Ace-Garageguy

Here's a thread about the FPPM 906 kit.

It's going to take some looking. Ebay doesn't have any of them right now. For the top resin kit, it's made by Fernando Pinto Models of Portugal. There's a multi-media longtail kit too. Porsche 906 L Le Mans 1966 n°30/31/32 Profil 24 - Nr. P24097 - 1:24

906 Porsche Carrera 6 1967 Arii - Nr. 11124-1200 - 1:24

Yup. The working fire truck I mentioned earlier was a Tonka Ford, like this... The hydrant hooks to the outdoor hose. And like you, I had several of the "Girder and Panel" building sets. This one had little pumps and tubing, clear tanks and colored water to make "industrial plants". Of course, at the end all the water became dirty brown as the colors mixed. Had one of this style too. The pieces were fairly brittle styrene, whereas the girders in the Kenner set were tougher polyethylene and the panels were thin translucent styrene. I remember the little V-shaped connectors on the Kenner beams would break off fairly easily, and the Elgo "Skyline" corner blocks were quite fragile.

I never noticed that before. Must be one of those early evil subliminal influences that start us down the path to the dark side.

I had a lot of stuff. Tonka trucks, Matchbox and Dinky small scale stuff, still have a couple of Wyandotte stamped steel trucks, one like this but with a different color cab. Also still have a firetruck in about the same scale that hooks up to the garden hose through a little hydrant and sprays water. Lionel trains (still have 'em, sometimes run 'em at Xmas), Tinkertoys, various building construction sets like this: Erector Set, steel construction equipment like dozers and graders in roughly the same scale as the Wyandotte truck. Oh yeah...a chemistry set. First thing I made was amorphous sulfur. What a stench. Also still have a friction DeHavilland Comet that sparks as you pull it along the ground. And one of these.

Seats, back wall of the interior and the dash are from this equally ancient Revell parts pack.

Chrome engine is the 50+ year-old Revell parts-pack Buick nailhead.

With that, I agree 100%.

Cool. Really really cool.

I was primarily addressing the line of the top, which I find to be more pleasing than the more upright production version. Frankly, I've always preferred the Hirohata car in primer over the finished version. Far as the rest of the details go, think through the process of reworking the Buick side trim to have "flowed back from the top of the cutout and not above it". It's stamped stainless. How would you have integrated the roll of the wheel opening into the curve of the chrome? Eliminated the roll? Raised the wheel arch? Lowered the chrome strip? Possibly. I agree the side trim and the darker color going at a wonky line back from the wheel arch roll isn't the ideal solution, but the car was built to the style of the times. Two-tones with less-than-successful color separation were pretty common...even on production cars. So were awkward chrome treatments. And part of the reason it's a classic of the genre is because of the level of craftsmanship, fit and finish. Joe Shmo couldn't have built this thing. Details aside, the major lines work on the Hirohata car. They just don't on that turd of a yellow Chevelle.

The '49 Merc is a nice looking car, if a little stodgy. This is the Hirohata Merc, the one that pretty well defined the look in 1953 and has never been excelled as far as flow and proportions are concerned. It's one of the most famous customs on the planet, and I personally think justifiably so. Lotsa guys have tried it, most of them get it wrong.

Wow. Never saw The Hobbit. Love her with elf ears. Gotta go get that movie.

"Lost" girl.

Or, you can make your own...in color, metallic colors, white, etc. http://www.pulsarprofx.com/decalpro/

Interesting. I'm not arguing, I just personally find that the majority of cars are improved with a chop, so long as the overall proportions are carefully considered, and the result is looked at as a 'fresh' design and not compared directly to the original. The yellow car fails because the lines go all fat and horrible, making the thing look hunch-backed and dorky rather than low and mean. The sail panel is WAY too heavy, the windshield needs to be raked more to flow into the roof, and the roofline itself is bulged and pregnant. The height of most vehicles is determined by practical constraints like the necessity for headroom, etc. In some cases, the clothing fashions of the time determine the roof height. The Model T coupe with a roof that could accommodate a top-hat is one extreme example. Out of curiosity, of the two rodded cars below, which proportions do you prefer?

Welcome welcome. Bunch of good people here, willing to help with tips and techniques and a lot of knowledge. I have a couple of the 1/8 scale '32 kits too. I agree about getting your skills up to speed before doing one of those. They photograph like a real car, and every little flaw shows...which is why I haven't built mine yet either.

The other '70s-Show girl.

Still nobody for this one, eh? Maybe you'd recognize the rest of her. Likely, nobody ever actually looked at her face before.

Bravo Steve.

Nothing at all 'wrong' with the "collector" mindset...it's just alien to the way I'm wired. Though I have a pretty extensive collection of models, to me they're ALL for building or parts, and most of them have already had bits pirated. Same with my music on vinyl. I'll buy a slightly used record and actually play it rather than searching forever for a prefect sealed example and leave its virginity intact. If someone else wants to "collect" simply for the pleasure they get from just 'having' (and pay big bucks), that's fine by me. At least that way, a few unmolested examples of what things were like new will survive.

Posting a negative comment about an ugly turd of a car, especially one that's had a lot of time and money poured into making it ugly, seems to ruffle some feathers around here. It's interesting. Apparently that "everyone's a winner" mindset being shoved down kids' throats is sneaking into and coloring the way people react to carp. Yes, whether you LIKE something or not is entirely subjective, but there are principles of good design that are entirely objective. There are a lot of designs I don't particularly LIKE, but that still work well from a design standpoint (shape and line, proportion, etc.) Calling a turd a turd, especially when the turd-caller has some established design cred, can only make for a better world filled with fewer ugly turd-things. Both that '57 Chev and the Yellow Chevelle are turds, design-wise. Shape, line, proportions...nothing about the modifications even remotely begins to work.

Letraset, Chartpack, etc. in some smaller fonts. I still use the stuff on occasion. http://www.pcbsupplies.com/dry-transfer/

It's not "over chopped" so much as having been chopped by someone with no sense of proportion and line. The yellow thing was one of the ones I tried hard NOT to emulate when I built this back in 2012. This is a 4" scale chop.