Snake45 Posted July 17, 2019 Posted July 17, 2019 WOW, I think I’ve seen more new builds of the old AMT ’65 Riviera on here in the last month than I’ve seen in the previous ten years I’ve been on here. Here’s mine. In 1966 or ’67 I bought and built AMT’s 65 Riviera. Details are hazy, but I think maybe I displayed it in unpainted white plastic for a while, with the interior brush-painted Pactra Leaf Green. Evidently I decided to paint it at some point, because the body and hood were lost in a fire in our basement in December 1968 that wiped out my whole workbench. All other parts—chassis, engine, interior, grille, glass, and front and rear bumpers—survived somehow, probably upstairs in my room. So last May at the local toy show, my favorite glue bomb vendor had a big new box full of random bodies—no complete models, just bodies, most of them junk—that included an intact ’65 Riv in day-glo green. My first thought was that I could cobble together enough leftover custom pieces from a new kit to build it into something, and then I remembered I had a complete set of stock(-ish) parts from my original. I could hardly pay the $2 asking price fast enough. Took me several days to round up all my original 50+ year old parts, and I found everything but the hood—that must have been downstairs with the body in 1968. (The wheels and tires were also missing—I must have recycled the wheels into another project at some point.) Only damage to the “new” body seemed to be one missing vent window frame, a cracked/bent right A-pillar, and some scratching on the roof. But after stripping, the roof damage was much more apparent: It looks like someone started to try taking the paint off with a chisel, or a small axe, or machete, or some evil implement of that kind. This required extensive filling and recontouring—not difficult, just time-consuming. The gray primer under the day-glo green didn’t come off in the Purple Pond and turned out to be quite rough and “pebbly,” so every square millimeter of the body had to be hand sanded. Almost mercifully, someone had previously sanded off most of the body emblems and nameplates, so I wasn’t even tempted to try to save them; I went straight for a “day two” or mild custom job. I was working on cutting down a spare hood from a ’66 Wildcat when SuperbirdMcMonte molded me a resin replacement that was absolutely magnificent—as good as any resin part I’ve ever seen. BIG hat tip to SMcM! I wanted to use my original 50+ year old interior, with its original hand-brushed Pactra Leaf Green paint, just for nostalgia. The paint had some bare spots and thin spots that would need some touching up. I found a jar of hardware-store Pactra Odd’N’Ends Hunter Green (at least 15 years old) that turned out to be a near-perfect match for the Leaf Green. Miraculously, the stuff was still quite workable and usable; didn’t even need any extra thinning or mixing. After touching up the interior where necessary, I hit it with a couple coats of Krylon Satin Matte clear to tone down the high gloss of the enamel. The green guts severely limited my choices for external paint. My choices seemed to be white, black, silver/gray, or some shade of green. I gave some consideration to Pearl White but decided to go green instead. I have a can of Duplicolor Honda Hampstead green that would have gone well with the dark green interior, but unfortunately it turns out to be a pretty close match to 1965 Buick Seafoam Green, and I didn’t want this model to be taken for a stocker. So I went with Testor One Shot Lime Ice, which definitley says This Ain't Your Grandad's '65 Riviera. Final paint is one coat of Rustoleum red oxide primer, sanded with #800 WetOrDry, followed by three coats of the Lime Ice (each 24 hours apart), followed by three coats of Wet Look Clear (again, 24 hours apart), which was then color-sanded with #1000 WetOrDry and polished out with Wright’s Silver Cream. Today’s retro rod & custom magazines are full of 1st Gen Rivs with some degree of customizing, quite a few of them in some shade of green, but, they’re invariably seen wearing wire wheels, polished Astro Supremes, or sombrero-ish wheel covers, on whitewall tires, and usually lowered to a gravel-scraping stance, if not a straight-up lowrider. I wanted to try something more like a musclecar/NASCAR-badassitude stance, just for a change. Big 'n' bigger tires went on the chrome dish wheels from an AMT '62 Corvette for a timeless look. I don't believe I've ever seen another Riv set up quite like this, real or model; I think The Green Phoenix would make a fun cruiser. And here it is next to a stock Welly '65 Riv diecast that I Snake-Fu'ed last year, just to show how Not Stock it is . As always, comments welcome, and thanks for looking!
Lordmodelbuilder Posted July 17, 2019 Posted July 17, 2019 Love that car! Just has a badAss look too it even in the white & primer. I will have to get one & build it. Nice work saving this one Snake!
donb Posted July 17, 2019 Posted July 17, 2019 Excellent work Snake. I like the green very much. Great job as always.
Sixties Sam Posted July 17, 2019 Posted July 17, 2019 Wow, that's a lot of work, but the results are great! It's nice to see an old model like that saved! Sam
Peter Lombardo Posted July 17, 2019 Posted July 17, 2019 nice save, it took a lot of work, but worth the effort.
Bucky Posted July 17, 2019 Posted July 17, 2019 These markings look like hieroglyphics: Didja have them translated before yer rebuild? HAHAHA This has to be one of my fave builds of the old AMT kit. I always thought of this body style of Riv as more of a muscle car than a personal luxury car. Those Rivs came in '66 and later. WELL DONE, BRO!!
Cpt Tuttle Posted July 18, 2019 Posted July 18, 2019 Second to the split window Vette, the early Rivieras are my favourite 60s GM design, and you have done a great job with the resto, and i like the style even if it is, as you say, a bit different. Great job!
Hmann68 Posted July 20, 2019 Posted July 20, 2019 Wow that turned out great! I agree with your choice of wheels and tires, really gives it attitude. A lot of hard work there and it paid off! One of my very favorites of all your re-do’s that I’ve seen so far ?
Snake45 Posted July 22, 2019 Author Posted July 22, 2019 On 7/17/2019 at 3:22 PM, Bucky said: This has to be one of my fave builds of the old AMT kit. I always thought of this body style of Riv as more of a muscle car than a personal luxury car. On 7/20/2019 at 6:55 PM, Hmann68 said: I agree with your choice of wheels and tires, really gives it attitude. You guys really get it! Thanks! From time to time I give thought to building one of these as an AWB early funny car. Ridiculous, right? But not the stupidest thing seen in those days....
Gramps46 Posted July 22, 2019 Posted July 22, 2019 Congratulations on the outstanding save and appreciate the back story.
Bucky Posted July 22, 2019 Posted July 22, 2019 1 hour ago, Snake45 said: You guys really get it! Thanks! From time to time I give thought to building one of these as an AWB early funny car. Ridiculous, right? But not the stupidest thing seen in those days.... AWB, eh? I say why not? It was done with a Marlin:
Snake45 Posted July 23, 2019 Author Posted July 23, 2019 8 hours ago, Bucky said: AWB, eh? I say why not? It was done with a Marlin: I was thinking more of a certain '65 Ford LTD 4-door funny car, but that's a cool example of the strange & weird, too.
Snake45 Posted July 25, 2019 Author Posted July 25, 2019 Thanks for all the kind comments, everyone. It was a lot of fun and very rewarding to bring together the sad remains of TWO failed, seemingly doomed projects, separated by decades, and resurrect one fairly clean model out of the mess. Much more fun than nailing together any brand new kit of any kind!
Straightliner59 Posted July 25, 2019 Posted July 25, 2019 Nice save, Snake! There's a certain satisfaction to resurrecting a glue bomb. I've saved three old, original Monogram dragsters (Slingshot, Long John, Sizzler). They are some of my favorites in the display case.
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