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We'd love to help feed your newfound addiction to model cars locally; I'm an officer in ACME-Atlanta Car Model Enthusiasts, and we have our monthly club meeting this coming Sunday from 2:30-5:00 PM at the Smyrna Community Center. We'll have show & tell and a great how-to demo on engine detailing. Come join us if you can! We'll even have some out-of-town guests visiting us this weekend.

I'm 150 miles from my workbench, but the Citadel paints I showed are great for brush painting. They're about the only metallic paints that work reasonably well when brush painted. I thin them with a bit of water or Future. Obviously for better quality, if I have the time, I mask/airbrush w/Alclad metalizers. I recently went to replace the silver from Citadel and they've changed all the names of the colors. Hobbytown had a cross-reference chart w/the old names and new names.

Thanks! I was kind of surprised Foose used a 6 cylinder 300 front end. The SRT-8 has the best looking factory front clip (mainly because of the chin spoiler). Chrysler sold 300C Touring Wagons overseas, which inspired me to start one of my own, but it sits unfinished, who knows when I'll get back to it. One issue is the windshield, the front clip is from a 1/24 scale Revell kit married to the 1/25 scale Magnum body. I had to slightly bow the A pillars outward, so I need to carefully trim the 300 windshield to fit.

Thanks! How does it happen? I have no idea, this idea hatched when I was thinking of putting a Mustang front end on the Magnum body. As I was scouring my unbuilts, my eye hit the GTR kit, and that's where it came together. Once I realized the dimensions were so close that it was feasible (and a lot more feasible than the Mustang idea), I went with it. It was quite by accident, but I had a lot of NISMO detail parts that certainly helped make the idea come to fruition. It's fun to mix 'n match in car design, all the great customizers were doing it long before I came along.

Thanks for the new replies. Bike came w/the same Fujimi detail kit that has the roof racks/Thule luggage carriers. The body is available in resin from scaleproduction.de ; I gave them permission to copy my design and they did a good job of it and it's been fun to see a few more built (mostly European builders). As far as body conversions go, it wasn't that difficult, the parts fit pretty well w/a minimum of filler.

To get such a highly-detailed, all-new kit of a car like the Hudson, for $30 retail...that's a bargain. Model car guys are cheap...the Hudson should be an easy sale, and I think they've done their homework to make sure there are no cringe-worthy elements. I'm really looking forward to the Hudson...my Dad used to rave about how good they were, with the first step-down design for a common car, and their performance even w/the 6. Of course the car that got purchased for Mom was a Hudson Jet, but she loved that car.

I would expect over time they would offer a '56. The biggest changes would be to the rear quarters, taillights, rear bumper. IIRC everything else is pretty much the same inside and under the hood. '55's had the underhood area painted black, in '56 they "cost-reduced" it and they painted it body color rather than a contrasting color.

That's all I remember seeing as well; roofline issues. I've been a big fan of the 300's since I found out a friend's Dad had restored a '56, and he knew another guy locally who perfectly restored a '55. I took photos of both, and did the body/interior masters for All American Models '55 and '56 300's, Art did the chassis/engine parts. As gung-ho as I was, I still haven't built any of my resin 300's...too many projects, too little time, too much "modeler's ADD" I will build one of my resin 300's alongside the plastic kit.

They could, but they probably won't. Products, prices, track record are the only way to read their tea leaves. Falcons certainly are better than what many of the critics will acknowledge, but when less-than-accurate models aimed at adult builders are priced double what their true value is compared to the competition, well...the market will ultimately decide their ultimate success or failure. What is clear is that they certainly didn't go through the same steps as Moebius has to ensure their products meet their customer's expectations. The approach that Moebius is taking is a breath of fresh air, quite honestly. Interesting subject matter, attention to detail, listening to their customers and critiques, making sure something is right before they hit the market, and priced with only a nominal premium over commodity-level kits, I really hope they have great success with this formula. While it was interesting to see how things have transpired since those first Hudson photos, I have to wonder if the amount of critical input was such that they purposely did not share the same development of the Chrysler 300's to the general public.

The Complete Future That should give you a pretty good idea of what to do with it.

These are $10 models at Wal Mart...I don't see much market for resin which would cost exponentially more. For $10 a builder can buy it, tear it apart, and redo it exactly as they want. In fact two have already been shown on the MCM forum by Zoli. There's a $200 resin Audi TT offered by an Asian aftermarket firm. He literally took a cheap Welly diecast and recast the whole thing. As in "without any improvements". I don't know about anyone else, but I believe one would be crazy to spend that $$ on resin when you can get the model for $15, and in 15 minutes have it disassembled and ready to refinish to your standards from there.

I do not like brush painting acrylics in general, aside from small detail items. That said, I'll go against the grain of what everyone is saying in regards to recommending Tamiya over Testors acrylics for brush painting, at least in regards to black colors. I find Testors Acryl flat black (regular flat black, interior black, any shade of their flat black), and their semigloss black, to be far better than Tamiya for brush painting. The key is to use a good quality brush and apply it in a fairly heavy coat. It covers so much better than Tamiya black it's not funny It levels out as it dries. Kind of like "shrink to fit", much like Tamiya sprays. No having to wait for it to dry and go over it repeatedly, the pigment is much denser than Tamiya's. As for other brush acrylic colors...I don't use 'em. I airbrush 'em. But I do a lot of small detail painting and touchups w/flat and semigloss black, and I absolutely love Testors Acryl for those tasks.

