Tom Geiger

Not picking on your wife here, but you brought up a fact. There are people who don't have the driving gene. My wife's brothers all have had multiple accidents, mostly from judgement errors such as going too fast around turns and onto off ramps. And those smack in the back of the car in front of you accidents. Years ago one of them had his EZ-Pass suspended for going 45mph through the toll booth! The speed through those is 15mph. He was totally irate and couldn't figure out why they were picking on him. When he brought this up at a family event, I had to yell at him. He was clueless that he was navigating through an alley the width of his car, coming out the other end blind and not able to see what cars were just starting out from the manned lanes. Nor did he consider that the toll collectors regularly walked across the lanes and wouldn't anticipate him thundering through at 45mph! Absolutely clueless! And when those folks cause accidents, the attorneys always sue the car manufacturer as part of the law suit because they are 'deep pockets' and often will negotiate a settlement that will cost them less than going to court to defend it. In one of Lee Iococca's books he mentioned that the costs that went into a Chrysler vehicle... litigation was on top... more than steel!

Here's the windshield opening that you get with the kit body. Side note, the drip rails are nearly non-existent on this kit, so I sanded them off and added Evergreen round to replace them. Also note that the kit emblems shown here on the cowl are faint and easily get buried under paint. And there wasn't FORD on the hood. When I reviewed the test shot for Model King, I suggested those needed to be on the decal sheet, so they are! Next build I do, I'll be sanding off that trim and using the decals. Here's a 1:1 that I will eventually build! See the relationship of the top of the windshield to the drip rail. Note that this is just a black gasket on this truck, so if you don't want to chance scribing a new trim line, you can probably get away with a Sharpie black line, following the edge. I just marked this one up for you! This is about the amount of plastic we'll need to cut away to make it look right. Now that you got me thinking, I will probably cut this up next chance I get up to the bench! I just checked and the kit windshield will support this. There's enough glass at the top thankfully.

Per the Maisto Squareback... go for it. Diecast is just a model in a different material. Take it apart and do what you will with it. I'm happy they did these and the notchback too since we didn't have them in plastic. My mechanic is a VW guy. He'll fix anything, but his passion is air cooled VWs. It's pretty much an old time shade tree mechanic kind of place. In the right bay there's a frame off Oval resto going on all year. Yea, they work on cars out in the cold and rain because that project takes up two bays of the garage.

I think a lot of that prestige is gone today. Nearly any human who can fog a spoon can sign a lease on a luxury car. Back in the day someone who had a Caddy or Lincoln actually had to pay for that car! In fact I remember back when regular guys who drove a Chevy all their lives would retire and treat themselves to a Cadillac. That made a statement back then! I'd say that's still valid. And maybe even more so for us car guys. Yes, we know a bit more about the mechanics etc, but I can always talk myself into that car that just hits me! Yea, the reason I own a Jaguar S Type! If we were all logical, we'd be following Consumer Reports recommendations and all drive Camrys! And I agree that cars need better names today. Most of the US manufacturers have a long history of distinctive names, and as long as they've kept the trademarks up to date, could be using those names today. True some of them would be lost on younger folks and non car folks since it's been a long time, but I was excited to see Chrysler dust off the Dart name.

Those big Zingers were promotional items that appeared at 1:1 car events and races back in the day. I remember a couple of them were up for auction... I just can't remember how far back with estimates in the $20,000 range. I remember that Model Car Science had a Zingers contest back then. I ruined all my Corgi cars trying to make Zingers out of them with 1/25 scale engines.

The Curbmaster does look interesting, as does that 1953 Chevy National ambulance body... how was their quality? And since the statement was "We have recently finalized an agreement to have our resin products cast again." it implies that they have someone else do the casting... and how will the quality be from a new caster?

I did mention that Round 2 had a lot of stuff that would be ahead of a Caravan reissue. Most folks don't want an 18 year old mini van unless they did something cool with it. The quote above is pretty funny considering that when I got into this hobby I was buying 15 year old Volare and Pacer kits for $3-5 each. I was actually buying them back then to get the Suburbanite snow tires for my light commercial builds since there weren't a lot of truck type tires in those days. Sad was that I resold some of those kits cheap once I swiped the tires! Now those kits command a decent dollar!

