What's up with the engine block in the 1/25 scale Palmer Porsche 356 kit? It's a V8?

[peteski]

On 9/18/2025 at 10:14 AM, iamsuperdan said:

I want to get a hold of an executive or designer from Palmer Models (if any are still around) and interview them for the magazine. 

Would love to get to the bottom of their whole philosophy and business model.

And why they did the things they did.

And how many drugs were involved.

And if any of their design team had ever actually seen a real car before kitting it.

 

I suspect that many original Palmer execs or employees are no longer with us. Here is a trip down the memory lane:

 

Edited September 19 by peteski

[Bugatti Fan]

Besides the car kits I seem to remember that Palmer made some kits of field weaponry like gatling guns and cannon?

Edited September 19 by Bugatti Fan

[Beans]

5 hours ago, Bugatti Fan said:

Besides the car kits I seem to remember that Palmer made some kits of field weaponry like gatling guns and cannon?

At one time I built the gatling gun.  Started on the WWI howitzer but never finished it.  The fit of the parts was a definite challenge for me at the time.  Almost want to give it another shot.

[Russell C]

Aforementioned eBay purchase, posted this over in our Show your Gluebombs thread.  For a size comparison, I set my old Honda CRX / 911 Porsche next to it, which makes me think the Palmer company didn't have a good grasp on scale, either, if they were aiming for 1/24 scale. From some digging into MCM AMT engine posts, the long-ago builder here may have used one out of a 1960-ish AMT Ford pickup?

[Bugatti Fan]

Palmer kits were always a bit of a joke.

The biggest joke by Palmer was using a micrometer as the P in Palmer on the box lid to suggest that what we were getting was a precision engineered product. They were having a laugh !

[Beans]

7 hours ago, Russell C said:

Aforementioned eBay purchase, posted this over in our Show your Gluebombs thread.  For a size comparison, I set my old Honda CRX / 911 Porsche next to it, which makes me think the Palmer company didn't have a good grasp on scale, either, if they were aiming for 1/24 scale. From some digging into MCM AMT engine posts, the long-ago builder here may have used one out of a 1960-ish AMT Ford pickup?

I'm not a Porsche expert but don't think I have ever seen one with a spare tire carrier on the back.

[Russell C]

14 hours ago, Beans said:

...don't think I have ever seen one with a spare tire carrier on the back.

Part of what I thought made this gluebomb "so-terrible-it's-adorable." That, and its tri-carb Ford truck V8. I've scraped off the body decals, but the irony about the perfect circle decal being so far off-center on the spare cover makes me think I should keep it that way and make some kind of extended bumper to hold the spare, using one of the custom bar bumpers out of the old AMT '40 Ford kits. The reverse side of the cover has a V raised emblem and it seems small in diameter, perhaps the size of the old AMT Ford Falcon or Corvair wheels. Meanwhile, I also had a pair of Fujimi 24th scale Porsche 911 headlight buckets in my parts pile since forever. At first I thought they were too small to correct the Palmer walleyed housefly oversized headlights problem, but what I have may not actually too unusable small (ignore the blue masking tape stickies behind 'em). Not going for sheer scale perfection in this simple project, just some kind of nice improvements while keeping the two main elements that the original kid builder wanted.

[peteski]

On 9/23/2025 at 8:11 AM, Beans said:

I'm not a Porsche expert but don't think I have ever seen one with a spare tire carrier on the back.

That "Continental Kit" looks to me like it came from the Gunze Sangyo 1:32 scale '59 Caddy Eldorado. Looks to me like a good match.  Besides I don't think Palmer had chromed parts. Just some creative kitbashing.

EDIT:  now that the center is shown, I still think it is from a 1:32 Gunze kit, just not the Caddy.  There were other '50s cars with optional Continental Kits in that model series.

 

[stavanzer]

I like your thoughts on the restoration of this kit.

Sticking to the 'spirit' of the original build, gives you guidance on what to do, and not do. I wait eagerly to see further progress.

[Ace-Garageguy]

I have rarely seen such a poor representation of any vehicle, but I do admire your quest to do something nice with it. 

It's kinda like the mutant puppy that's just so sad and pathetic, with one eye always looking over its shoulder, that it becomes your favorite.

Poor little car is too unbelievably awful to throw out, so I honestly do applaud your effort to build it. Honest.  

[Russell C]

4 hours ago, stavanzer said:

I like your thoughts on the restoration of this kit. Sticking to the 'spirit' of the original build ...

Yep, it'll be a bit of a challenge, and it could be there's a leftover vestige of the frustration I had with my own self when I was 10 or so and my custom vehicle ideas were beyond my skill level. Did this kind of thing once already with the '62 Ranchero speedster gluebomb I resto-modded. Sold it on eBay actually for just break-even a while after displaying it at the GSL contest, but the nicely reassuring thing there was the guy who bought it said he was glad to add it to his 'survivors' where the twist was that it was ultimately finished to the skill level the original builder wished to have.

I see the same way forward in saving the two others I got last year, the '60 Buick shorty and the even more comically shortened Mercedes 190.