Mike999

The '27 T Police Car was last re-issued around 2007, so more than 10 years ago...hard as that is to believe. That was kit number 38679. It has the "Ford Official Licensed Product" and Stevens International logos on the box. The original issue back in the 1970s was kit number T178. For newer modelers who wonder why this is such a desirable kit: it's the only Model T kit that ever came with the side-curtains and windows for the up-top. Even if the windows are so thick, when scaled up they would be more like bulletproof glass. In real life the windows were thin celluloid/isinglass. The side-curtains/windows could be rolled up and stored under the bottom cushion of the back seat. I have a '27 T where I carefully cut out the side-curtains and will replace them with thinner clear plastic. Someday... Other great things about this kit: it has optional vintage speed equipment (a Frontenac DOHC setup and 4-outlet exhaust header). Also quite a bit of police gear: a sawed-off shotgun, a big chrome flashlight, 2 vintage police helmets and 2 night-sticks, a megaphone, etc. There's also a siren and other police parts for the car itself. If I ever get around to building one of these as a police car, I plan to make a few changes. Things in the kit like bumpers, wire wheels and wind-wings were all extra-cost options on open Fords in 1927, and it's doubtful any police dept. would have ordered them. For once, the wheels are an easy fix; just use the wooden spoke wheels from an AMT '25 T kit. Since 1927 was during Prohibition, I've thought of building one of these as a police "Raid Car" for hitting speak-easies and liquor warehouses. Maybe a retractable ram on the front end, for breaking thru doors, and a winch on the back for pulling doors down.

Heh! I saw that big price reduction too. Like somebody above said...these people must never look at Completed Items.

I mentioned those about 100 posts ago, or so it seems. Only 6 1/32 scale kits were issued like that, with photos for box art: the '32 Ford Sedan, '22 T Sedan, T Dragster, '24 Buick Touring, '32 Ford Pickup and the Dune Buggy. The Dune Buggy was just a re-issue of the earlier Hurst Baja Boot, without the roof and spare tires. On eBay, those 6 kits seem to sell for slightly lower prices than the originals.

For nostalgia drag fans: its stable-mate, the old Long John streamlined dragster, is still available. This is the Galaxie Ltd. version. No doubt some of the talented builders in here could replace that "dummy engine" with the real deal and spiff it up in other ways. http://www.hobbylinc.com/galaxieltd-long-john-streamlined-dragster-monogram-plastic-model-dragster-kit-1:25-scale-544

Budweiser Bevo Boat, photographed in 1931. Built to promote their Bevo near-beer during Prohibition. Wonder if that hood ornament - the cannon - really works? http://theoldmotor.com/?p=155520

Sometimes Amazon doesn't seem to do foreign currency conversion right. Or something. Once I saw a Japanese vendor on Amazon offering a kit for U.S. $10,000. I thought, "That can't be right." It wasn't, I went to the vendor's store and the price was 10,000 Japanese Yen. Or a little less than U.S. $100, which made more sense. I have no idea why it translated to U.S. $10K.

Good to see the Brat back. Never appreciated it when it was available, and being a geezer, I remember when it sold for blow-out prices at toy stores and hobby shops. I like its "rumble seat(s)." Also nice to see the Dodge pickup and mini-bike. As a reminder, at kit swap meets and such, you may see the old Accurate Miniatures Corvette Gran Sport in a Revell box. Revell never had the molds, they just cleared out a warehouse of bagged kits a few years ago and printed boxes for them. At the local hobby shops in Los Angeles, full retail price for those kits was $19.99, a great deal, and they sold out fast. I think the original price in an A.M. box was around $35.

Congrats on finding something you like! I wish they'd re-issue the 1/8 scale Honda Scrambler from the same era. Revell has reissued the Honda CB72, Triumph Tiger 100 and some of their other old motorcycle kits. Though those kits seemed to be pretty short runs and vanished out of the stores quickly. Proving the old rule once again: "If you see a model you want, get it NOW."

A woman on another forum posted a photo of her car's thermometer yesterday morning, on her way to work. She lives in the Minneapolis area, I think. The outside temp displayed was -30 degrees F.

