Mike999

Some of the Matchbox 1/32 scale car kits were very nice, too. Their 1/32 Citroen Legere had an engine, a radiator grille with OPEN bars, and could be built as a coupe or cabriolet. For many years, it was one of the few WWII era civilian cars available for military builders. Their Rolls-Royce Phantom I was also impressive. Its (tiny) steering box even has the "RR" emblem molded into it. For years I've thought about building that one as a "Home Defense" vehicle, in Britain circa 1940. Maybe with some home-made armor plate and a Vickers machine gun...

Maybe Bo Hopkins, who was one of those Pharaohs. Back in the 1980's, I used to hang around a country-western bar in North Hollywood, CA, the Little Nashville. Bo Hopkins also used to come in there, and every once in a while he even got up and sang with the band. He was from Greenville SC, not far from where I sit writing this. The Little Nashville also became famous...or notorious...for two other regular customers: Carol Bundy and Doug Clark, a/k/a "The Sunset Strip Killers." https://darkerinthelight.wordpress.com/the-sunset-strip-killers/

I still remember reading his 1963 biography when I was a kid, "All But My Life." Co-written with Ken Purdy. The saddest part was him going back on a track after the crash that broke nearly every bone in his body. IIRC, he ran a few laps then parked the car and said something like, "No. Can't do this any more. It's all over." Long out of print and rare today, it looks like. But you might luck out and find it at a yard sale or thrift store. https://www.amazon.com/All-But-Life-Stirling-Moss/dp/B0007DNHT6

No relation. The Inch Pincher II was 1/25 scale. The Calif. Wheels is 1/24 scale and a much newer kit.

The Peugeot 504 wagon sure sold like mad in Egypt, and was downright "iconic" there. I lived in Egypt from 2005-09 and hundreds of 504s were still running around. And probably always will be. We stopped at a garage/junkyard one morning to fix a slow tire leak. The huge yard in the back had junked 504 wagons almost as far as the eye could see. Some body shells were even pre-torched, so the unlucky 504 owner could just grab the body section they needed - fenders or, if he was really unlucky and rolled it over, an entire roof section. That yard was an amazing sight. This pic shows a typical 504 wagon: on the "Green Road" between Alexandria and Cairo, stuffed full of humans with their luggage piled on top. I lived in Alexandria, and a whole fleet of 504s there were also used as upscale tourist taxis. The typical Alexandria taxi at the time was an ancient Russian Lada with parts often rusting off as you watched. The Peugeots were much nicer, and I really liked their comfortable seats and upright seating position.

OK, thanks. The VW was sealed exactly the same way, with round, clear seals on both sides and the ends. A standard "Euro" sealing method that Revell may be using for everything now. At HL a few years ago, I bought a Revell "Calif. Wheels" '59 Cadillac hardtop on clearance and it was re-sealed with regular tape. And had a warped roof, so definitely a return. Long as I'm here...the warped roof is a common problem with that kit. Revell stuffed it into a smaller box than the original issue. The boxtop tended to push down on the roof and warp the thin A & B pillars. So if you're eyeing that kit at a swap meet or show, try to open it up and check for warpage. Another change in the "Calif. Wheels" kit: Revell removed the vinyl-top texturing of the original kit. That was fine by me. The vinyl top was a real Cadillac option in '59 but ultra-rare, and I'd rather make my own than try to grind down the texturing. TBH, I was surprised to see the '68 VW Beetle in HL at all. It's the "California Wheels" version that I thought was out of production. The store only had one. But it was in a shelf slot marked "68 VW Beetle," so maybe it's making a comeback.

