I can't belive they let it slide

[cosmiccadillac]

You're missing the point of the discussion. It's not that kit... it's the larger issue of why mistakes keep making it through to production over and over again in many kits, from many different manufacturers, and why the kitmakers don't (or won't) pay attention to the details. Aren't they supposed to be scale replicas of the real thing? Apart from the fact that some details just can't be reproduced in scale, shouldn't we expect at least basic accuracy, more or less, as far as the things that can be reproduced in scale?

How does a newly tooled kit with the gas tank depicted backwards, for example, make it to the shelves? And wouldn't it have been less expensive to get it right the first time than to rework the dies and fix it after the fact???

It's not about any one specific kit, it's about the amount of mistakes that keep showing up time after time.

As far as I can see, just about any kit has basic accuracy if you can roughly put it together and it looks like a car at the end. As a fabricator, its very easy to look at a print and make something mirror image by mistake. There are a lot of shuffling things around and making things in relation to one another. These models aren't being made to save somebody's life with a brain transplant or anything, it's for us to be able to work with in our HOBBY. They make them as decent as they can while still being able to make enough money. So they make an occasional mistake with a door handle or other small thing, that's where we as modelers step in and work our magic. Most of us aren't building models to make money, so we can afford to spend a little extra time on fixing it. If you hang with a group that IS picky enough to notice small things like that, then you can tell them how you made it right to look EXACTLY like the real thing (even though it still won't be exact ). To me, thats all part of what comes with the hobby, the nature of the beast if you will. Bravo to these companys for making the right decisions over the years to still be around to give us more kits to work with

[cosmiccadillac]

Exactly right, except that moreso than being made for "us," they are made for mass-market consumption, and the vast majority of folks who buy them wouldn't notice an error like an upside-down door handle if it jumped out of the box and smacked them right across the kisser.

Folks tend to forget sometimes just how small a segment of the model market us "lunatic fringers" comprise.

This is, of course, NOT to say that the model companies shouldn't strive to make their products "as decent as they can."

I totally agree, and even the model companies should strive for perfection, but we live in an imperfect world. I wouldn't quite say I'm part of the "lunatic fringers" yet but I'm trying real hard and getting to know just how small a group it really is

[bill_rules]

If kit manufacturers had just put "CUSTOM" on every box......would this thread still be going???

[RLHoward]

Hmmm, interesting thread here! Looking at the problem here, all I see are upside-down door handles. Not hard to fix, at least we have a DECENT kit of a 62 Chevy. The part I find funny is that the resin parts are wrong. I admit not knowing anything about the particular resin part but most of the time when making improvement parts for a kit, wouldn't you get the details right? Oh well, life goes on! Back to the workbench, gotta Van to finish!

[93Z34]

I dunno, maybe it's just me, but here's the way I look at issues such as this with a kit. At the end of the day, we're modelers, right? Part of being a modeler has always been to build what WE wanted individually. While I understand the "bigger picture" of discussion here, I still say if there are inaccuracies in a kit the builder simply can't live with, then that's what the exacto knife, Dremel tool, filler and Plastruct or Evergreen plastic is for.

I am a huge '62 Chevy fan myself and can't get enough of these kits. I loved them when they first came out and I still love building them today. Are there things with this kit that aren't accurate? Of course there are. But, what about the Revell '70 AAR Cuda kit or the AMT '68 & '69 Roadrunner and GTX kits? How about the new Nova from Revell? Do we see a pattern developing here? The bottom line is, each and every single kit out there has accuracy issues and no matter how much time is spent on researching the 1:1 subject, something will always slip through the cracks when it comes production time. Unfortunately, some accuracy issues are more obvious than others. Personally, I'll take a mis-cast door handle over a body that has severe issues with body lines and contours myself...

We are always begging for new kits and new subject matter to build. Along with those ongoing requests comes the necessary evil of realizing that, no matter what kit it might be that's issued, there are going to be accuracy problems and things we don't like about the kits we see issued. It's simply up to each of us to make the changes we want to make to these kits to please ourselves individually. Some may decide to change the problem areas while others may be happy to simply build the kit the way it is and enjoy it for what it was meant to be, a simple, fun project. At the end of the day, the choice is ours on how much effort we put into righting the wrongs of any given kit. As long as we enjoy the project and are happy with the end results of our efforts, isn't that all that really matters?

[Chuck Most]

At the risk of offending some of the more important nabobs of this hobby, let me add a few pennies worth: For starters, the research and reference work for the Trumpeter Pontiacs, Chevy II's and I believe, the Monte Carlo were done by none other than perhaps the guru of such work, John Mueller. John is not only highly knowledgeable, but is a stickler himself for accuracy in a model kit--but he's not the tooling mockup department, nor has he ever been the toolmaker, never his role in the industry, from what I know.

Art- once again you overwhelm me! All great points, but one thing... what the ####### is a 'nabob'?

[Rob Hall]

Art- once again you overwhelm me! All great points, but one thing... what the ####### is a 'nabob'?

No idea...maybe some kind of old time slang. From the context of the usage, I'm thinking it's a pontificator, i.e. someone that expresses an opinion on the hobby.

[Harry P.]

na⋅bob /ˈneɪbɒb/–noun

1. any very wealthy, influential, or powerful person.

[Chuck Most]

na⋅bob /ˈneɪbɒb/–noun

1. any very wealthy, influential, or powerful person.

And here I was, thinking it was something from Star Wars...

Ernie- if you think this kit is bad... check out the Trumpeter '60 Bonneville. I think the engine was developed by some moonlighting Lego engineers ! And the little gaffes and foul-ups, wow. I'm pretty lenient on stuff like this (well, more so than many other modelers), but the whole time I was working on that kit I was constantly muttering"Oh, you have GOT to be kidding me..." Builds up into a pretty fair representation of a '60 Bonnie, though, if you don't mind a little extra pain and suffering during the build process!