Another zombie thread! And most appropriate, considering the subject matter. The rest of the story: AURORA planned a whole series of these "Chamber of Horrors" kits. The parental uproar over The Guillotine put a stop to that idea, and it was the only one released. BUT...Aurora had already cut molds for the next kit in the series, "The Hanging Tree." Those molds were shoved into the back of a warehouse and forgotten for decades. Until somebody found them, and created a resin kit from those original molds. You can still buy that kit from Monsters In Motion. There is a goof in the MiM description: they say this kit is "1/8 scale" but it's nowhere near that big. It's the same scale as the guillotine, somewhere between 1/15 and 1/18, maybe. https://www.monstersinmotion.com/cart/attack-of-the-b-movies-item-list-a-h-c-19_119/aurora-hanging-tree-model-hobby-kit-p-1677

Maybe the same '61 Dodge Phoenix re-pop I bought back in 2006, according to my inventory sheets. Back then, Model King was selling resin kits thru Model Roundup. The '61 Phoenix was Model King kit number RK-112 and sold for $34.90. It included the body, interior, chassis, non-chromed bumpers and I think vac-formed glass. It's buried in a box and I can't dig it out right now. A vendor named "Vic's Resins" is selling a '61 Dodge Phoenix on eBay right now, and many other resin bodies: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vics-Resins-61-Dodge-resin-body-/362543618926

For comparison, here's the original ESCI 109" 2-door "African Safari" Land Rover and its No-Licensing-Problem Italeri reissue from 2007. The words "Land Rover" don't appear anywhere on the box of the reissue. It's also missing the gorgeous original Cartograph "safari" decals, otherwise the kit is identical to the original. Italeri must have fixed the licensing issues. This year they're also reissuing the Range Rover under its real name, and the Range Rover Police was reissued just a few months ago.

The Euro Revell catalog is showing what appears to be a brand-new Land Rover Series III kit, with hardtop, roof rack and spare tire mounted on the roof. It's not another re-hash of the old ESCI/Italeri kits. This is a long wheelbase 4-door, which no one has ever done in 1/24, AFAIK. The ESCIs are LWB 2-doors, the old long-gone Monogram was a SWB 2-door. Look for the thread "Spielwarenmesse Nürnberg 2019." Which is currently right under this one in the forum list.

That 1/24 scale Land Rover Series III looks like a completely brand-new kit. (I'm always skeptical when a model company says "New.") It's not a re-pop of the old ESCI kit, still being re-issued by Italeri. The ESCI/Italeri kits are all 2-door long wheelbase versions. That one is a 4-door LWB, with a hardtop and roof rack configuration I've never seen before. I found it listed by Spotmodel, a European online model shop. They say expected release date is October 2019.

Another vote for the Sotar 20/20. I bought one several years ago at a steep discount. With the right air pressure and thinning, it's amazing what small lines it can spray. And along with 1/25, I do 1/35 kits, where very small lines/patterns are often needed. But it's also good at bigger patterns, as you show. The only problems I've had were my own fault, from not cleaning it thoroughly. Even that wasn't too bad. Started a session one day and it wouldn't spray. I disassembled it and cleaned everything with lacquer thinner. Now I backflush it with thinner after every use, and make sure the needle is perfectly clean.

Thanks, somehow I totally forgot about the awesome new-tool Tamiya kit. Right after I typed that, I was sitting here wondering which Gullwing kit I forgot to mention. Then I got sidetracked - the power pole outside my house went down in high winds, and this street lost our electrical power for a few hours. Since my furnace is electrical, I went off to fire up the fireplace.

The 300SL Gullwing is probably Italeri's own kit. Which hasn't been available for a while, and according to Internet Gullwing fans, is the best 1/24-25 kit of that car. It was first released in the late '80s or early '90s, based off Italeri's 300SL roadster. The Heller kit dated from about 1979. I recently got a package deal on 2 of the Heller Gullwing kits on eBay for a good price. They don't have the space-frame detail of the AMT 1/25 kit, which is OK. I want to build a barn find, and I may drop one of the engines into a hot rod or something.

Don't get me started on Beanie Babies! Back when they were hot, a PlayCo toy store near me had a great scale-model section. I learned not to ever go there on Sat. morning to check out the kits. The store was full of Beanie Baby nuts, hollering at the sales staff, digging thru the stock, and causing incredibly long check-out lines. It always seemed to be adults throwing tantrums, trying to fill their collections or whatever. A couple of times, people nearly came to blows over those things. I also like the eBay threads. They're fun, entertaining and educational.

Some re-pops of good old ESCI stuff, like the Ford Escort, Range Rover and Mercedes 230G. The 230G came with 2 different rear-end treatments: side-opening vertically-split "barn doors," like the Rally version Italeri issued a few years ago. Or the horizontally split tailgate/hatch. Last seen in the Revell "Feuerwehr" fire truck version. That Land Rover Fire Truck has me curious. Guessing the old ESCI Rover with some new-tooled fire truck parts. Italeri has added new parts to some other old kits in the past few years. Like the 1/24 Toyota BJ-44 with the .50 caliber machine gun, and the 1/35 scale Land Rover that got a new hardtop and both left-hand and right-hand drive dashboards.