Very cool! I have tons of projects to get done...and this just makes my modeler's ADD go into overdrive. Thanks.

Very much like my setup; excellent tutorial. I have a translucent light box and a series of drafting lamps with floodlights, and one spotlight. Because the box has sides, I can move the spotlight around and shine it on pieces of white and black illustration board that I clip to one side or the other to get some good contrast via reflected light into the body sides. On my camera there's an aperture priority mode to set the aperture to F8. I have two macro modes; super macro goes to 0.0", and I use it pretty frequently. The zoom on the camera also allows me to step back several feet (I have the setup mounted up high and use a standard tripod) and focus in for a more "natural" perspective.

Finally got a "minor" grail...Tamiya's Honda NSX Type R. First time it was issued, I didn't know about it. Japanese issue only, all sold out. It was spot-reissued once, they sold out in a nanosecond..missed again. This time it's available through Tamiya USA Might be a spot-issue as well, but at least this time it's officially available through US channels (though that's not a deal-killer w/the excellent Japanese websites). Looks to be typical vintage full-detail Tamiya goodness. Photoetch engine cover, front intake screens, side vent screens, radiator face, and tags. Window masks, too. So it is an improvement over the original. Sure wish there were more online photos of unmolested originals...they were very rare, less than 500 made.

Doesn't take much to make an improvement; and this only took a few minutes:

As long as the zombie is awake... I don't mind the wheel style at all, oddly enough it suits the car, but if I had built it I'd have widened the rear fenders, I think it would have been worth the effort and look exponentially better. But maybe that's just me...

Sigh...another thread from years past, brought back to "life" The builder is long gone from this forum. Let's not dredge up why. I still like the model, still think the rear wheels sticking out beyond the fenders is...uh...*fill in the blank*

I think you completely missed his point; nobody questions the racing heritage, it's just that those Porsches on the showroom floor & racetrack are not accessible by the mainstream buying public. An economy car budget won't buy you that. The closest thing to an accessible economy car w/a rear engine is the Smart car, but it might be a rear mid-engine. Regardless, it's driving dynamics are far inferior to any modern FWD VW, regardless of size. As much as I despise the idea of the Cayenne and Panamera, they're making huge amounts of $$ for Porsche and that $$ is going towards making their sports cars better and better. The best driving Porsche isn't their fastest nor most expensive...the Cayman is probably the most "pure" Porsche you can get. And it's the best driving because it's a HT w/a stiff structure and mid-engine, not rear-engine.

A European company called Geronimo Works makes it. I think you should be able to locate it: Strada Sports - lower left of the page

Our club has a group build of the recently reissued MPC '76 Caprice kit. I was looking over a couple of them this weekend, and found damage on both bodies. Looks like the ejector pin on the driver's side of the body mold (underside of cowl) is pushing up too aggressively/too far when the body is popped out of the mold. This causes the cowl and upper fender to be warped, and affects the top of the driver's side front fender and even to the side where the stress causes what looks like a sink mark on one of the fender creases. The other day I looked at one of the previous reissues from when RC2 was in charge (maroon/black box, gray plastic), and I noticed the same issue, but not quite as bad as the current issue. Has anyone else noticed this? I would assume it will make proper hood fit difficult. I have an original that has no problems at all in this area. One would think this kind of issue would have been dealt with in test-shot phase, but ???

The only explanation I ever got was one that I just can't wrap my head around, something about not looking anything like anyone's tires. Okay, they succeeded With an attitude like that, I wouldn't be surprised if someday model car kits come without any tires at all...the builder left on their own to find or make tires. That doesn't explain why other companies, especially companies making cheaper, almost toy-like diecast models, have better generic tires. When prepping parts for paint over the weekend, I was looking at photos of a 2010 GT just like I'm going to build, including an E-bay closeup of a wheel/tire, and it really was disheartening to see how far off the tire is compared to a real one (and crazy enough, they are an improvement over the clompers that were in the '05-'09 kits). The wheel looks fine (assuming a refinish from chrome)...tires, not so much. Oh well, thank goodness for parts boxes and cheap tire sets at shows Hopefully the tires end up my only real complaint w/the kit. The rest of it all looks pretty nice.

It's not really the height that's that bad (I don't have a 1:1 to measure), they could be slightly shorter but the sidewall is too squared off, too much material from bead on up. A cross-section of a real Mustang tire isn't anything like the kit tire..I have diecast models that have far more accurate looking tires. That's what bugs me the most...cheap diecast models w/ much better looking (generic) tires than (more expensive, supposedly-made-for-picky adult builders) kits.

Looks great, I'd like to build one like it w/the latest version of the kit (which is minus the goofy graphics and yellow headlight covers).