The kit is aimed at the comic convention crowd and would sell pretty well there. Same with the Elvis dune buggy and Beverley Hills Cop 2 Nova are aimed at the tv and movie memorabilia shows... all hobbies with a bigger following than ours! I wouldn't be surprised to see a release in white plastic with cool California custom decals. The quality of the wheels alone deserve that!

I understand how the "Make Offer" works. The "reserve" rejections are almost immediate. These all took some time, and varying times. The seller was definitively involved. They only had one of the item, it seems they sell a lot of varied things, not just models and such. I was curious about feedback so I checked and if I chose I could leave them feedback. I did note that the seller had a neutral and a negative for the same thing... refunding money for items no longer available. That's not a small thing. eBay takes that one pretty seriously. Back when I had my memorabilia store set up I couldn't find one of the 1000 old post cards I had. The buyer understood, but eBay sent me a nastygram when I did a refund with "item no longer available.

and if you think that the average person is stupid, remember that half the population is dumber than him! No, not mentioning that he no longer had the item for sale in my first three contacts with him makes him an idiot! You think he would've told me 'no longer available' in the first communication and have taken the listing down.

Thanks for that comment. I found photos of VWs with 4 lugs and assumed they all had them! Good to hear the 5 lug wheels included in the kit are correct!

My irk of the day was a certain eBay seller. Being inspired by the Trabant Universal thread here on the board, I decided I needed one soon. I went to eBay and there was one for $22.99 plus $5.50 postage. The seller had a "Make An Offer" and the $22.99 was the "Buy It Now".. so what the heck, I sent an offer of $20. I get back, "Your offer was declined" so I send another offer of $21 which was quickly declined without any comment. Eager to see just why this guy put a "Make An Offer" on this, I send an offer of $22.00 and that is declined! So what is this guy up to? I shrug and still want it so I hit the "Buy It Now" and pay for it on Paypal. My sale is confirmed. This morning I get an email that my sale was declined. Seller says he wasn't minding the store, and forgot to delete the listing when he sold the kit elsewhere. IDIOT! You think he would've responded to my first offer with "kit no longer available"?

Here's a photo I used for inspiration on that headlight issue... My own solution was to leave the kit headlights connected to the grill. This is as far as I've gotten but I'd be adding some kind of 30s light bucket behind them!

You think they would've used the lesson learned from the Ford 500.... they replaced the well known Taurus with this one... and within a year or two renamed it Taurus!

I understand Bill, I only bought the unit after I stumbled across that Calliari Modelworks that still makes the sheets in both white and clear. And of course knowing how the aftermarket works, I bought a load of the clear sheets. Not expensive when you buy the larger quantities from him. Good 'enuf for the few times a year I pull it out to make a windshield..

Just remember that these are the morons who keep us all gainfully employed!

I lived in Pirmasens, Germany on the army post from 1969-72. The guy across the hall from us had a big Pontiac wagon as the family car, but regularly traded interesting Euro cars for their second car. He had a Fiat 500, a Karman Ghia Type 34 and a Capri like the subject of this thread, and this was before they were imported into the US. My father just had a Beetle!

Thanks Dan! No permission needed, anything I post is open to lively debate. I like hearing your perspective. I haven't built the kit myself, so I'll watch out for some of the pitfalls you mention. I was just impressed when my nephew built it. Thanks! JIm, I don't have a photo of the engine, which surprised me! The blue Beetle was built by Mike Havranek, a modeler who died a few years ago. He was someone you said hello to at shows, not a close friend, but when Dave Burket had his collection for sale I bought two pieces, this nicely done Beetle and his Green Hornet. Dave had actually put aside the Green Hornet for me since he knows I have a small collection of different style builds on that old Monogram classic. My model collection... no wonder I can't find anything I just went looking for the Beetle because I thought it was in one of my showcases. I was surprised when it wasn't there, so it must have not been unpacked from my move (yea it was 4 years ago!). I did dig into a few boxes and found some stuff I didn't know I had as well as four other built models I hadn't seen in awhile, so the time wasn't wasted. But you know how it goes, I can hunt for hours and never find that VW, but one of these days it will jump out at me! Maybe someone can post photos of their Beetle engine.