Went to a bigger Hobby Lobby than the one in my neighborhood yesterday. The only new kit I saw there was the Revell Snap-Tite '57 Chevy. No kits on clearance. But I also saw ONE Revell "Calif. Wheels" '68 VW Beetle and grabbed it, with a 40% off coupon. Been wanting that kit for a project. I was suspicious at first; the kit wasn't shrink-wrapped and had been re-sealed. But I opened it up at the check-out and everything inside was still in the bags and looked untouched. Continued on to the only remaining hobby shop in this area, though most of its business is R/C cars and planes. This store used to have a dedicated display of new model kits, on an aisle end cap. That's gone now and the kits are just shoved together on the shelves. The Revell Snap-Tite '57 Chevy was the newest kit there, too. Looks like the store is reducing its plastic kits. It used to get new kits pretty quickly and I could find new ones there, if not at Hobby Lobby. That store is carrying Tamiya acrylic paint now, which is new. But it only carries the small bottles and didn't even have a full selection of them. Internet and USPS to the rescue...

Along with the internet, I checked several old scale model books. Those kits are rare and information about them is pretty thin. Best Model Kits made 6 gun models in 1/3 scale: your Savage Repeating Rifle Model 1899; Winchester Model 94; Stevens 311 Double Barrel Shotgun; Mannlicher-Schoenauer Sporting Carbine Improved Model 1952; Browning Automatic Shotgun; and Remington Wingmaster Model 870. Best Model Kits must have been out of business by 1959. Between 1959-61 Aurora re-issued 3 of their gun kits: the Savage, Winchester and Mannlicher-Schoenauer. That's about all I could find out. I'd like to have the 2 shotgun kits, just for fun.

Many years ago I got a resin Holden panel truck on eBay. Its donor kit is an AMT '69 Chevelle. Sorry, too lazy to go take a pic of it...

I'd like to see a Chrysler Airflow model in plastic. This Tamiya kit is probably as close as we'll get in 1/24.

Flea Market Day, and I didn't find anything...except a table full of boring NASCAR kits. But one vendor had this for sale, and I thought some of you geezers might enjoy seeing it: The Sears-Marx #9555 Professional Slot Car set. This thing is 1/24 scale and HUGE. One of its possible layouts takes up 4x10 feet. It came with 2 cars, a light-blue Chaparral and a (of course!) red Ferrari 250 GTO. It was in very good condition, the decal sheet with racing "meatballs" and numbers etc. had never been cut. The Chaparral pickup had a problem and needed some soldering. The price wasn't bad and the seller was willing to negotiate. He didn't want to sell it on eBay because of the size. But in the end, I had an attack of good sense and didn't make an offer. I could probably fit it in the basement, but it might interfere with the stacks of kits...

Hmm. A mystery! This might help you. An old thread from 2014 had this to say: "I have about every version of this kit, and I could only find the tonneau in the candy-stripe box issues, the Ford dealer promo and the one with the red "highboy drag racing version" on the side."

That one was sort of done, but only in 1/32 scale with some serious goofs...

I'd guess the AMT '32 Ford roadster might be in there somewhere. IIRC, first released in 1959 with fender-mounted spare tires, and re-released, sort of, immediately without the spares. Sometime in the Sixties, the kit with the fender-mounted spares was released as a FoMoCo promotional kit in an orange-and-white striped box The same kit was re-issued in 1968 as a Bonnie & Clyde movie tie-in, with a cardboard garage diorama. Issued umpteen times since, including a celebrity "Reggie Jackson" kit circa 1976. It even popped up in the 1990s in an AMT/ERTL "Pro Shop" box. One of the later re-issues is one of the most common and one of the worst - the #6585 AMT-ERTL kit with the built yellow car on the box. Inside, it has no stock tires, loads of flash, and is fittingly molded in Turd Brown plastic.

Looks like your Hobby Lobby also has the Revell "California Wheels" VW Beetle. I thought that kit was long out of production. Two Hobby Lobbys near me still have shelf spaces labeled for it and open. But I haven't seen the VW kit for probably over a year, and that was only 1 kit in one store. I thought about getting it, didn't. Then next time I went back, it was gone. Typical. Thanks for heads-up on the tractor, I'll keep an eye out for that one.

