Mike999

And no wonder. According to Tom Daniel himself: "Monogram actually had a Mercedes SSK kit in stock, so we just added the other (Rommel) tooling to that to make the kit." Quoted in Scotty Gosson's fantastic book "Show Rod Model Kits." The book is a great read full of fun history and trivia.

Heh! Even sunny Southern California has something similar, those nerve-scraping Santa Ana winds. As described by Raymond Chandler in "Red Wind:" "There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen."

The Mazda Cosmo fit is excellent and it is easy to build, much like the Aoshima kits. I've built car kits from both companies. The Cosmo even has metallic chrome nameplates for the badges, if you don't want to paint them. It does not have an engine but has good chassis and interior details. Hasegawa did one Cosmo kit with a rotary engine, but that one is old and very rare. I believe the regular Cosmo kits are currently available. They go in and out of production, like all kits. Hasegawa recently released a stock, non-police version with a 1/24 scale female figure in it.

Ha! I call that "eBay Fever." It's pretty common at flea markets these days. There are big ones near me on Wed. and Sat. I've found a lot of good deals. But lately it's been either raining or freezing cold on just about every Wed. I got to the Wed. flea market one morning, just as a seller was stacking up a bunch of model kits on his table. He was asking $5.00 each. I grabbed several. The real prize was an MPC "Indy Hall of Fame" set that I'd been trying to find forever. The box was a little crushed but it was still shrink-wrapped.

Welcome! Hasegawa makes a police version of its 1/24 scale Mazda Cosmo. It has options for the Tokyo Metropolitan Police or the Hiroshima Prefectural Police. A link to the kit on the Hasegawa web site is below. On a business trip to Japan once, I visited Gifu Prefecture. We went to the Mitsubishi factory beside the air base. Mitsubishi had an amazing collection of scale-model aircraft in a big display case. Unfortunately our visit was short, since we took the trains from Tokyo. https://www.hasegawausa.com/product-pages/hsgs0258.html

At least one old Aurora aircraft kit has been released by Atlantis: the Hughes Airwest DC-9 in 1/72 scale. That box art sure takes me back...

I really like that Grim Reaper, and have to go find one now! Along with a few other things in the mail today, I got a Sea Monster. The Russian PTS-M (PTS-10) Medium Amphibious Vehicle. I've wanted a model of this vehicle for years, since I saw the real thing in Egypt. It's made by Miniman Factory in 1/35 scale but is still BIG. Resin and photo-etch, with metal tracks custom-made by Friulmodel just for this kit. Unlike most Russian vehicles, the PTS-M didn't recycle tank tracks from a T-55 or T-72. It had its own unique treads. The original price of the kit was in Nosebleed Territory. It recently came down some, and I got this one at a further 40% off. Of course, since I bought it, any day now Trumpeter or MENG will come out with a plastic kit at an even lower price...

I don't know anything about them myself, just saw them in the store and was also intrigued. The back of the card shows the 6 tips and describes their spray widths. The Red tip is the smallest width, 0.5 to 1 inch. The White tip is the largest, 2 to 2.5 inch. From the back of the card: "Remove current Testors tip and replace with comfort tip of your choice...Clean tip with a solvent such as mineral spirits or Testors thinner between colors." The price was $5.99

I just went to Hobby Lobby in Anderson, SC. Zero kits on clearance. Looked like they did a re-set, most kit slots were filled. And last time I was there, they only had 1 Revell '66 Suburban, today they had several. Hardly any new kits either, except the two Tom McKewen dragsters. I thought briefly about picking up a Polar Lights BTTF DeLorean, until I saw the $32.99 sticker on it and got shocked. Just picked up some glues and a pack of Testors Assorted Spray Can Tips.

