Poor Poor Pitiful Mako Shark

[Snake45]

Here's what I have left of the original MPC Mako Shark I built when this kit first came out, what, late 1966, early '67?

If I'd bought this as a glue bomb, I'd have no qualms about stripping the paint and starting from bare plastic, but I have a sentimental attachment to the color. It's (long-gone) AMT Candy Oriental Blue, one of my first rattlecan paint jobs, and one of very few "survivor" paint jobs I have left.

Chassis is long gone (I think I might have built a dune buggy out of it, if you can believe it), but all the body parts are here--complete body, glass and interior; in the bag are the grill and rear bumper, rear window slats, all 4 original wheels (with a couple of knockoffs, even!.

The plan is to clean it up, glue the front clip solidly to the body, touch up the paint as best I can, and put it on a simple curbside/promo type chassis. I thought the chassis from an AMT '63 Corvette would slide right under it, but no joy--it's much too wide, the front fenderwells are too big, and the whole thing might be too thick. I'll prolly just make some kind of simple pan-thing from sheet styrene and Evergreen strips. The goal is just to get it to where it can sit together in one piece and remind me how far I've come. I've got two unpainted glue bomb Mako Sharks from eBay, from which I'm pretty sure I can cobble together one good Shark model (have the MPC "Custom Vette" unbuilt kit for backup), with enough stuff left over for one Shark-ish street cruiser.

Wish me luck.

Edited June 14, 2015 by Snake45

[Roadrunner]

Nice! I had one of those too, painted it a very similar color in fact.

[cobraman]

You can fix it up.

[Snake45]

I'm pretty sure I still have the original hollow Firestone tires around here somewhere, too, though I have no idea where.

Anyone else remember those tires? They were introduced on the Shark, the Monkeemobile and I think the Ford J car. For a while you could buy a set of them direct from MPC for I think 50 cents a set. Sounds like quite a deal today but you have to remember the whole model was only $2. You can multiply that 50 cents by 7X to 10X to get an idea of what that means in today's "dollars."

[oneescalante]

Inspiring build, bringing one of your original builds back to life.