For anybody wondering about the 1/24 ICM Model T's: I'm working on a Speedster right now, and it's a very nice kit. Other on-line reviewers say the same about all their 1/24 Model T's. It could probably be built in a couple of hours without extra detailing. Getting the 2-piece brass parts together takes some care, like the headlights and carbide generator. These parts are NOT molded in brass on my kit, they are gray plastic like the rest. Which is OK, they need to be filled and sanded, which would destroy any plating anyway. I painted them Gloss Black, waited overnight, and airbrushed them with Testor's Brass lacquer, which worked fine. That Testors Brass also works with brush-painting, so I used it to dry-brush the big brass "FORD" nameplate in the middle of the grille. The biggest knock against the kit is no separate chassis, it's molded as part of the fenders. Probably not an issue unless the builder wants to cut off the fenders. I may try that in a future Speedster build. ICM missed a few details, like the hood latches, which would be tiny in 1/24. Though they did throw in some other micro-details, like the 4 tiny, separate exhaust manifold wing nuts, and the complex steering wheel quadrant with separate spark advance and throttle levers . A slightly bigger problem: ICM didn't include the lift handles on both sides of the hood. Those are pretty visible on the real car, but not that hard to make or find. Looking online, some Speedsters had the hood sides cut down for better cooling. I went that way, which took care of the lift handle problem. That also exposes the engine, so I'll probably add wiring. Not a very big job on a Model T.

I got a '40 Ford 4-door from Steve Kohler a while back. Made by "Star Models," I think. I wonder if it's the same body. The one I got is also pretty nice. At least it's much nicer than an old resin '40 Ford 4-door body I had, which was thick, rubbery and as detailed as a bar of soap. That one came in a lot of resin bodies somebody gave me, in exchange for putting their stuff on eBay. So I basically paid nothing for it, and that's exactly what it was worth... I thought of building it as WWII staff car or Combat Photographer's car. Or maybe even a Ford "midnight requisitioned" by the Monuments, Fine Arts & Archives Section - the famous "Monuments Men." With zero vehicles officially assigned to them, they had to be very creative. IIRC, their motor pool at one point consisted of a nearly-dead old Jeep and a partly wrecked German Kubelwagen.

There are some funny stories about McQueen always trying to upstage Brynner in that movie. Like the scene where Brynner and McQueen are in the wagon, and McQueen keeps flipping the shotgun around and playing with it. That kind of stuff drove Brynner crazy, to the point where he went to director John Sturges and complained. Which didn't seem to do him any good... On the classic Western movie theme, this one should be easy: "I saw three of these dusters a short time ago. They were waiting for a train. Inside the dusters there were three men." "So?" "Inside the men there were three bullets."

Finally tracked down this book for a reasonable price, "Surplus WWII U.S. Aircraft" by William T. Larkins. It went out of print a couple years ago, and prices went sky-high at the Usual Suspects like eBay and Amazon. I found my copy through one of Abe Books' vendors. Softcover, 209 pages of mostly photos. Larkins started photographing aircraft in 1934. Right after WWII, when the boneyards were full of often brand-new aircraft flown straight from the factories, he traveled around and photographed many of the yards. It's amazing to see an airfield parked wing-to-wing with obscure aircraft like the Consolidated B-32 Dominator bomber. The B-32 was the back-up plan in case the B-29 failed, which it nearly did; the B-29 cost about $3 billion to develop, or about a billion dollars more than the atomic bombs it dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Along with the photos the book has some great old advertisements for surplus aircraft. Trainers like the Stearman were really dirt cheap. Since Larkins was shooting photos on govt. property, he couldn't always go where he wanted. The cover photo of him with his camera is cropped from a larger pic in the book; Larkins is shooting outside a fence, standing on the roof of his 1932 Ford Model B coupe (with steel rear wheels and wire fronts).