Thanks. HBO made a pretty good movie based on Burton's book. "Pentagon Wars" with Kelsey Grammer & Cary Elwes. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0144550/ Your article mentions another notorious turkey that got cancelled, the M247 Sgt. York DIVAD (Division Air Defense). There's a car connection since one of the main contractors was Ford Aeronutronics. Known to some of us working in the field, who had to deal with them, as Ford Aero-Neurotics. The M247 was supposed to be a low-priced system using existing components: the hull of the M60 tank, modified fire control radar from the F-16 fighter, etc. Didn't work out that way. Costs ballooned and the thing couldn't hit the broad side of a barn, let alone an incoming Russian fighter. Ford also raised eyebrows because it insisted on using 40mm Swedish Bofors guns, not guns firing the common NATO 35mm anti-aircraft rounds. It was probably just a coincidence that Ford was partnered with Bofors and stood to make lots of money from that decision...

I checked his "Other Items." Not a model person, most of his stuff is marine/boating items. If you don't want the bundle, he's offering the same six kits individually, at $30 each. He also has the 1/8 scale Mann Honda Road Racer for $40, also from Hobby Lobby. Oh well, at least his shipping is free. I still wouldn't buy from anybody pulling this trick.

Here's a 2016 thread about the Midgets, with some interesting back-and-forth. It mentions that the kits didn't sell very well, and the people who pushed for them left Revell shortly after their release.

Just a few more days, I hope! You're right, there are many replicas of the "Broderick Crawford" cars out there. For anyone else who wants to do that '55 Buick, you have to be careful looking at those replicas. One of the most famous is a 2-door hardtop, which is completely wrong. The owner knew that, but he wanted a hardtop. The real cars were Buick Special 2-door sedans, with a Century front clip (that's why they have 4 portholes). Those cars were only built for the 1955 CHP contract and not sold to the public. The Maisto die-cast body is exactly right. Enough of hijacking your thread! Sorry. Here's a link to an old Hemmings article about those CHP Buicks: https://www.hemmings.com/blog/2013/03/17/sia-flashback-broderick-crawford-lives-1955-chp-buick/

I see that already, at the big flea markets around here. I've snagged some die-cast "beaters" just for parts, to doll up plastic kits or other die-casts. Things like the separate window and door handles are really useful. I bought a couple with the dreaded "die-cast rash," where the metal is actually deteriorating. Those go really cheap. One woman came to a flea market several weeks in a row, to sell off her late father's die-cast collection. She said it took up a whole outbuilding. Lots of hard-to-find Franklins and Danburys. Some had minor damage or missing parts, since they were on display in that outbuilding and the collector had little grand-kids. All were missing the original boxes and shipping material, though he did save some Certificates Of Authenticity. She sold most of them for $10-20. I got two '48 Tuckers that I had been trying to find forever. Also a '57 Ford Retractable. Those were all complete and undamaged. Outstanding work on those cars by Tim! I really like seeing die-casts detailed. Right now I'm just about done (famous last words) with a Maisto '55 Buick California Highway Patrol car. That started as a "quick weekend project" (more famous last words). The basic die-cast is very nice for a low-end item you can find for $10 on eBay. Maisto based it on a real replica CHP car (none of the originals survived). I just wanted to add some interior and trim detail, but it took longer than I thought. As usual...

"Good hands. Bad taste in cars." Great job, and the background makes it look like she's sitting outside Darnell's, waiting to self-restore. I like to do weathering myself and that's some of the best I've seen. Those Pro Shop kits were painted VERY well with a hard, glossy finish, and it's not easy to un-finish them. I learned that with a Pro Shop '78 Trans Am I'm trying to turn into a beater. I did learn one trick. I wanted to leave the gold pin-striping and other decals mostly intact. Scrubbing the body with a Scotch-Brite pad flattened the black paint but left most of the gold trim alone.

Thanks. A couple of ideas come to my alleged mind. The AMT Surf Woody has some small, ribbed pillars in it for the "surfin' hearse" version. They might be just a little too small, since the ICM kit is 1/24 and the AMT is 1/25. You can also find plastic ribbed pillars in Hobby Lobby/Michaels, for decorating wedding cakes. They come in different sizes, but I'm not sure if any are small enough. I'm using a big one right now for a 1/16 scale figure in a "Berlin 1945" scene. The best starting point might be the body of the 1/24 scale Monogram Boot Hill Express. The driver's seat of the hearse in the photo even looks like an old horse-drawn coach seat.