There are several reasons why USPS International rates have gone up. FIrst, I think we had cheaper rates than other countries for a long time. I remember traders commenting that it cost them a lot more money to send to me, then I had spent the other way. This also may have some bearing on where the US dollar is against foreign currencies. I know that an Aussie dollar used to be about 50 cents US, and now a US dollar is worth $1.06 Australian. So USA goods and vacations are grand bargains to them. I know an Aussie buddy-0-mine went on an eBay binge of very rare and expensive old US kits when it first happened. He had them all shipped to me and when I got 6 kits, I'd send them on to him to save on the per order shipping. I remember those packages costing something like $20 to mail to him. As someone else said, nothing goes by slow boat anymore. So when still had surface mail on the books, the stuff really went space available on the same planes as if we had paid for airmail. Sometimes it would take a few weeks or longer, other times I'd find stuff I mailed to Europe getting there in a week. Next, the USPS has forever been running at a loss. Some of which is due to Congress putting restrictions on them like mandating how they fund their pension fund, as well as making them continue with six day delivery. The USPS also delivers anywhere in the USA for the same basic rates, no matter how back water you are. I saw a TV news story showing a mail carrier delivering mail to remote cattle ranches in Wyoming by Cessna. UPS and FedEx have up charges for anyone who is slightly off the major path, and probably wouldn't deliver to the cattle ranch at all. But USPS continues to do so at a grand loss, and that gets spread back to all of us.

I was curious so I went to the link and saw the vacuform Bill is considering. I was a little dismayed when I saw that you need to heat the plastic in your own oven and supply a shop vac for the suction. So what you're buying is pretty much the vacuum box and frame. It is a decent size of 12 x 12 with a working area of over 9 x 9. That is a lot of plastic. You'll need to buy large bulk sheets to cut down to that size. You can't even use Evergreen sheets. The Mattel unit is complete with a heating surface and a vacuum hand pump for suction. It was a toy, but makes for a pretty decent little unit for our purposes. Size is a limitation but I think most of us are thinking small parts. A few years back I bought the above Mattel Vac-U-Form on eBay for less than $50. There is still a company that makes the sheets with all those little perforations around the edges. They do the sheets in both clear and white plastic. For me, I pull out the unit from time to time to make a windshield or other curved glass. I don't see much use in making parts like hoods and such since that's more done in resin these days. It doesn't come out perfect everytime. Sometimes it takes a few trys (and sheets!) to get an acceptable windshield.

http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=90603 Just posted the review... enjoy, complain or otherwise engage in conversation!

Amen! I had gone to New Jersey for my model club meeting on Saturday so my wife and I got together with my daughters for dinner at a local restaurant. We beat the Father's Day rush and had a nice time. Today i got to sleep late and spend a little time with coffee and the Internet boards. Then I went on to do a bit of yard work and power wash my deck for the summer. Life is good!