Another great review of a kit that normally wouldn't interest me much. Thanks. I do share your interest in "flying turkeys," those aircraft left far behind in the slip-stream of aviation history, usually for good reasons. Which reminds me...all those Buffalo orders put the Brewster production lines way behind on their next product, the SB2A Buccaneer/Bermuda. Which was a good thing, since the overweight, underpowered and fragile SB2A was one of the worst aircraft ever built. Being a little more polite, the Pima Air Museum labels it "perhaps the least successful Allied aircraft of World War II." Australia was lucky and able to cancel its whole order for Bermudas. Which it replaced with the Vultee Vengeance, maybe a case of out of the frying pan and into the fire. Nobody was ever crazy enough to use the SB2A in combat. The US Navy, Army and RAF only put them to work as target tugs and rear-area hacks. The US Marines employed them as night-fighter trainers, but only in the safe confines of Florida. Quite a few went from the production line straight to the scrapyard. The cover of Steve Ginter's book is sort of a visual metaphor for the Buc's career:

Thanks for the comments, everybody! I think the weathering maybe needs some "streaking grime," especially in places that are still clean. Still thinking about doing that. If I remember right, the asphalt dust is a thin coat of Lifecolor Grimy Black acrylic paint, with a little dark gray pastel dust added while it was still damp. I added clumps of mud and grass, but they're mostly out of sight in the fender wells. It was fun researching the story of these cars and the race. That's why I bored you all with the TL;DR.

Well, I guess it's sort of a "car" model, since it includes the Oshkosh M983 tractor. Trumpeter's 1/35 scale M1120 Terminal High Altitude Air Defense missile system (THAAD). It was on sale at a mostly military vendor's site. I worked on parts of the real thing before I retired. It's a monster kit, something like 750 parts and the lift arms etc. work like the real thing, if you can get it together.

I just checked several big on-line vendors. Two of them have the 1/35 scale Paris Taxis (one with a load of French infantry going to the Marne, one without). No word on the 1/24 kits yet. It seems to take a while for ICM kits to show up with American vendors.

