Tom Geiger

Yup.. if you watch old reruns of The Wonder Years (especially the episode where they were all gathered around the TV watching the first man walk on the moon), look at their living room table set, coffee and end tables. That was a popular Sears set that my parents bought in 1968 and currently is the set in our basement family room!

Saw these yesterday while picking up my repaired Dodge Caravan. The guy we use is into air cooled VWs and everyone who has those brings them to him for repair or restoration. My camera somehow went to black and white, and I didn't notice as I took these in direct sunlight with no glasses! The Beetle is bright purple and the Ghia was super nice. It's black primer with a new white top! I've been thinking about that one ever since!

http://patch.com/illinois/northbrook/man-showing-new-car-flips-it-charged-reckless-driving Here's stupid that won't wash off!

I want that! I'll send you my address here in the USA! My friend in Perth had a blue one and promised me first right of refusal if he ever sold it. I was told that he'd never sell it, so I lost track. Recently another friend told me he had sold it! Argh! Thanks for posting the pix!

There is a Lindberg Monarch kit. Put a search agent up in eBay and you'll come across one soon enough! I had a 1977 Monarch Ghia 4 door sedan. I loved the Granada / Monarch from the moment I saw them, even painted my '66 Valiant that same silver in 1976. I guess it was 1981 that a buddy-0-mine at work had his father's Monarch for sale. His dad was working in England and didn't need the car. It needed a left front fender and I paid $600 for it. Mine was a silver 4 door with a blue bucket seat interior, complete with the same console that was in the Mustangs. I had the same console in my 1979 Capri. It had a blue vinyl roof and the trunk mounted luggage rack. I found a silver fender easily, but with that silver that flaked off those shortly after leaving the assembly line, I spent the summer sanding down and priming the car. I was afraid to repaint it silver so we did it in a very light gull gray. Then I fell in love with the new Nissan Stanza hatchback, so I sold it for $3000 and bought that Stanza as our family car for $8000.

Ya know, I'm not gonna mention the other magazine here, 'cause i do get it, but I'd like to think that there isn't a big competition. I get both magazines and each has it's own flavor. Same with the kit manufacturers. I know the main characters and they speak highly of one another.

Very cool. I spot a VC in the middle of that line up! I've always wanted a VC Ute.

Jeremy, that's because you haven't driven one. Zero to sixty.. 6.5 seconds. It's like driving a rocket ship. And faster than most of the muscle cars we all pine after! Forget everything you ever thought about electric cars.

I'll be seeing more Teslas... I told the story of my cousin who let me drive his Tesla. He is giving a lot of test drives. His father, my Uncle George decided he needed one at age 74. So he's got his on order.

and pretty much my philosophy on life.... I believe I've passed the age of consciousness and righteous rage, I've found that just surviving was a noble fight I once believed in causes too, had my pointless point of view Life went on no matter who was wrong or right.

Both Sears and K Mart have been circling the bowl for years. It's like the Packard / Studebaker merger, someone once described as 'two blind men helping each other cross a street'. We were a Sears family, out of necessity since my father was military and we lived outside the US much of the time. Our lifeline to civilization was the Sears catalog. They had a deal with the military PX system that you could place orders to pick up there. The PX usually had a poor selection of nothing, so much of our goods, clothing and especially Christmas toys came from Sears. The last time I was in a Sears was many years ago when we still believe in buying everything at the store. I ordered a dishwasher, which needed to come from a central warehouse somewhere. They also wanted to charge a delivery charge so I was going to pick it up at the store. We order it, and while we were still waiting, I get my Sears card bill and they had charged me in full. I made a phone call and told them I wasn't paying for something I hadn't received, and they told me they noted that, and I should call them back when I got the item. A month later, I get my second Sears bill. I still didn't get the item. Mess of excuses, back ordered, etc. So I call them again, especially since my bill says past due and they've added their zillion percent interest. Operator says not to worry, they'll fix it. I finally get tired of waiting and cancel the order. They refund onto my Sears card. I call and they refund all the interest etc. After I canceled the order in person, I walk across the street to a big appliance store... that's when I learned that the world, but not Sears had changed! I buy a dishwasher, and they deliver it for free the very next day. They take my old one for free. And Sears hadn't caught onto what the competition was doing, still blindly following their old 1966 era model. I never walked into their store again! As for K Mart, again we spent a lot of money there when I was younger. There is one on the highway near my house and it's a sad looking store. Clean but everything from the floor to the ceiling tiles are worn and old. There was no music playing, just silence since there were few customers. The few employees there looked sad. I got the heck out of the place because it was an uneasy feeling!

that's the kinda thing that chases me in my nightmares!

