Tom Geiger

Hey Bill! Haven't seen you in a long while, hope all is well! GM carried too many brands that essentially sold the same product for years. In the consolidation of it was either Buick or Pontiac getting the axe. I don't believe Pontiac did anything wrong, but I believe Buick survived because it's GMs big nameplate in China. In China it was always considered a prestigious car, a car a plant manager would drive. So if they killed Buick in the USA, that American aura would have been damaged in China and I believe GM is close, if they haven't already, sell more units in China than the USA.

I've heard that about Azteks.. after all they are basically a GM Mini Van. Same review people give about the GM mini vans too. One of the guys in my model club got rid of one due to the troubles. Another guy has a Pontiac mini van with the same trouble pattern. I don't get what people find so offensive about the design. It pretty much has the same grill / head light area as the Pontiac Vibe and isn't all that different in shape than a lot of other SUVs. It's like some journalist declared it funny looking and everyone thinks they have to pile to be in on the joke. Funny thing for me is that there are many Japanese vehicles on the road today much uglier than the Aztek was, and nobody says a thing about them. In fact if the Aztek was a Toyota, they would be a big seller!

Setting a membership fee for premium membership will give some folks a feeling of entitlement. Not that some don't already feel they are entitled! A donation button may work better since people could give what they want or can afford. Acme Labs (the site we make our license plates on) has a donation button, as do some of the other free services I use.

There is no free lunch on the Internet. Once you install the ad blocker it's sending some data back to the mother ship. Heck, it could be worse than the ads you're blocking. And the big question. Ads on the board. Does the site get paid for each time the ad appears in a page view, just for the clicks, or a combination of both? AND, the big question... do the ad blocker guys negate the view income, thus work against the site?

The big question is why this guy is doing engine work with a tie on? And she's giving him that, "No I'm not helping you lift that hood" look.

Very nice work! Great weathering, it has that just right look.

Wow! You had the cool dad! Lucky kid!

I need three of those! A certain movie made me a Mini fan for life when I was a kid. I've had the below Polystil Mini since I was a kid. I recently saw some photos of my first apartment at 19, and there it was sitting on my book shelf!

The auction currently has 43 bids. So someone wants it. If I was gonna have an Aztec I'd want the bright yellow one with black trim. It looks like an angry bee and if you're gonna go odd, you might as well go all the way!

The Nascar kits are sales proof. I've seen them sit at shows for $5 each. The same with diecast. A fellow I know was selling his father's 1/18 collection. Over 1000 pieces, all still in their boxes. He was looking for like $5 a car, which must be a fraction of what his father paid. At first I thought there may be an opportunity, but once I hit eBay and saw the same ones just sitting there at $10, it was evident that this ship has sailed.

My thought exactly! The article... written by a 20 year old female summer intern with a 2 hour deadline. Heck, I'm a car guy and there's cars in there I never saw before!

Thanks "Z", very well put! Many thanks to Gregg!

Your first couple of kits can be a bit costly since you will need to acquire a bunch of supplies, different paints, glues, putties etc. But these will last a long time. I have paints that are a dozen years old that I'm still using. I have Evergreen plastic packs that are twenty years old, so those initial purchases will last a long time. Tools are the same thing. You can start out with an eXacto knife and a nail file. I use 3M brand auto sandpapers, and buy the packs and cut down the sheets into little 2x2 squares. I have a half dozen grits, a pack of each, that have lasted me 10 years. You can then add a tool per build. If you feel the need, you can buy a small drill set for $15 and a pin vise to work them for $5. A small set of files is also cheap. I don't use an airbrush or even a Dremel, I'm more of a spray can and hand tool kinda guy. You can get a panel scriber, flexi files, a good pair of photo etch sheers and other bits as you go along, Some of my favorite tools... round toothpicks at $1 a box. I use them for applying glue, and holding parts to paint. I've even whittled small parts like arm rests out of them. I also keep a box of small Dixi bathroom cups handy. I spray paint into the for brushing and touch up. I sort parts in them, I turn them upside down, stab toothpicks through them to use as paint stands. A $3 investment for a year. I also am addicted to straight pins. I believe I bought a box a few years ago and still have plenty. I cut them to short lengths (with metal sheers from my garage) to use as assembly pegs. There's a lot of cheap stuff. The hobby can be cheap or expensive depending on how deep you get into it and your available funding. It's easy to blow big money on mills and lathes, but that's a choice you can make way down the road. Good luck.

