Tom Geiger

I've always defined my Holy Grail Kit as that one special kit you have searched for years and finding it would make your life complete! It doesn't have to be expensive, just impossible to find! It's not a long list of relatively common kits.. hint- if you put it in eBay and several examples pop up... it's not hard to find! I can say I no longer seek the Holy Grail! I have been fortunate enough to find and acquire all those rare kits from my youth, and everything I wanted truly bad. The one car I would have considered my Holy Grail is the 1966 Plymouth Valiant Signet promo. This is no doubt the rarest Plymouth promo (body style - I'm not counting a muscle car rare color). I've done some research and believe that it was never officially released because it has some glaring errors. For instance the body has the 1965 style roof and not the new for 1966 roof. The change probably happened at Chrysler and never was conveyed to AMT for the promo run. I believe that Chrysler got their internal copies, and had AMT destroy the rest. All the copies I've been able to trace to their source started with a Chrysler employee. Sooo... I searched for years. I found one on eBay during a time when I wasn't able to spend the money. A year or so later another one appeared. I still wasn't 100% in the right financial position but reasoned the combination of me and the model would never be perfect so I hit that "Buy It Now" button for $400. That was 4 years ago. Yea, the most I ever paid for a model. Since then someone cast it in resin and I have two copies of that too.

I'm still being held hostage by the "View New Content" button! I reported it months ago to no avail. Several others PMed me that they have the same problem. When I hit the button I get "no new content available". Works the same on three different computers, all the different browsers as well as my Iphone. BUT, if I log out of my account and hit same button I get new content! I can only conclude that it's something stuck in my account. It wouldn't be in my cookie on my PC since I get same result from multiple computers. No doubt there's a field that has a bad value in it where the date and time I last accessed the board.

Interesting commercial... note that the car in the ad had a manual trans too! I especially liked in the end when she drove away, the trail of rust turned into a Chrysler emblem! And any ID on the girl in the commercial?

I was sooo thinking that when I read Joe's post! I got tricked into trying some at a Denver steak house. Actually not bad!

A very enjoyable build. The parts pretty much fall together. Where some of the instructions on the engine and suspension appeared a bit vague and parts didn't look as if they would fit, they just snapped in place. Sometimes without glue at all. There are some pretty tiny parts, so bring your magnifiers! That includes some microscopic decals like Trabant emblems for the wheel center caps that love to disappear as you try to place them! I was speaking with Ron Bradley, a Maryland model dealer who sells at the regional shows and he had one Trabant sedan and one wagon kit. He said those were his last of several cases of each. I guess these are selling very well here!

Hmmm... I have a Tweety on the back of my 1991 Geo Tracker, I hope that doesn't count!

That was the winter of 2001 for me. I had a construction project to put up a modular office building that was designed and ready to go in September. Of course there was a lot of hemming and hawing, and they finally approved it really close to the January 1 required delivery date. And it happened to be one of the worst winters in NY state in a long time. Literally the first two hours of every work day was shoveling snow out of the previous day's work!

Great score John! It was nice seeing you and Amy at the show yesterday!

Hey Dan- That is a cool technique. If the weave texture is too large, you can find tighter patterns in cheap napkins. I have found that both McDonalds and Taco Bell napkins have a pretty good pattern for scale upholstery.. and they're free!

I've spent the time to read all seven pages of this thread. No, I don't think this board is any more snobby than any other board, or any face to face model club. Like any other venue it takes some time to find your place. When you are brand new, you won't get much response to your posts until you have spent a bit of time, gotten familiar with the general vibe and have started some relationships with the folks here. I decided a long time ago that I'm not going to be a model car missionary. I will not sit at a table in the mall hoping to drag the general public into this hobby. I won't jump on a newbie and try to get them to drink my specific Kool-Aid. At the same time, I will welcome, embrace and encourage anyone who shows an interest in joining our aging herd. I will go far out of my way to answer questions, share techniques and even send people the parts they need free of charge. That's just paying back the hobby for those who helped me when I asked. I won't be pushing anyone to build better models unless they want encouragement. I know guys for 30 years who are content simply spraying Walmart paint right onto bare plastic and gluing the kit together quickly. So be it. I understand this because it's not in my desires to build a GSL Best of Show model. I'm happy getting the idea in my head into plastic, and am pleased to have learned the skills to do so. But there are things I just don't want to learn such as running a lathe or becoming an airbrush expert. It just doesn't appeal to me, so I must appear to the top dogs, as my Walmart paint friend appears to me!