Probably somewhere in their relationship. Chrysler owned a stake in Mitsubishi at one time, and sold their cars under Chrysler name plates..and used their engines in Chrysler cars. My first Caravan had a Mitsu 2.4 in it. Trivia - Didja know that Mitsubishi made the last year's worth of Valiants in Australia?

don't know Dan, but it reminded me of this: Another year and then you'd be happy Just one more year and then you'd be happy But you're crying, you're crying now

I'd say the issue with decals through the ages is the same issue we've had with kits... quality control! My most recent mess was with Revell decals from the '38 Ford Pickup... the Checkers Market ones. I had put them aside to use on a taxi someday. So I used them on my Dodge Caravan taxi.. and man what a mess! The went down awful, the long taxi checker board stripes just kept curling back up and losing the glue in the process. Once I finally got them all on, I tried to clear coat the entire body and they all shrunk up and made a big mess! I posted that on a board and someone told me the warning about using decal solutions and clear coat over those specific decals (and I suspect other Revell decals of that era) were on the instruction sheet! Well that did me a heck of a lot of good, since I had separated the decals from the kit. The warning would have been much better maybe on the back of the sheet! No doubt Revell tried a supplier and found out there were issues way too late. The good news is that today we aren't stuck using just kit decals. We all make a bunch of our decals on our own ink jet printers. Yes, you have to work with the absence of white and the metallic colors, and make sure you apply them over light colors. You can also have someone print your design on an Alps printer for a fee. As far as license plates, I dunno! I've never used kit decal plates. Plates are much better on the card stock, glued down. I print most if not all mine on the Acme site, reduce them down to scale and glue them where needed. Great every time! And for the 49 Merc gauges.. we have the ability to scan, reduce them slightly and print them to the right size. And they probably are better printed on white paper and glued into place.

Winter is coming! Here, west of Philadelphia, it was down in the 50s over night. We had the windows open and woke up freezing in the middle of the night. It was 60 when I got up this morning, seems to have warmed up to 70 right now. And that will throw a wrench into our pool plans for the long weekend. The weather is changing. Leaves have started to fall, per my needing to blow off the deck twice every day! Crud!

and they'd probably all call you "SIR"

Stupidity act of the year?? There is a rap guy named Andre Johnson who sliced off his name sake and jumped off a balcony. He survived the jump and all the kings horses and all the kings men, couldn't (maybe wouldn't) put Johnson together again! New rap name .. P-Hole Diddy? (sorry, no video)

And how can there be such a sinister plan That could hide such a lamb, such a caring young man

Yes! I've been planning on bringing the Anglia and Thames panel back to stock someday. I'd like to have the Thames in my light commercial fleet! I don't know what guts to use, but I'd been thinking 30s Ford chassis and maybe a Model A four?

That puts me on mail box watch! I haven't seen my copy yet. Yea! Maybe a new model magazine for the weekend

Frank, I was only commenting on the specific situation. Those who won't pony up $50-100 for an old original or resin copy of their holy grail car. I know my own quest was a 1966 Valiant, which was only done as a promo that has become very rare. I paid over $300 for a copy because it was that one model that made my life complete. So I'm puzzled when others won't pay any more than $20 for a kit of their first / favorite car. Note that in this and other threads I've made comments that agree with your points. Recently I said that there is validity to wish lists and that the manufacturers do listen. I mentioned that the old SAE annual new kit request polls of the 1980s - 1990s that we eventually got nearly all of the top requests as new tool kits. Revell has done well with their current strategy of new kits of timeless classic cars that they can keep in their catalog forever. Most of these are kits that we will buy and build different ways over and over. They all parallel / compete with older tooled kits, but with the detail level we expect today. Those should be winners! Recently on this board, someone suggested that Round 2 find and release the old 1959 Buick kit, which we know the tool existed as late as the 1970s. That was a very crude, curbside kit with maybe 20 pieces. My suggestion was that it would be cool if the 1959-60 Buicks got redone to the quality of the Revell '59-60 Chevy kits. And the funny thing about wish lists is that things we would have said "no way" to ten or even five years ago are feasible today! The manufacturers are focusing on the baby boomer market, hedging bets that we all will be buying kits in our retirement. With the manufacturers surprising us with subjects we never thought they'd do, anything is possible!

As per what Art said, I was at the GSL auction where they auctioned off a bunch of box art models in 2001. I was lucky enough to win the Deora pictured below. Interesting that they air brushed the color change, I am assured this was the same car and could find small similarities in the box photos, matching imperfections etc. Back then they did the cars without glass or lenses, adding them in the air brush phase. The tires also have the tread painted gray so it would show up in photos. If anyone knows who built this one, please let me know! My only claim to fame in this area is that I built the above pickup for the Model King release. This is the final box shot, which Dave gave me on glossy paper. Dave gave me a test shot of the truck, with about a month to build it and hand it off to Doug Whyte, who was the photographer, at NNL East that year. I'm not a fast builder, but I rose to the occasion and got it done in time! There never was any mention of what would happen in the end, nor did I ask. So I was surprised when it showed up back in my mail box. I have the truck today.

Looking at this thread again, I just took notice that you did the car as left hand drive, and with a NY license plate. Interesting! So that may not be a British Capri... I believe the LHD ones came from Germany!

Yea, that bothers me when people list kits that are easily obtainable, but maybe at a premium for an older OOP kit, or available in resin. They pretty much mean they expect a company to spend $500,000 to tool up that model with really bad sales potential just so they can use their Hobby Lobby 40% off coupon on one copy!