The link below says they specialize in small moves, and they'll give you a free quote for 1-10 items or more than 10. Otherwise I've never used them and know nothing about them. I did do a cross-country move in 2015 and learned one thing: this is the time of year to move stuff, but you might want to hurry. Summer is peak moving season and it can be a lot harder to schedule a delivery then. I learned that the hard way, since my delivery didn't happen until July. I had to buy a house, etc., before I could get all my things delivered. https://www.tsishipping.com/moving-services/small-moves

I've also collected wagon kits over the years, including resin bodies and full kits. Two of the weirdest resin kits I have are 2-door wagons: a '59 Mercury Commuter (missing 1 taillight) and a '58 Imperial. The Mercury 2-door wagon was available from dealers like any other 1959 Mercury. The Imperial had to be a custom job, but somebody did build at least one of them, as shown in the pic below:

Ha! Great minds, or something. If that's the softcover "Playa Giron" by Santiago Rivas, I also got it recently. The pic of the M-41 I posted is on Page 12 of the color art section. Two future builds I'd like to do on that subject are the Hobbycraft 1/48 Sea Fury and an A-26 Invader. The A-26 has always been one of my favorite aircraft.

Just saw this thread, so here's a heads-up: Sprue Brothers has the Aoshima Countach LP400 on sale at 40% off their usual discount price of $55.99. Mr. Calculator tells me that works out to $33.59. Hobbylink Japan has it for $29.76, but some people don't like to order from Japan. This is part of their 2018 Winter Clearance sale. I posted a general link to the sale somewhere in here. But here's a link directly to the Countach kit. (I have no connection with Sprue Bros., other than being a customer). https://store.spruebrothers.com/searchresults.asp?Search=countach&Submit

The Tamiya M-41 is a real oldie from the '70s. Like most Tamiya kits of that era, it was easy to build and looks like an M-41 when finished. It does have the usual Clunk Factor of the times, since it was originally meant to be motorized. (So we could attack Godzilla!) That was the only 1/35 scale M-41 kit available until the 1990s (Renwal did one in 1/32, reissued by Revell). Then the Taiwanese companies AFV Club and Skybow both did a Walker Bulldog. The Skybow was the slightly better kit, according to the Experten. If I'm remembering the story right: eventually AFV Club bought Skybow and, to confuse everybody completely, released the Skybow kit in their own AFV Club box. The sky's really the limit for markings on these, since the M-41 was used all over the world. It often appeared as a fake "German" tank in WWII movies. It was used throughout the Vietnam War by the South Vietnamese army. One of the more interesting uses was at the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion. Those M-41s were pulled directly from U.S. stock. They had their U.S. Army serial numbers quickly painted out, and were decorated with colorful slogans like "Cuba Libre." Here's a picture of one from the Playa Giron museum in Cuba:

Great re-work on a very rare subject. Can't wait to see it rebuilt. At least you got the most important parts - the bedrolls! (Kidding). Here's a 2015 thread on "ungluing" parts, just in case it helps. (You even participated in it.) I wonder how that Freeze-Off stuff worked...

Here's a link to the Model Car Garage "Sun-style" tachometer. http://www.modelcargarage.com/store/pc/viewPrd.asp?idproduct=36

Sprue Brothers is having its yearly Clearance Sale. This is the LAST WEEKEND of the sale. It ends at 11:59pm US Central Time, Sunday, February 25, 2018. Sprue Bros. mostly sells aircraft and armor stuff, but I did see some car kits for sale: Aoshima 1/24 Lamborghini Countach LP400 and some of the 1/32 scale big truck kits.; some Fujimi and Hasegawa car kits; Gunze, lots of the "Mr. (X)" surfacers, paints etc, Italeri, 1/24 semi trucks and 1/9 scale motorcycles; MENG 1/24 Hummer H1 and the H1 Upgrade Kit, with the bull-bar and roof rack Prices are 40% off the sale price shown, not the original price. Link is below. From the home page, the "Winter Clearance Sale" link is on the left side of the page. Good hunting! http://store.spruebrothers.com/

Here's an interesting take on the Bonnet Bus. This guy used 2 of those kits, plus an AMT '55 Chevy, to create a full-sized school bus. http://www.125scale.com/125-scale-model-bus/