monte Carlo, Regal, El Camino, Cadillac DeVille, or 5.0 Mustang (NOT something like a Corvette or Trans Am, although even those cars are fairly affordable too). Park one of these 1970's-80's cars next to a clapped-out 6 year old Subaru Impreza and see which one gets the attention!

S.Svendsen above isn't the only guy who built a Concorde a while back. I'm sure many of the guys on this website who also have read Scale Auto remember their 20th Anniversary contest where they bound a set of Slixx decals into an issue of the mag and you had to build a model around that theme. It didn't have to be a race car specifically - there were several magazine delivery trucks entered, for instance - but most entries were racers (I hope there's no backlash for posting photos bearing a competing magazine's name and logo!) . I built two for the contest, which meant buying a copy of the magazine at the LHS in addition to the subscription I had at the time (long since lapsed). My premise were two NASCAR entries from the same team, 20 years apart. In the present day, they campaigned a new Chrysler Concorde as seen directly below, but when the team (and the magazine) were just starting out, it was a year-old 1979 Monte Carlo in the Late Model Sportsman Series, as seen at the bottom of my post. The Concorde body is from the AMT "Slammers" "Street Heat" model, and the Monte Carlo's body is from an MPC 1979 Monte Carlo annual glue bomb. Sorry, but I just don't recall which chassis' I used for these builds. (I apologize for the poor quality images. They were taken about 8 years ago on a very early digital camera. My cell phone takes better pictures!):

Not only is it merely real, it's really quite sincerely REAL! (With apologies to L. Frank Baum... )

Well then, I guess I was right in principle!

Well, I'm not ashamed to admit that you skunked me this week, Harry. I have absolutely no idea of what this week's Mystery Car is.

I like the "different" color scheme, especially with the steelies color-matched to the interior.

Harry, Harry, Harry... I'm surprised at you! Rear-view mirrors didn't become standard equipment by law until January 1, 1966. Unless it was a higher-line car, it was generally still optional equipment in 1962. I'm almost certain it was an option on this Bel Air, and I KNOW it was an option on the Biscayne. (Other things we take for granted that needed laws to make them standard equipment: Seat belts - Front outboard positions, January 1, 1965, all seats January 1, 1966. Back-up lights: January 1, 1966)

Hey, I once had a '61 Corvair Lakewood wagon that rode smoother than the '73 Chevelle wagon I had at the same time. Personally, I don't want the fillings to be shaken loose from my teeth by the time I arrive in California! Maybe I'm getting soft in my middle age (I'm DEFINITELY getting soft in my MIDDLE! ), but I like my comfort.