I voted for the Citation. Back in 1982 our friends bought one new. Man was that car trouble. I'd love to see you convert it to a 4 door hatchback! The GTO is too cool a car for your project! I await the progress thread! This is fun stuff. Note that I'm currently working on a Trabant.

A building manager has solicited bids to put up a fence. He gets two bids... First bid is from an Irish contractor who says he'll work hard and put the fence up for $1000 The second bid comes from an Italian contractor with no explanation but a price of $3000 In qualifying the bids, the manager calls up the Italian contractor and asks him to explain... The contractor says, "A thousand for me, a thousand for you and we hire the Irish guy to build the fence"

There was a promo in 1/25 scale. I'll bet someone cast them at some point. The Franklin piece is nice enough to just put on your shelf and enjoy. But if you do insist on building your own, keep track of them on eBay. Soon enough someone will offer a damaged one that will sell cheap.

And I believe they are kin to the BMW Dixie (Heller kit). The car was indeed a British Austin, first built and sold here as the American Austin in Butler, PA. That effort went bankrupt during the First Great Depression, and was resurrected by a former salesman for the company, and relaunched as American Bantam. This company won the US Government's specifications for a General Purpose (GP) vehicle for the military. In short, they designed the Jeep. The government realized that Bantam didn't have the facilities necessary to produce the amount of Jeeps needed for World War II so they gave the contracts to Ford and Willys. If Bantam had managed to keep control of that situation, they may still be a company today!

Hmmm... shorts in a knot! What you don't get is that Frank and I know each other so we can poke a bit! If he shows up at the Liars Show tomorrow, may even kid him in person. And age IS a factor. I'm 56 and I wasn't around in the hobby in the heyday when things like the Double Dragster kits etc were first done. Although I think the kits are cool as all stink, I wasn't there so I don't remember buying that kit new as a 10 year old, and neither do you! At the same time there kits that I remember from my youth, that again predate you. And then there are kits you bought as a kid that you have that reliving history feeling about.

Geoff- Are you having both door windows rolled up? I usually like to roll at least one down for better interior viewing (and for fishing for parts if something inside becomes loose!) I think you can see in my photo where each window is rolled to a different position... I just think it adds interest to a model!

I thought the 79s were way cool back then. I remember some being delivered to the dealer before the EPA info was in so they couldn't be sold. Just for display. I was buying cars and trucks for my company and talked the Mercury dealer out of a brand new Capri RS. Red with TRX suspension / wheels and V8 auto. It was so pretty! We had to drive it on a dealer plate the first few weeks until they could transfer title. People kept stopping us asking what it was. That was fun. That fantasy stopped quickly. This car had the worst build an defects of any car I ever had. Traded it in after the 2 years of payments were done just to make it go away!

He listed a Monte Carlo today.. with T-tops!

Today on my way home from work I saw a Smart car with a rotating key in the back of it. It was stopped at a light and the key kept spinning. If it wasn't dark and I knew how to do a video from my smart phone, I would be posting it!

Today I received word that I passed my Certified Reliability Leader (CRL) exam. I took the 2.5 hr exam at the conference I attended a few weeks ago and really thought I hadn't passed. Big surprise! And quite pleased. That puts me at the top of the Facility Reliability field, something I've only been involved with the past year. Guess I'm a quick study!

I don't have a preference on those three '58s... just line up the boxes on your bench and do them all! You know you want to! BTW, I'm a 1958 myself, but since I was born in September I've been collecting '59s as my birthday car since that's what was rolling down the lines on the day I was born!

I used to feel that I only wanted my own work on my shelves, but I got better! I have about a dozen models that were built by friends, some who have passed away. I've actually acquired these on purpose after they died to remember them by. Important to me. I also have a few nicely built models that I don't know who built them, just because I saw them for sale and thought they were cool. And I can't forget my Olde Kustom Kollection... that's my 50 plus car collection of old custom builds done in the early 1960s. They are the folk art of our youth!

Tony, I did a kit review on that one here a while back... http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=90603&hl=

It's actually nice to know that there are people who have an appreciation for model cars as an art form, well enough to vote so boldly with their wallets! It would be cool if one of the folks who buys his models would post here. I suspect they are not builders but people with money who understand the work and art involved, and enjoy owning things of beauty!