Tom Geiger

IF you had read the R/M website, they don't retail kits. Look again, kits sold on the R/M site are sold by a company called "hobbyshipper". The header on the page plainly says, "Ships from and sold by hobbyshipper.com". So you haven't proven anything. As in why do I even bother....

My most recent McD story... when I'm hungry and I want to eat something cheap and quick, I get a couple of those $1 chicken sandwiches. Sunday I was on the wrong side of the highway and there was a Wendys. So I got two of their $1 chicken sandwiches.... much, much better than McDonalds. Where were these all my life!?!

My friggin bank. They send me a new Visa debit card, telling me my card "may have been compromised" and my old card is void immediately and I need to register this one right away. So now I need to figure out how many accounts of mine depend on this card so I can change them all!

A couple years back when Ollies advertised the Lindberg kits, I went to one that's about a half hour from my house here in PA. They had few of the kits, but they had a load of the Plastikote line of tall cans (I think they were called truck colors) for a dollar a can. I bought all of the primary colors, all the primer gray and all the flat black and clear. I bought at least a can each of the remaining darker body colors, and they had a ton of those! I think I spent close to $50 at a buck a can. Still working off those cans, except I finally ran out of primer gray and bought a few cans this past summer with a Pep Boys rebate card.

As you can see from the kit, the real car doesn't have a trunk lid but there is a carpeted area below that, pretty much like a lot of old Corvettes. The huge headrests are built into the body and not attached to the seats. Typical of a movie car, things that wouldn't be seen were left stock. The dashboard had a big visible top pad, but the instrument panel etc was stock Barracuda. The seats were also stock Barracuda and folded down to give access to the rear area. And as I said earlier, the drive train was stock base 273, auto trans with factory floor shifter. I am quite familiar with the car. It was used by a car dealer in New Jersey as a sales aid, sitting out front to bring people into the dealership. When it started to look shabby it was sent to the back of the lot, where it rotted for years. A NJ collector spotted it, managed to buy it and restored it in the early to mid 1980s. I've been inside and under the car. I crawled into that back area to prove it had the Barracuda body bracing, as someone was claiming it was built from a Valiant instead of a Barracuda. The NJ owner sold it to a car museum in Kansas where it was for many years. It was last sold at Barrett Jackson Scottsdale in 2015 for $137,500. Check out the photos in the link below. You can see the stock interior in one of them. http://www.barrett-jackson.com/Archive/Event/Item/1965-PLYMOUTH-BARRACUDA-CUSTOM-FIREBALL-500-181260

Jeff hit the nail on the head. The tooling is long gone for many of the nice thoughts here. With that in mind, Santa please bring me... The Monogram Land Rover - Hasn't been out in eons, I don't know why. It has some international possibilities, so it could be a Revell of Germany release? Dodge Van - Retool the grille and the front opening in the body that receives it if needed. The last issue before butchering the grille, was the high end grille with the dual rectangular headlights. I'd suggest doing the low end grille with a single round headlight, just to give us another variety. Dodge Pickup - Retool the monster truck back to stock Chevy Chevette - Okay they did the AMCs, so where's the Chevette? A lot of guys will build drag cars around it, as well as those of us who would build it stock. With the MPCs of this era, very little was changed between releases, primarily those needed to produce the next year's promo. With the Chevette, the only difference between the 76-78 are the two little grille pieces that mount into the hood. The current configuration of the tooling is the last issue, a 1979 version last sold as "Bear Bait" . The hood and grille are different all together on this one. So if Round 2 produced this kit with an extra hood and three extra grilles, they'd have everything to make any year Chevette in that box. What should be tossed: The old Revell Tri-Chevys! I will personally smash the '57 Nomad! Let's melt those puppies down and let the Chinese make new Buicks from the metal!

I remember that when I'd talk to Ray Parsons of R&R about his NNL East spots or when I'd see him at other shows, he'd say, "This is my last year, I'm retiring." Then he'd sign up for the next year's show. That went on for several years. I'd actually kid him asking if he was retiring again this year. Then he found the Mighty Mouse folks to sell his kits on eBay. It turned out that the tough part for him was the travel and working the shows. He showed up at NNL East as a spectator the next year and gave us a few of his kits for door prizes. He was smiling ear to ear, which was very unlike Ray when he was working a show. Happy as could be to be at the show. He said that he enjoyed the casting part, and with the sales handled, he'd carry on as long as he could. And two years later we lost him! So Ray never did get to retire.

I'll vouch for the Chevette kit! I have ALL the different versions, and the above was built from a promo as a gift to my sister in law. It's a replica of her first car. Round 2 probably has the last version tooling, and the good part is that aside from the grill and hood, the kits are all exactly the same. So if they did release it, some enterprising caster could cover the entire range by casting a hood and two more grills.

I like your project, especially the way you opened the lid on the engine bay cover. Here's mine, the Jimmy Flintstone van has a slant six in it, you wouldn't see the plugs on it either! The van is since completed, the pickup continues to tick me off! As you mentioned, the windshield splitter is an issue. It was solved on the resin van, but I actually removed it and replaced with Evergreen on the pickup. Don't forget to add a gas filler on the drivers side!

