Not a review but a Question ...

[camaroman]

Does anyone know the story on why there is so much difference between the AMT '65 and '66 Ford Galaxie Kits.

One seems to have about half the parts count of the other ...

[Eshaver]

Great question Glen. I remember both kits as "annuals" too. I well remember the opening trunk , hey , what a bonus that was in it's day what with a jack an all. The 1966, was a real disappointment . I dunno, seems all of the 66 line was simplified . In fact, I saw a lot of the parts carried over from the 65's to the 66's too. It wasn't until the 1967 Annuals came out that we saw a lot of major changes to the way A M T manufactured kits . I noticed the Ford in particular had separate pieces that comprised the front suspension for example . Ed Shaver

[Harry P.]

Just a guess here, because I don't know the answer... but it could have been that different people were in charge of making the decisions. Different people that had different ideas on how a model should be made. Maybe the people who had ok'd the '65 kit were replaced by different people who were in charge of later kits? Employees come and go all the time...

[High octane]

  On 4/25/2012 at 4:34 AM, camaroman said:

Does anyone know the story on why there is so much difference between the AMT '65 and '66 Ford Galaxie Kits.

One seems to have about half the parts count of the other ...

Maybe some parts fell on the floor?

[martinfan5]

  On 4/25/2012 at 3:25 PM, High octane said:

Maybe some parts fell on the floor?

And you know once that happens, they will never be found again

[Art Anderson]

  On 4/25/2012 at 2:34 PM, Harry P. said:

Just a guess here, because I don't know the answer... but it could have been that different people were in charge of making the decisions. Different people that had different ideas on how a model should be made. Maybe the people who had ok'd the '65 kit were replaced by different people who were in charge of later kits? Employees come and go all the time...

I think it was more than just a change of faces in the product development area, Harry. 1965 was the beginning of the end of the "slot car bubble", and given that AMT, along with Revell, Monogram, K&B/Aurora had invested heavily in slot car kit development, all of them suffered pretty badly. Even hobby wholesalers suffered (Chicago was, at that time, the epicenter of the modeling hobby distribution industry). Case in point: United Model Distributors (UMD) moved from their original warehouse in the historic "Water Tower" district on North Michigan Avenue in Chicago, to a new facility in the then-almost rural suburb of Wheeling IL, about 15 miles or so north of O'Hare International Airport in the spring of 1967. During that move, UMD hired a tugboat and barge to haul their unsalable inventory of slot car parts and accessories out into Lake Michigan, where the stuff was unceremoniously dumped into the lake--such was the collapse of 1:32/1:24 scale slot racing. The manufacturers were hit every bit as hard: Revell had to retrench for a couple of years (very little in the way of new product announcements), AMT began dumbing down new releases, Monogram was sold to Mattel in this time period. Strombecker began their slow slide into oblivion.

Back in those days, parts count translated into tooling cost more directly than it does today, and that showed up across the board at AMT. Coupled with this was a demographic switch: The 10-15yr old customer base of 1961-62 was reaching the age of discovering girls and real cars--the older kids were facing either State University or "Rice Paddy College" (Vietnam). Some of my classmates from West Lafayette HS Class of 1962 were already married, looking at starting families--all of this began taking modelers away from the hobby. In addition, the younger kids coming up were caught up in newer, seemingly more exciting stuff (This was about the time that skateboarding really took hold, for instance--"sidewalk surfing" was everywhere--just one of many competing activities which were vying for kids' spending money and time.

The "decline" which had its start by late 1965 was gradual--it took another 13-14 years for diminished sales, lack of internal capital among model companies to have its effect but it surely did: "What goes up must come down" played out all-too-perfectly"

As an employee of Weber's Hobby Shop here in Lafayette (back in the 60's, Weber's was probably the largest hobby shop in the Great Lakes region outside of Chicago-nearly 5000 sq. feet of retail space), so I was in the middle of all of it; saw it, experienced it.

Art

[mikemodeler]

Once again Art to the rescue with a history lesson! Thanks for filling us in with the story Art, I always enjoy learning more about this hobby and your stories and insight.

Sad to think that those slot car kits ended up at the bottom of Lake Michigan.

[tim boyd]

Art's observations here align closely with my views on the topic. Added to all that, a new company was emerging that was starting to encroach on AMT's turf. MPC was still getting underway in 1966, but its founder was one of AMT's best executvies and the loss of that talent undoubtedly hurt them. But MPC would really hurt AMT by 1968, when they took away some of the prime yearly Promo contracts and fielded a diverse choice of pretty killer annual kits.

I was once told that the '65 Galaxie was AMT's attempt to see if a Trophy-Series level of detail would help sell more annual kits. Evidently it did not work. But we got a really fine kit in the process.

Best regards...TIM

[camaroman]

Art and Tim,

Thanks for weighing in on this.

I just wish I had of opened these when I bought them so I could have bought a second 65 for the extra parts.

Both are reissues with the "pro touring ('65)/ donk style('66)" parts.

The '65 got some decent parts added and the '66 got unusable junk ...