I recently bought the Polar Lights Spider-Man Beetle. A lot of guys will be turned off by the Marvel Comics tie-in but remember that Tom Lowe has always been the master of licensing, and his first love is the pop culture memorabilia hobby, which is a market much, much larger than ours puny little band of model car guys! So a lot of these will be sold to Spider-Man and comic fans, many will never have the shrink wrap molested. A sale is a sale, so it's all good and hopefully the profits will be used to further kit releases we will like. Looking past the Spider-Man theme, and the peel and stick stickers (give them to a kid!), this is the second release of the original Polar Lights Herbie kit. Again, the Herbie was aimed at the TV and movie memorabilia market. Back then a certain character working for Playing Mantis told me that when Herbie was designed, there was a follow up kit coming of a California custom Beetle. With the sale of the company and ensuing confusion, it never got to market. Until now. That's right, look past the stickers and you have that California Custom Beetle! Here's the sticker sheet included with the kit. Nobody here will be decorating their model with these, but the Spider-Man ones may just decorate my model tool box! At worst, give this sheet to a kid! I will say a few things about Polar Lights / Playing Mantis back in the day. I was very excited when I got this kit because my then 12 year old nephew swiped the first one I bought from me. Okay, he gave me that puppy dog eye look and I gave it to him. Within an hour he had it all finished and looking rather neat on the table. It was molded in white, black for the chassis components and had a gray interior. That, along with the chrome and Herbie stickers gave it enough color to satisfy a Love Bug movie memorabilia collector. And remember that a 12 year old boy assembled it without any tools in less than an hour. Still, the car had opening hood and trunk, full engine detail and enough detail overall to satisfy us serious modelers, who then could go further with customizing and detailing it out. Here's a photo of an original Love Bug release. So in the equation of the perfect balance of a kit for today's market... I think they hit it squarely on the head. And who was working on this project back then? Well, our own Art Anderson and another familiar name, Dave Messner! Speaking with Dave recently, he glossed over his involvement with the Beetle, saying he was prouder of the '64 GTO / '65 Dodge kits using this same theory. Another interesting thing is that Polar Lights did this one in 1/24 scale, while their US models are all 1/25. So there was an attempt at complying with the International scale expected by the rest of the world on this German car. It does make sense and allows for kit bashing with the Revell of Germany and Japanese VW kits. Sizing it up, it does match the Revell of Germany Beetle and the old Revell 1/25 Beetle is noticeably smaller. Digging into the box is very interesting. Some folks probably just assume this is the Herbie kit with some silly stickers. Not so! This one comes with a slew of options. First, are the Cali Custom style nerf bars for bumpers. They snap fit into the same mounts as the original kit US style bumper with over riders. The cool part is that the original bumpers are still in the kit, so you have two options. There are two sets of bucket seats, the original stock ones as well as a nice custom set. Same with the steering wheel. There is also a custom exhaust option. And there are two sets of outside mirrors to choose from, both round and rectangular. Very neat detail! Steering wheel options.... Front seats.... stock or custom seats? Mirrors! Choose a set for this build and have a set for another model! The wheel options are also very cool and surprising. There is a completely new chrome tree of just wheels! There are TWO optional sets of custom wheels with exposed lugs. The only problem is that there are 5 lugs when VWs of this era had 4 lug wheels. If indeed those wheels were 4 lug, they’d have a ton of other applications, like 6 cylinder Falcons and Mustangs. I certainly would’ve investigated that! (Craig Irwin posted that VWs of this 1963 era had a wide 5 bolt pattern. Bugs 1968 and later had 4 lugs. Thanks for clarifying!) Aside from that are a set of Baby Moons, and a set of stock VW hub caps. One will note that the original Herbie release didn’t include these since the movie car didn’t have VW emblems on it. The original set of plain hubcaps are still on the original chrome tree. Another short coming, but fitting with the snap assembly of the kit is that the stock wheels have no lug detail, only a mount point for one of the hub cap options. Important to note that since the hood opens to show the spare tire, there are five tires and each wheel set has five pieces. The shortcoming is that the spare tire would have alug nuts on it or a hub cap, not what we’d do in the real world at all. I’m sure I can rustle up an exposed lug wheel to drill out and place there. This is the separate wheel tree. Note that there are five of every wheel. That includes the two custom wheel types, a set of Baby Moons, a set of stock VW logo hub caps and there is another set of plain caps on the other chrome tree! That's FIVE friggin sets of wheel options in this kit. Body wise, it’s the same as the Herbie kit, after all it is a Beetle. I think it’s fairly accurate but I’m sure someone will find fault with it. The bad news is that it’s molded in red. Not a nice bold and shiny red, but a dull near orange red. No problem for me since I plan on painting mine red, but red plastic can be a curse because it can bleed through paint, but also won’t result in a nice shiny model for those who just snap it together. I’ll bet that the body surface was designed to accept those darn stickers! Past that, a few comments on the body itself. First, the soft top isn’t in this kit. I was happy to get it originally since it was the first time this popular and common VW option was kitted in either 1/25 or 1/24 scale and I have plans to use one on another build of a 1950s Beetle. You can see where it was on the tree, there’s a cut off right next to the tail lights. A comment on the Herbie release is that while the top is included, the installation of it is disappointing. There are snap mounts on the