Unfortunately, that seems to be true. Here are the Revell '77 Monte Carlo's sold on eBay just this month. Looks like there was a bidding war on a couple of them: $36.53 with 32 bids and $31.00 with 16 bids. It's still possible to grab one for less than $20, plus shipping. But as always on eBay, timing is everything. Jan 6: $26.00, 6 bids Jan 10: $34.99 Buy It Now Jan 12: 32 bids, $36.53 Jan 14: 2 bids, $19.49 Jan 16: 3 bids, $20.50 Jan 17: 4 bids, $26.00 Jan 23: 5 bids, $16.85 Jan 25: 16 bids, $31.00

Not since 2011 AFAIK, as Casey mentioned, when it was re-issued as kit #85-1962. In 2016 the Ollie's closeout store chain had one of its big scale model blowout sales. In my area, the Monte Carlo kit #85-1962 was in the Ollie's sale for $7.99. And Ollie's had stacks of them. I wasn't much interested in it at first. That box art is dull and makes it look more like a toy than a model. Then I checked the Internet and this forum, and saw what people had done with it. That kit is excellent for a Snapper. Model Car Garage even makes a photo-etched detail set for it. Model Roundup has the blue Low Rider version (kit ##85-1918 in Casey's post) for $22.90. It's not hard to find at Big Auction Site, for mostly reasonably prices. As usual, just ignore the hypesters and the VRC Crowd ("Vintage! Rare! Collectible!").

I just did a quick check, with the Snapper roadster body/interior against the full-detail Revell '67 Vette roadster chassis. Looks pretty close, but you'd have to grind out some material from the back of the Snapper interior. And maybe the top of the chassis. The interior tub should sit flat on the chassis but won't without some modifying. And depending on how detailed you want to get, the 427 cars used a different front cross-member than the small blocks. I also checked the Revell Snapper against the chassis of the MPC '67 Vette "Night Stalker." That fit a lot better than the Revell chassis. It was nearly a drop-fit, and looked like the axle locations would center in the wheel wells of the Snapper body. The MPC kit is pretty easy to find and reasonably priced on Big Auction Site. That chassis will also fit under the '63-67 AMT Vette kits. Be warned that cutting out the hood on a Revell Snapper is a little tricky because the plastic is very thick. I did it not long ago, sort of successfully.

That's a great-looking Vette! Especially the emblems. My usual reminder when the Revell '63 Vette Snappers come up: they're a rare combination of equipment, which I appreciate. They have air conditioning vents in the dash and the shifter for a Powerglide automatic (no T-shaped reverse lockout). Off and on, I'm fooling with building an AMT '63 Vette roadster equipped that way, and have parts from a Snap-Kit to do it. I also plan to build it with the base 327 engine, and the hardtop only, permanently fixed in place. You could order the Vette with either a hard or soft top. If you wanted both, the second top cost extra. One glitch so far: the hood in my AMT kit was short-shot and left huge gaps between the hood and fenders. I'll steal one from a '63 AMT coupe, it fits perfectly. I might steal the A/C system from a '68 El Camino. I don't think they changed much from '63 to '68.

And the Lotus Europa is in the right neighborhood! The street sign says "Sancola Ave." That's in Toluca Lake, a very upscale Los Angeles 'hood near Studio City/North Hollywood. Bob Hope was one of its most famous residents, from 1939 until his death in 2003. Amelia Earhart lived there back in the 1930's, since the Lockheed plant in Burbank was just a couple of miles away. Other celebrity residents: Bing Crosby, Ozzie & Harriet Nelson, Frankie Avalon, Bette Davis, Donny and Marie Osmond, Henry Winkler, Ron Howard, Jonathan Winters and Miley Cyrus.

This Jimmy Flintstone body, #NB-175, is almost there. '27 Ford roadster body with track-T nose. Be advised that the nose doesn't have panel lines for the hood and grille. You'll have to add those yourself, the hood and nose is one smooth piece. You'll also have to add the grille bars. The nose is just an open hole. https://www.ebay.com/itm/Jimmy-Flintstone-NB175-27-Ford-1-25-Scale-Resin/122406388029?hash=item1c7ffd413d:g:YBAAAOSw32lYz~ly