The Marathon de la Route (1965-71): "Ha! I see your wimpy French 24-hour race, and raise you...SIXTY HOURS!" That was the Marathon de la Route, which required cars to run non-stop for 84 hours. It was one of the most extreme endurance races ever, held on one of the world's meanest tracks: Germany's Nurburgring. Nicknamed "The Green Hell" by Jackie Stewart, that track and its often-miserable weather nearly killed Niki Lauda in 1976. Along with its sheer grinding length, the Marathon had many strict and bizarre rules. For example, a pit stop lasting longer than one minute earned a one-lap penalty. Drivers were not penalized if they pulled off the track and made repairs themselves, so cars carried spare parts and tools onboard. The driver could also do repairs in a dedicated non-pit area, with a team technician or engineer advising. But the adviser could not actually help with the repair, only provide verbal advice. "No, no, turn it the OTHER way...!" The Marathon Mazda Cosmos: In 1968 Mazda was developing its revolutionary Wankel rotary engine, and decided the Marathon would make the perfect stress test for the Wankel. The engine was attached to Mazda's zippy little 2-seat sports car, the Cosmo. Mazda prepared 2 Wankel-powered Cosmos for the '68 Marathon. The suspension was modified for stability, power brakes were installed and a bigger grille added for better cooling. The bumpers were removed, a clear bug screen installed on the hood and a fuel filler extension pipe added to the rear deck. The only differences in the two cars were stripes and numbers: red for car #18 and yellow for car #19. Mazda recruited 2 teams of top-level rally endurance drivers. Car #18 was piloted by an all-Japanese team: Nobuo Koga, Yoshimi Katayama and Masami Katakura. Car #19's team was Belgian, made up of Jean-Pierre Ackermans, Yves Deprez, and Leon Last. The two Cosmos ran in fourth and fifth place for most of the race. In Hour 82, with only 2 hours left, the red-striped car #18 of the Japanese team suddenly veered off the track and shot into the Eifel Forest. Engineers had drilled a small hole in the rear axle to mount test equipment, and the weakened axle broke. The Belgian team in Car #19 finished fourth, behind 2 Porsche 911's and a Lancia Fulvia. Not a bad showing at all, for what was basically an experimental, prototype engine. The Kit, Hasegawa #20274 Mazda Cosmo Sport, 1968 Marathon De La Route: Molded in white (body), black (interior/chassis), chrome and clear. Also a piece of black mesh for the grille, and a sheet of self-adhesive metal emblems. Pretty impressive for a kit dating back to 1994! This is a curbside kit with no engine. Hasegawa did release one Cosmo kit with a Wankel engine many years ago, but it is Unobtainium today and goes for big bucks if you can find it. The chassis is very well detailed, with separate suspension parts, exhaust pipe, and even the skid plate unique to this racing version. Front wheels are poseable. The body is one piece, very sharp and well done. Even the side vents and tiny cowl vents under the windshield are molded open. Some faint molding lines need to be sanded down on the front and rear fenders and sides of the roof. The interior is nicely detailed with separate door panels and decals for all gauges and the checked houndstooth seats. BUT...those seat decals are too small! They should cover the whole seat-cushion area, but only cover part of each seat. Other Hasegawa Cosmo kits have decals that are the right size, so I don't know how they blew it on this version. I scanned the decal sheet and printed a copy, then pieced the seat decals together. Overall, this is a well-mannered kit that goes together without any major drama or ugly surprises. Final assembly looks scary at first: the glass is glued into the body, followed by the dashboard and door panels, then finally the chassis. Thanks to the precise kit engineering, everything fits great. There isn't much gluing area for the side panels, but the pins on the parts help align them. The most important tip: let the glue dry on all those parts overnight before adding the chassis. Glue isn't even needed to attach the chassis to the body; it snaps in place easily with 2 mounting tabs, front and rear. The Marchal front driving lights look good, but their brackets only have a tiny gluing surface. Keeping them lined up is tricky, even using slow-drying 5-minute epoxy. I should have drilled a hole through the bracket, into the body, and pinned these parts to keep them straight. Mine are not quite straight, which I will blame on racing damage... The self-adhesive metal transfers include 5 tiny M-A-Z-D-A letters across the back, the very tiny trunk lock (!) and the "Cosmo" and Mazda front emblems. If you don't want to fool with metal transfers, all these items are also provided on the decal sheet. WARNING: the instructions are complete in showing the mods for the racing version. But they are also very complex and cluttered, with many tiny and confusing symbols for "drill," "fill holes," "glue/no glue," etc. Study carefully before building, and especially note the holes that need to be drilled or filled. Here's a quick Cheat Sheet: DRILL: 2 holes in the hood for the transparent bug screen, and 1 hole in the trunk for the fuel-filler pipe. In the interior, drill holes for the roll bar. FILL: all 4 bumper holes, front and rear. Every builder seems to miss at least 2 of those holes, and I almost did too. Also fill the holes for the JDM rear-view mirrors on both front fenders. These cars didn't run with mirrors, they would have turned into shrapnel on the track. The Build: I wanted to build the unlucky car #18, as it looked near the end of the race. The Nurburgring is an asphalt track surrounded by forests that cars frequently run into, spattering them with plenty of mud, grass clumps and other grunge. I found a few pics of the Cosmos on the Internet. All photos showed a heavy coat of black asphalt dust on the rocker panels. I'm not happy with the weathering (as always!) and may fool with it a little more. The interior got a lot of added detail like a seatbelt and dashboard toggle switches, most of which can't be seen now. Oh well, I know it's there... I drilled out the round side marker lights in the front fenders and replaced them with HO scale clear lights, painted Tamiya Clear Orange. I also added paint chips and dust/dirt. And since a bug screen needs bugs, I added a few of those with tiny specks of Tamiya Clear Green and Flat Black paint.

This site has a printable bomb chart, explaining the color of the bombs and the bands on them. Also lots of other info on WWII Allied bombs. http://www.303rdbg.com/bombs.html