side edges that are visible on a finished model. I have already sanded them off the top piece, but the body includes the accepting holes, which still are visible since they protrude beyond the edge of the top piece. So be prepared to fill this in to do a solid roof Beetle… or… the new kit body doesn’t have those holes, Round 2 has filled hose in. The bad news is that they didn’t do it all that well and I can still see the four mount holes as indents. So you will need to do a bit of surface repair with putty. Note that no matter how well this model was built, you can still see those pesky soft top mounts right above the doors! I can say that this appears to be the only bodywork you’ll need to do. The body is clean and I don’t even see mold lines. One observation is that the body is molded with a stiffener across the open hood area. Typical of models of every era, the usual “Remove This Piece” thingie. Only on this kit, it’s attached rather well. For those of us into the hobby with a box full of knives and such it’s no problem. But for the casual builder or little kid who just wants to snap this thing together, it should just twist out. But it doesn’t. It’s really in there and requires some serious cutting. The white body is the original Love Bug release with the roof holes for the soft top, The new release in red doesn't have the top included, or the holes in the body. Still, there are ghosts of those holes on that red body that will require putty work. The only other comment I’ll make about the body is that we mentioned that the Herbie release didn’t have VW emblems like the movie car, so the emblem on the hood was missing and they didn’t fix that on this release. So you’ll need to add one. Good news is that the Revell of Germany kit has that as a separate chrome piece. So you can steal that, or make a foil casting of it. Note that I’ve seen a finished model of the Revell kit and that emblem seems to sit a bit high, so sand the back a bit to get it more in scale. Another difference between the two releases, Herbie VS Spider-Man (or should we just say Cali Beetle?) is that the interior parts are molded in grey in Herbie and black in the new release. So if you want a stock interior and own both kits, you can start with either depending on the color you want your interior.. either without paint, or as a cleaner base for priming and painting a lighter color interior. So I know what you are all asking, “How does this affect Tom Geiger?” Well, I originally bought the kit for $17 just to see what was in the box. I was curious to see the new custom options and if the soft top was still in the box. I’m pleased to get the same body without having to fill in the roof holes since I am planning on building a solid roof car. So what do I plan? When I was a kid I was a US Army brat and lived in Pirmasens, Germany from 1969-72. The first thing my father did when we got there was to buy a red early 1960s VW Beetle for transportation. He paid a few hundred for it, from a departing serviceman. It was a good car that served us well as our second car for the three years we were there. I don’t remember it ever breaking down or needing repairs. The paint had seen better days, but the body was solid. It was a good car. The funny thing about it was that this may have been the only US spec VW on the army post. Lore was that it was originally sold in the USA and a serviceman got orders for Germany and Uncle paid to ship it there. Upon leaving, he sold it and may have taken a new Mercedes home, since that was common among servicemen at the time. So we were probably the third or fourth owner. Our car had the US bumpers with the over riders while German cars just had the single blade bumper. During our ownership, the car got tapped in the rear and we put a German bumper on the back. So that’s how I’ll build mine, along with the USA oval from the Revell kit and I already found photos of a set of the US Forces Germany plates (standard US size plate, green with silver lettering) that all our cars had back then. Our parting with this VW is also an interesting story. My father paid something like $500 for the Beetle and it served us well for the three years we were in Germany. He thought that having a car until the last day we were there was more important than selling it. There was a place where servicemen just left cars behind when they left. Leave it there with the keys and title and maybe some poor GI would take it. But for the most part those cars got vandalized and became parts cars. The last week we were there a newly arrived officer asked me if he could walk to the PX from the motel attached to the officers club where we were both staying. I asked him if he needed a car, and managed to sell it to him for $300 with the stipulation that he’d get it the day we left. My father was so impressed with my sale, that he let me keep the money! My first car sale at 14! And once we settled stateside in the New Jersey suburbs, I used that money to buy a lawn tractor to start the lawn business that provided all my needs throughout high school. Back to the model.. So what does Tom think? I do like this kit. I liked the original Love Bug release and am happy to have the long lost California Beetle version, even if it is disguised with stickers. It is nicely done and will go together well. I like the cool new custom parts, especially the extra effort of a whole new tree of wheel options. This release does have a lot of interesting options, and I was a bit surprised that they also included the stock pieces. It is a 2 in 1 kit for sure! They should mention on the box that you can build a stock VW from the kit, but they do not. They will lose sales because of that! I’m happy to have the kit. Right now my build theme seems to be recreating old family vehicles. I have my sister in law’s old Chevette on my shelf, and I am about to begin building my wife’s old Mustang II. So it will be a quick project to build this VW. It will be cool to have this old family member on my shelf!

I went to Starbucks. I placed my order, "One large coffee please." Fairy man couldn't fill that order, he demanded, "is that a Vente?" I replied, "No, I want a large coffee, hold the foo foo." He gave up and sold me one large coffee.

And a VERY happy Father's Day to you! I remember the story and YOU are truly a FATHER and a hero! Well done!