Me likes!

Very cool work!

Very very nice! I love the color scheme. I'm gonna have to get me one of those!

Good deal Rich! I've pulled up a chair and anxiously await the progress! Armchair modeling at it's best!

A lot of what you buy initially will last a very long time. Buy decent tools and they'll last a life time. With paints, the first few models will get expensive, but the paint will stretch out over your model building for the next few years. I put a date on my cans and I have some that are a dozen years old and still work fine.

Gas Monkey Garage could redo that entire line of Novas in a week or two!

That is coming along spiffy!

It all depends on how we vote with our wallets! Note that Moebius seems to listen to our demographic better than any other company ever has! I believe if we respond by buying the things we tell them we want, they will keep cranking them out! As for the Ford pickups, I believe we will get a short wheelbase, a long wheelbase and a 4 wheel drive chassis. I know there's a V8 and a 6 coming as well. They will be doing the flat side pickups since the step side bed for this era is the same we have on the old AMT '53 Ford pickup. And they know we're smart enough to kit bash that one!

I find internet advertising interesting. I haven't figured out the logic behind the ads on this site yet. Other ad services watch you and figure out ads that may interest you from your browsing or location. For instance I had helped my daughter buy a Fiat 500. I get ads for those. I also see ads for a local car dealer, no doubt due to my zip code. And the company I bought the NNL East pens from seems to be stalking me everywhere!

John, that reminds me of those full size plastic engines they have at Pep Boys to show off engine stands. I thought it might be fun to get one and detail it out. Now would that be a model? Me thinks so, a 1:1 scale model of that engine.

That's part of the quandary of the local hobby shop / survival equation. Some of them are their own worst enemy, both from the owners and the people they employ. Most of them don't do anything to promote their business and the hobbies they represent. And some have some really weird business ideas... and completely ignore the very basics of customer service. For instance there is a certain shop that doesn't stock any magazines because they have ads in them that compete with his business. He doesn't realize that stocking them would have people coming in on a schedule to buy them, and another $50-100 once there. The guys who don't know anything at all about the hobbies and employ young girls as staff. I once was in a shop standing at their ever shrinking model car area and a lady asked if they had a Porsche model. the young girl glanced at the shelves and announced, "no, they didn't have any." I immediately jumped in since a Tamiya 911 was right on the shelf in front of her. The lady was appreciative and asked me what else she needed to give this as a gift. I loaded her up with paints and glue. She had no problem spending $100. The young girl went and got the manager, telling him I was bothering the customers! The shops that don't keep their racks full, whether it's paint, plastic, wood etc. I know a local shop that keeps two of each Evergreen number and immediately reorders to that quantity when they sell one. Other shops wait until the racks are near empty and lose a lot of business. It's not just the $5 pack of Evergreen, it's that the customer won't come back after constantly being disappointed. They'll go elsewhere and the shop loses ALL of their business. A local shop here in PA doesn't have any Tamiya paints. So I asked the owner. He said a lot of people were asking for those and just shrugged. Um, isn't that a friggin hint? Again, the next time I went to his competitor who stocks Tamiya. He lost all my business. And as mentioned, I've been in several shops where when I walked up to the counter with $50 worth of supplies, I encounter a friendly guy who asks what I'm working on. When I reply, the face falls and they moan, "oh, cars." and they're no longer interested. Heck, the guy at Home Depot couldn't have been interested in the box of screws I bought the other day but he remained friendly!

The Volare front end is a popular swap onto street rod pickup trucks. I would assume that they followed through with that torsion bar design all the way through the cop car era.