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Stones, Woods and Cook 1941 Willys times 3 Like many of us “old timers”, back in the early 60’s, as a youth, I built a number of what today we call “iconic” kits….a few of the Roth custom rods, the Orange Crate, Black Widow and the Silhouette to name a few…..but of all the old kits from that era, my favorite was the Stones, Wood and Cook Willys. I am not exactly sure why it was the stand out kit for me, maybe it was the fact that it was highly detailed (for the day) with opening doors, or the Roth painted signage on the car or even the name, which always seemed to roll off my tongue easily, heck, it could have been the box art with the photo of the car coming off the line….. I just don’t know, but one thing was for sure, with my relatively limited modeling skills, I, like most kids back then I butchered that kit. I mean, those door hinges were impossible to get right, and the suspension parts and tedious working steering did not enjoy being glued together, and having to use only tube glue that was slow drying and had a nasty tendency to get on all of your fingers and then mysteriously on to the body…..man what I ended up with was a preverbal glue bomb. Well today all of those builds are long gone, tossed out by my mother, along with my collection of baseball cards from the 50’s and 60’s (long before the crazy prices of the 80’s for those collections) and my home made slingshots, Swiss Army knife and Tiger Battle Tanks when I was in the Navy…..Oh well, back then it was no big deal to me as I was interested in Girls, Cars (real), music and beer after discharge. Sound familiar? Anyway, back in 1990 when I got back into building, one of my goals was to find all, or at least many of those iconic kits from the 60’s that I had built and build them now with my improved skills. I know this is not unique……many of you have expressed the same thoughts and goals. Today I find it extremely rewarding to hold one of those kits in my hands…..it takes me back to a simpler time. No real worries……no mortgage payments, no job stress, no car payments, and no parenting worries ……man, the only concern was getting my homework done so I still had time to do a little modeling. I acquired the Revell SWC Willys kit in 1992. For 20 years I had it safely tucked away in a draw just waiting for the day when I would finally think the time was right to build it. I was not worried about my skills, I mean at this point I will attack just about any model or attempt any new technique fearlessly. So back in 2012, the time seemed right….after all it was the 20th anniversary of me acquiring the kit, so I began the build. I had a wonderful article from the “Rodders Journal” that recounted the early days of the car…….the variations of it, the time it spend converted to a “street” car and a brief history of the players and some detail of the illustrious racing career of that car. Most importantly, it has some wonderful photos from back in the day, so I was able to model the car relatively accurately to the early 1960 time frame. As I began the build which would ultimately be close to box stock, I know the door hinges were going to have to go….I rebuilt them from scratch and I think they work much better since for one thing, they have metal pins holding them….the other change was giving the model whitewall front tires as in many of the old pictures of the car it was sporting them. The Oldsmobile engine has the necessary spark and fuel lines to complete the engine compartment. Amazingly, at least to me, the decals had held up extremely well over the years, with the copyright date on the kit being 1969. Along with the original SWC car, I have here two additional versions of the car……..as I said earlier, this car has been presented in a number of versions and by a number of tribute builders. As much as I like the original car, I find the candy blue version even more attractive. I really like the gold “Old English” style lettering on the candy blue paint. By the way, the paint is Duplicolor silver, over primer topped with Tamiya clear blue. This is really a Big John Mazmanian kit that I converted with Slixx decals. I opened the doors and made the same kind of hinges that are on the original car. This car was detailed based upon an article in an older “Hot Rod” magazine . In the last version of the car, I took a little “artist License” and changed up the pure black car a little. This is the SWC version of the Big John car Revell issued a few years ago….. Sure, the black looks great, but I wanted a little life to the color, so I used a very deep dark purple which appears almost black but it really isn’t. I opened the doors on this one too, but used conventional style hinges for expedience but gave it working steering. All three cars were clear coated after decaling and were buffed and waxed to get a nice smooth finish. All I need to add to these is a Big John, candy red car, which I have, also with Slixx decals and I will have satisfied my itch to build the 41 Willys Gasser cars of my youth. As always, thanks for looking and I apologize for once again running a bit long-winded.