Maindrian Pace

Really neat, reminds me of the red/tan '86 Eddie Bauer Bronco that my father bought new, our first 4x4.

Beautiful job. I restored and hot rodded a Hubley '62 wagon years ago, used a set of Country Squire decals put out by a guy/company called Redbear Decals. Not sure if they still exist.

That's a good question, and the answer may surprise you. It was supposed to look like a European Ford. Here is the story directly from Jack Telnack, the head of Ford design at the time, and chief stylist of the Fox Mustang.

It really does. It looks even closer to the '65 XP wagon, which used a mostly US Comet front clip.

They are the same width as the AMTs but a bit shorter, making the scale kinda 1/27-ish. Or thereabouts. I just looked at your '53 Ford Victoria. Seems you have a good bit of patience, and perhaps a measure of the other attributes as well. But if you don't, you can always substitute stubbornness and determination, and you're there.

I like unusual and orphan cars, and the early '60s Exner Mopar creations somehow combine both; mainstream orphans. Enter Johan to forever enshrine these cars in the hobby, and you have a great selection of subjects to build from. Controversial styling rules!

Palmer is a company that needs no introduction, they are well known in the vintage plastic world for their incredibly bad representations of cars that look like 3D versions of cocktail napkin scribbles, as well as their occasionally pretty decent, as though by accident, models that somehow came out OK. The Multi piece body Comet wagon is not one of them. To begin with, I didn't build this car. It was rebuilt from a glue bomb by Nick Whitlow on a Facebook model page about a year ago. I don't do much, if any FB, so a friend of mine forwarded that page to me to show that a guy on FB was building a model of my car, sort of. As it turns out, Nick is well known not only as a model builder, but also in the real car world, specifically as a fan of the AMT Piranha / Man from U.N.C.L.E. cars, and actually found and restored a real one. He then wrote a book on the subject. I believe he is also a member here. He found a built Comet and started correcting the kit's many flaws, the most obvious of which is the too-tall top that needs to be chopped to look stock. He did this by making new side pillars and chopping the windshield frame. After he modified the top, he adapted a shortened AMT '66 Mustang chassis and added AMT parts to the Palmer engine block to make it look less generic. He painted it black with a pearl white roof and added the wheels from a Piranha kit, naturally. These kits didn't come with glass, so he found a parts box windshield and trimmed it to fit. I told him he was doing a great job and posted a pic of my real car, and he seemed amused that one of these still existed and that the owner was reading his thread. His build turned out great: Fast forward about 1.5 years, Nick PMd me on FB telling me he was thinking about selling the Comet. I asked him what he wanted for it, a price was agreed upon, and it was on the way to Mesa. Unfortunately, the mail monsters were not very kind to the package. So some rebuilding was in order. Not a problem. With Nick's approval, I made some minor changes. I drilled the axle holes lower to pick up the ride height a bit, tried out a set of Modelhaus resin Falcon dog dish wheel/caps on promo tires, and added rear curved 1/4 glass to the model. To make those, I made a Sculpy clay buck with Evergreen styrene master glass fitted to the Comet, then vacuformed it. The glass was attached with CA glue and clear enamel paint in the corners. Want to have some fun? Take a terrible kit and see what you can do with it. These are great blow-off projects between serious builds.

A thing of beauty, and the real cars are as well. Nice job.

Super nice, great scribing work on the door lines. My kind of project, un-gassing the gasser. De-gassing? Out-gassing?

Both beautiful, and as the owner of a '60 Comet wagon, those cars always get my attention.

I like this, it's got a full-on '70s show car/street racer vibe to it that's really cool.

It looks great. The Mk. 10 has always been my favorite Jaguar sedan/saloon, despite what the market prefers. I might have to get one of those to add to the rainy day stack.

Super clean build, the paint is great and I have to try that vinyl top paint now.

That thread was nothing if not entertaining, so much so it was shut down after everyone got their punches in. I commented in it that it shouldn't be too hard to fix it, and I was *savaged*. "We shouldn't HAVE TO CORRECT THE STUPID THING! "Why is it so far off in this day and age of computer files, scanning and digital rendering? It should be PERFECT!" "I have been waiting for this kit for 25 years and they give me THIS?" "I don't know why you guys are so upset, it looks like a Mustang to me, but I think these were the ugliest Mustangs of all time, so what do I know?" And on and on. A real dog pile. So I decided to start a how-to thread on correcting the kit so I could build a model of my daily driver at the time, a '92 coupe which I still have. The thread got so many views that it maxed out my free Photobucket account in three days, and I had to switch to a paid account so the pictures would stay up. I only intended to build the one body, but no less than 12 members here PMed me asking me to have it resin cast so they could have one. They said essentially the same thing: "It looks great Mike, uh... I can't do that, can you have this cast because I really want one." Or six in one case. I was flattered, but I didn't know the first thing about resin casting. So at one of the Moonlight club meetings, Dan Baker introduced me to Greg Wann, the Master Caster, and that's how it all began. Greg said it was the best selling body he ever cast. I couldn't have imagined that, or that it would still be in demand 8 years later. But it is, enough so that I made a new resin master because the original kit body master is trashed, having been used to make four molds (they don't last forever) and the process is hard on a body, especially one with so many glue bond seams. I've done several other cars since then, including a Fox LX hatch back. It's been a fun ride.

I love these prehistoric thread revivals. We need more to see cool stuff we otherwise would never find.

Revell kits from that era are truly hit or miss, interesting subjects but confounding fitment issues, wonky body proportions, terrible two piece tires that resist all forms of glue known to man, needlessly complex sub assemblies, and crazy parts counts. But great box art, which is... something. Building one and making it look nice is a true achievement.

Started this one in '94, when the car was new. Getting around to finishing it.

Pretty sure the AMT Pacers had them too, a nice York compressor but without hoses.

Just seeing this. Love it, fantastic period piece which is very representative of the period.

Super clean build, and looks close to a car built on the show Iron Resurrection. Very nice indeed.

Glad to see this one back on the bench, it was a favorite to watch. Iconic car, freshly restored, along with the red '67 coupe in Craig Jackson's collection. It's amazing that these two cars still exist.

It looks very good, the revised one ton front wheel openings are a nice touch. I can't remember seeing a winch on the front of a dump truck of that era, but they were upfitted with special equipment to suit whatever the job was, so it's a nice upgrade. What's the plan, brand new truck, or weathered?

Simply awful news, so sorry to hear that. All the best to you and your family, Mike.

IPMS shows are often not very car-heavy, but Arizona modelers must not have gotten the memo. This show was great, and the models in the other categories were just downright epic. Something for everyone here.

If your skills were overwhelmed ten years ago, they certainly aren't now. Fantastic build.