You aren't "keeping it real". You are just a loose cannon on the board. How dare you belittle Dave Van, a known hobby insider, when he reveals FACT to the board? Truth is that I've known Dave Burket for some 30 years. Dave doesn't lie or spread rumors in the hobby. He told me, face to face, the same thing Dave Van relayed. For some reason, Revell sold their remaining supply of Blue Bandido's to a dealer who I won't name here, because it's not my place to do so. I was told that we won't see that one, I'm assuming the Blue Bandido or Blue Beetle again. I wouldn't rule out seeing another version of that '29 Ford kit again. And Dave Van is right. The faction on this board that doubts and belittles everything, will indeed drive anyone in the know right off the board. Certainly the faction here was disrespectful to Dave Metzner, I doubt we'll see any more factory representatives again. This is what causes this board to lose credibility.

The Fireball 500 is a 1966 Barracuda. The fantasy was that the car had some big powerful engine, but the actual car had a stock 273V8 automatic with drum brakes. I pulled a small teardrop trailer behind mine. It was scary. Took it out on one trip. That was enough. So no, I wouldn't be pulling a race car on trailer behind a real Barracuda.

I didn't have collision on my car so my insurance company wouldn't get involved. Neither my wife or I have ever had an at fault accident so it was a decent gamble. We still haven't, and I didn't expect an at fault company to play such games, literally telling me to take them to court. It was at a tough time in my life, so I didn't have the brain space and resources to do so. If that happened today, it would be another story.

Oh yea, my Geo Tracker has 245,000 on it. A bunch of years ago I was at a junkyard and I noticed a beat up Honda Accord sedan sitting right next to the office with "Don't Touch" written several times on the windows. I asked the yard guy what was so special about it, and he said that it had 600,000 miles on it. Said there was nothing wrong with it, that the owner just figured he wasn't going to push his luck any further and bought a new car. He junked it because he didn't want to stick anyone with it. The junk yard guy just couldn't scrap it!

Cool Steve! Nothing like a little push to get you moving on a project! I once had a '64 Valiant convertible in storage. I went there in the spring to find out that the idiot I was renting the space from had pushed it outside in the fall because he wanted to use the space for something else. The car had a bad top and the interior was sogged out over the winter. Of course I was pretty angry, especially since I was paying to avoid the same damage he inflicted on the car and he kept cashing the $50 monthly checks. He just shrugged his shoulders and said he lost my phone number.. well the checks all had my full address on them and I was in the phone book.

Very nice work as usual Steve! I'll be watching your progress! Here's my '59 promo. What's cool about this one is that it's the same colors I remember my Uncle John's car being back in the day. Although I'm pretty sure his was a four door sedan. Nobody left alive who would remember. I always relate cars back to my life and experiences with them. My Uncle John and Aunt Rose would babysit me often when I was a tyke. My favorite activity was following the city bus down the boulevard. So my uncle complied, following the bus and stopping behind it at all the stops so I could count who got off and on. Somehow I found this amusing when I was three.

Welcome from Exton, PA. We have a club member from Palmerton, near you.

Here's some photos from 2005. I went to Long Island the day before the show and stayed at Al's house. Here's the famous Dave's. Jam packed as described. We called it that "just pee anywhere" ambiance! And Gary Weikert's place... I believe he's still there. The guy on the left was Pat Dunnivan from Kansas.

Very cool and well worth playing hooky. Kids remember stuff like this for the rest of their lives!

I bought my 1996 Grand Caravan new and have 196,000 on it. I will be needing a 200,000 plate sometime this year. I book marked the page. My 1999 Plymouth Breeze has 155,000 but I was the third, and now the fifth owner so it doesn't qualify. I bought it from a model club friend, it was his mother in law's car with 34,000 on it. Her son was the original owner, and the parents bought the car from him. I was the third owner, buying the car for my daughter. When she grew up and went on her own, I transferred title to her. When she got her Fusion, the car was still in good shape so I bought it from her.

That is a cool adventure. A few years ago my wife and I were laid off at the same time. I suggested that we take a year off, sell the house in PA, buy a camper and tour America. She didn't entertain the thought for a minute. I'm sorry we didn't do it.

No, they were the insurance company of the lady who hit our car. Big name company, slimy enough that the estimator they sent us to, told us how they'd try to screw us.

Insurance companies have found a new profit center... sale of damaged cars. When my wife got hit in our 32,000 mile 2000 Jaguar S Type, the body shop claim guy warned me that the insurance company would total out my car, demand to take it and turn it around at a profit. Sure enough, the repair estimate came to $5000. They totaled the car for $3500 and told me 'take it or leave it', even though I had documentation of buying the absolutely perfect car for $10,000 three months earlier. They wouldn't give me money to repair the car, only to "replace" it. This was at a time I didn't have the resources, brain space and time to sue them, so I had to walk away, keeping the damaged car. Their deal was that they had no allegiance to me since I was not their customer. If they had repaired my car, they would've lost the $3500 they offered me, never mind the $5000 they really owed me. If they could "take" the car for $3500 and then turn it around at auction for $5000, they would have turned this whole episode into a profitable event for their company. American business at it's finest!

I don't look at either the screen or the keyboard when I type. I'm a trained 10 finger typist. I can be watching the TV as I type. When my daughter was young she thought it was fun to put her hands over my eyes and watch me continue to type. Cap lock- I disabled mine. There is a code to disable the key that I found, where else? On the Internet Good luck on the book! See you soon Manny!

Yes, Bob's Paints will be at NNL East.

This Anglia was started by me in 1973 or 1974. It's still not finished but the Testors paint is just about dry! This one doesn't count because there were many years that I wasn't a modeler. The Volare messenger car was started in 1988 and I finished it this January. This one does count since I have consistently been a modeler, and pulled it out to complete a few steps every few years. So 27 years.