Harry P.

Never tried that.

As in the above photo?

I dunno... it looks pretty shiny to me!

Actually only the first Batmobile was flat black. http://home.comcast.net/~apennyworth/original/1966batmobilevisualtimeline.html

Depends on your zip code. There are areas of the country where you probably see more Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Porsches and Jaguars than Pontiacs... Say, 90210, for example...

So is "Superb 7" some sort of inside joke???

Or here's an idea... get your own subscription! (Actually, if you subscribe it's cheaper than buying the magazine one issue at a time.)

Real what???

From ford.com/news: Mercury Announcement Updated June 2, 2010 You may already have heard about an important announcement we made recently to end production of Mercury branded vehicles by the end of this year. Ford will continue to provide existing and future Mercury owners with parts and service support at Ford and Lincoln dealers, and honor current warranties and Ford’s Extended Service Plans. For additional information please view our Frequently Asked Questions section of the website. Sincerely, Your Mercury Customer Support Team

Mark, excellent points regarding the extra costs of crash testing, emissions, etc. Makes a lot of sense, and no wonder that car makers are consolidating these days. Like you said, the world of car manufacturing is much different today than it was back in the domestic makers' "glory days" of the 50s and 60s when "badge engineering" still made economic and business sense.

I wonder how well that theory really ever worked. I mean the GM idea of getting a young first time buyer into a low-priced GM car (Chevy)... then maybe he moves on to a Pontiac or trades up to a Buick or Olds in a few years... then maybe a Caddy once he can swing the payments. Get the buyer when he's young, offer a "ladder" of products with the ultimate prize (Caddy) at the top, and keep the customer for life. That worked for GM for years, probably Plymouth/Dodge/Chrysler-Imperial and Ford/Mercury/Lincoln too, to some extent. But with the onslaught of foreign competitors, and buyers being a little more informed than they used to be, the old "Customer for Life" idea doesn't much work anymore. Plymouth is history, Pontiac and Olds are gone, Mercury next. Makes sense when the American car makers' slice of the pie is a whole lot smaller than it was 30-40 years ago.

Thanks! I made it myself...

http://www.chrometechusa.com/modelplate2.html

Yes, yes and yes!

I suggest you PM him and ask him directly.

Yeah, I guess that's sort of good, in a "perfect scale duplication of the real thing" sort of way... I mean, if that's what you're in to and all... Translation: Holy COW!!!

I dunno.... swept San Jose... up 2-0 with Philly... maybe time to apply for the parade permit???

HA!!! In yer face, Philly!!!

Yep. Hard to believe... but true!

But I did find out that Windsor is the most southern city in all of Canada! (But I actually already knew that...)

Just for kicks I tried a google search for Goodison Trucking, Windsor, Ontario. Nothing...

If you post photos directly from your hard drive, they show up as small thumbnail images... and you have to click on them to get them to open up to full size. But why not just open a Photobucket account?? It's free.

The trick is NOT to apply a solid black line over the last color coat... that always winds up looking very toylike and unrealistic, because the lines are almost always too thick (too wide) and much too stark and black. Bob Downie has a great technique for getting the lines "just right"... maybe he'll see this and provide a better explanation. but basically what he does is paint the car as usual, then add the black lines using a Micron-type pen with black ink (or some similar pen with a fine tip and liquid, flowing ink, like a Rapidograph draftsman's pen... NOT a ball point or marker), then adding another coat or two of thinned-down body color over that. This makes the black lines less "black" and you wind up with a very realistic panel line... dark enough to look like an actual open seam, but not too dark as to look fake.

Usually the kits with the worst flash problems tend to be older kits where the tooling (the actual steel molds) is fairly worn from use and don't close completely "tight" anymore, allowing the hot plastic to squeeze in between the mating surfaces (where it's NOT supposed to go!) Most newly-tooled kits have very little, if any, flash... some Japanese kits are known to rarely if EVER have any. But really, it's more of an annoyance than a real problem... it's fairly easy to remove, and just sort of "comes with the territory" in most kits to one extent or another.

No problem, I already have a new one going.