AMT 1979 Penske PC6 Indy Car

[Darin Bastedo]

I'm Currently building this kit. I have a stack of the different variants of this kit, and I was wondering does anybody know the behind the scenes story of the development of this kit?

The kit has all of the basic components of a Penske PC6, the lack of positive locating pins and lack of significant parts would lead me to believe that development was halted somewhere in the test shot phase, 

For example it has radiators but no, radiator hoses. It has a waste gate that is not attached in ant way to the intake system, the exhaust headers have to me modified to actually fit together meet up with the turbo charger . The two piece (split down the middle) cowl has to be modified and reinforced to glue together on both ends and to hold it's shape so it will fit on the main tub.

I'm not complaining mind you, but it just seems to me that perhaps they had an ambitious plan for a super detailed model and the budget got cut when it was only part done.

Anybody know the story?

 

 

 

Edited July 3, 2016 by Darin Bastedo

[oldcarfan]

It might just be attributable to the fact that it was AMT in the 70s and 80s. I seem to remember a lot of their kits from that time had issues like this.

[Darin Bastedo]

I don't know about that AMT had some great stuff around that same time, like the Datsun 280Z Turbo, 1969 Camaro etc.

[Mark]

AMT first started doing Indy car kits (again) in '73 or '74.  I never compared any of them to one another, but I wonder if the '79 kit is based on the earlier ones.  Generally, with racing subjects, the first versions produced will be the most accurate.  As the tool is updated to produce later versions that didn't yet exist and couldn't have been planned at the beginning, compromises are made.  Usually they focus on the exterior details, the stuff under the skin will be hit or miss.  That's true with Indy, NASCAR, drag cars, or any other racing subject.  The drag cars were usually further away from the 1:1 right from the start because the kit would often share the body and other main parts with a showroom stock version kit.

As for the vague locator points and missing small details, a lot of kits (not just AMT's) were like that in that era.  AMT started tooling some of their kits offshore in the Seventies also; not sure if the Indy cars were among them.

[Darin Bastedo]

I actually have every AMT Indy Car kit they've made. The PC6 doesn't appear to be based off any of the previous tools, which is a good thing as the detail which is included is fairly accurate. When I say missing detail or location points, I mean things like including a turbocharger wastegate but not having it attached to the intake system at all. It's like they had planned to have a part to connect it but just never tooled one. There are other examples too. for instance some parts seem like they put a great deal of effort into making them look real and high detailed while others seem to be less refined. this would be less obvious if they weren't part of the same assembly. For instance the rear hub/halfshaft is a highly detailed one piece casting with very fine engraving for the universal joint and CV joint, but the rear shock absorber looks like a piece of rotini.

[Mark]

AMT changed hands at some point in '78 (sold out to Lesney) so the "unfinished" theory might be correct.  Checking the '79 Lesney Products catalog, they've got three Penske team car kits, all announced as May '79 releases.  For those to have gotten out in/around May of '79, in all likelihood they were started earlier, by the original AMT company. 

[Darin Bastedo]

AMT changed hands at some point in '78 (sold out to Lesney) so the "unfinished" theory might be correct.  Checking the '79 Lesney Products catalog, they've got three Penske team car kits, all announced as May '79 releases.  For those to have gotten out in/around May of '79, in all likelihood they were started earlier, by the original AMT company. 

That would explain it. The kit just has an overall unfinished feel about it.

 

[Art Anderson]

AMT changed hands at some point in '78 (sold out to Lesney) so the "unfinished" theory might be correct.  Checking the '79 Lesney Products catalog, they've got three Penske team car kits, all announced as May '79 releases.  For those to have gotten out in/around May of '79, in all likelihood they were started earlier, by the original AMT company. 

AMT was in ever-deepening trouble by late 1977, and was literally within hours of going to bankruptcy court when Lesney stepped in in late summer to buy them out.

Art

[tim boyd]

AMT was in ever-deepening trouble by late 1977, and was literally within hours of going to bankruptcy court when Lesney stepped in in late summer to buy them out.

Art

Just to clarify here, it was late summer 1978 when Lesney bought AMT.  

Art and I were both doing contracted work for AMT in the mid 1970's, and I had also just interviewed in early 1978 for a Marketing position after graduation from college, and some of the info I learned was a result of that interview and the subsequent letter telling me that I would not be hired in spite of my credentials, etc.  So we both can offer perspectives here that most may not know    

Art is exactly correct here; and to add a bit more texture, it helps to understand that in early 1978 the AMT plant in Troy Michigan endured a strike by the UAW (which represented its workers there) and senior management was opposed to making an expensive settlement.  Faced with this and declining sales over all, AMT management decided to shutter the Troy facility and move all production to their newer and more automated second production line in (IIRC) Baltimore, MD.  Of course, the Troy facility also included all of AMT's product development staff.  Under these circumstances, turmoil was a given.  

Though I have not built the '79 Indy kits, I did build the earlier Indy Eagle kit, the Grant King Sprint car, and the Dirt Track Car kits (these date from the '74-'76 period).  These all exhibited the same issues that are cited above in the '79 Indy kits, and it is entirely possible that the tools all came from the same source  This may be as much of a factor as the turmoil at AMT during the '79 kit development.  

TIM    

[Alix Bernard]

Thanks for posting this Darin. I enjoy the "Reviews"/ Discussions on the older kits. I've actually been thinking about getting into the old indy kits and always was curious about the contents.

[Art Anderson]

During the 1970's, I was a dedicated Indy Car model builder, in addition to being a contract "box art & trade show display model builder" for AMT.   As part of that,  I was connected by AMT to Norton Group, who'd sponsored Rick Mears' 1978 Norton Spirit Penske PC-6, to build 25 models of that car with acrylic display cases and walnut bases for them to present to Penske,  Mears, several associate sponsors, as well as for display in various venues around the US.  Those had to be built from 1st round test shots, which I found be have a fair number of problems.  When the kit was finally released in early 1979, some of those test shot problems had been corrected (as one might expect), but not all--a lot of shortcuts in the design and development (but then, their earlier (1976) releases of the Gurney Eagle Model 6 and the McClaren M16-C had many very similar issues, some leading to serious inaccuracies.

Those all took considerable reworking, even the addition of a few parts on my own (not including added superdetailing), but they all could (and still can) be corrected.  Such was the state of plastic model car kits introduced in the mid-late 1970's.  Bear in mind that in the eyes of the US model kit industry, plastic model kits were still considered the pastime of early teenaged boys, were considered little more than toys, and were marketed & sold as exactly that.  Especially problematic was that model kits of Indianapolis race cars had only limited appeal outside of the US Midwest--not surprising given that Indy Car racing was then centered still primarily in the Midwest and Great Lakes states, and generally had but a one-two year market, before time passed them by as far as kit sales were concerned--that was a lesson that AMT, MPC and IMC learned in the mid-1960's, and Aurora Plastics well before then.   So, it's little wonder to me that most all of those kits (MPC's Eagle and Turbine kits being the exception) were apparently designed and developed on rather low budgets--get them out quickly, sell some, and move on.

Art