Table of contents for October 2018 in Scale Auto

Every one of us has car stories. They are a uniting force in that way. Mopar products have played a big role in my life, and I’ll bet in many of yours too. While the first car I remember our family having was a 1955 Chevy, the first new car we got (I was just 8) was a 1963 Plymouth Valiant convertible, white with a black top and bright red interior. It was a push-button automatic, the first car my mom learned to drive. We spent a lot of happy hours in that car, even though the trunk gathered water better than a rain gauge during a Midwest thunderstorm. We drove to the swimming pool, took fishing trip vacations, made a major haul to Washington, D.C. for a vacation one…

South Carolina modeler and SCMA club member Gary McCulloch, presented two timely clinics at our recent club meetings. Sharing ideas and learning from other modelers is what this hobby is all about. Catch his top tip on page 11. Gary’s first tip is below: Tip: Tires found in old kits can look pretty scruffy, old and faded, but they can be brought back to life in three simple steps. First, wipe them with Westley’s Bleche-Wite whitewall tire cleaner. Next, apply a coat of Armor All Wheel & Tire cleaner. Last, to bring out that new tire glow, wipe down the tire with Purple Power Prime-Shine Tire Shine. All three products are available at well-stocked automotive stores. -Gary McCulloch Goose Creek, S.C. Q: I built a few acrylic display cases years…

Few performance cars are more elegant or beautiful than the early 1970s Chrysler B bodies, known as the “Coke bottle” or “fuselage” style. With an aerodynamic shape evoking fighter jets, the design certainly lives up to the “muscle car” moniker — a perfect aesthetic to complement the formidable horsepower under the hood. The ones that catch my eye are the 1971 Plymouth Satellites and Road Runners. I’ve always drooled over these cars, with their bright colors and catchy graphics. Alas, considering the cost and mechanical ability necessary to own and maintain one of these beauties, the closest I’ll ever get to having one is to build one — or a few — in 1/24 scale. Monogram’s 1/24 scale Satellite is in fact, a true 1971 Road Runner, which ordinarily came…

WHEN WE MOVED FROM SUNNY Southern California to a grand 450-acre family farm in New York, I discovered one side of the farm bordered a major thoroughfare from New York City to Albany. I spent many afternoons after school sitting on the ridge overlooking the highway watching trucks head north and south, always wondering what they were hauling and to what destination. About five miles from our house was an interchange between two interstates, and nearly two dozen trucking companies had their terminals nearby. That, in combination with a pair of huge truck stops, meant a cornucopia of truck liveries for a young truck junkie, like yours truly, to gawk at. Add into the equation regular dairy tanker pickups from the milk bulk tank, and feed deliveries for the herd,…

This is an impressive re-release with things not found in most mass-produced kits like aluminum body panels, nice pile carpet, nylon seat belts, metal suspension and exhaust parts. While options are minimal, there is a working suspension and fully functional rack and pinion steering. Tamiya’s Caterham Super Seven BDR has a parts count still well over 300 pieces; at least 225 injection molded parts, 75 metal parts (formed and die-cut sheet aluminum), five extremely well rendered Goodyear rubber tires, and different sizes of vinyl tubing, ignition wiring and braided line. The kit includes 238 screws, nuts, two screwdrivers, a lug wrench, and sandpaper. The instructions are thorough, easy to follow, include images of the parts for extra clarity, and painting callouts for those who like to paint before clipping parts…

KNOWN FOR EXTREMELY RUGGED terrain and changing weather conditions, the Safari Rally was revered as the toughest on the World Rally Championship schedule. Despite some early adversity in the 1992 Safari Rally, the driver combo of Kenjiro Shinozuka and John Meadows battled back to a 10th-place finish. This rerelease has not been seen on model shelves since 1992, although you may be familiar with some other variants, such as the street-car version or one of three other liveries for rallies with names like the Monte Carlo/Sweden, Ivory Coast, and 1,000 Lakes. In the box of this curbside kit you’ll find styrene molded in white and clear. There are extra parts intended for other build variations, such as a left-hand drive dashboard, but instructions make it clear which parts can be…

THIS 2000GT IS A REISSUE, now with a female figure. It is a right-hand drive, curbside model with nice chassis detail and posable steering. While only the bottom of the engine is represented, the body is molded almost as if there were possibly plans to include an engine. There are 72 pieces, a nice set of soft Bridgestone tires with sidewall and tread detail, and a decal sheet with Mylar faces, badging, gauges, and woodgrain trim for the interior. Mold lines on the body are fine, but some, especially near the window trim, are a bit tedious to remove. Plastic is on the hard side and slows the sanding process. Scribe the window trim before sanding mold lines to preserve them. The hood is molded to the body in a…

My recent Sunday night jaunts to retrieve milk from the grocery store have become much more enjoyable since locating a towering display of Hot Wheels cars parallel to the dairy aisle. Flipping through dangling cartridges and finding a special die-cast of a Pagani at 10 p.m., is just as rewarding as having said milk with breakfast on Monday morning. Let’s be real, it’s impossible to successfully start a new work week without multiple bowls of Cheerios alongside an overdose of coffee. There’s also no more perfect expression of automotive passion, than that of Pagani. The name Pagani might be a new one to your ears, and perhaps you immediately jump to the conclusion I’m talking about a steaming Italian biscuit you order at the nearest Olive Garden because, well, the…

OUR TIP OF THE MONTH IS Gary McCulloch’s second tire-related submittal. This “Tire Painting Machine” was conceived after Gary painted his own thin redline tires. Granted, it’s quite a bit more high-tech than what we usually feature, but it’s a great solution to a perplexing problem. If you don’t have access to a lathe, with a little imagination you can modify the concept and create a similar tool to suit your needs. The idea is to center the tire on a shaft and paint a perfect circle on the tire by placing an outer sleeve (with paint on its bottom edge) over the shaft, then press the sleeve against the tire’s sidewall. Gary machined the center shaft so it had a tapered bottom to automatically center different size tires. The…

This article is dedicated to the late Bud LeFevre, remembered as one of our hobby’s most prolific and enthusiastic builders of Stock and Super Stock class drag racing models. You can see a portfolio of Bud’s models in the February, 2004, issue of Scale Auto. THE A990 BELVEDERE Having enjoyed a great deal of success in the rapidly growing sport of drag racing with its 1962-1964 “Max Wedge” 413 and 426 Super Stock B-Body offerings, Chrysler was looking for a follow-up act for the 1965 season. Chrysler found it with its new and slightly downsized “intermediate class” Plymouth Belvedere and Dodge Coronet. By pairing these lighter cars with the new drag racing version of its 426 cid race Hemi V8, and stripping the cars of the added weight of comfort…

TODAY, AURORA PLASTICS CORP. is a mostly forgotten remnant of the 1960s modeling scene. But at the time it was among the largest, most successful of all kit manufacturers. Most of Aurora’s kits were in genres such as ships, planes, and figures. However, the relatively few model car kits that it did make were often memorable and well liked at the time. One of Aurora’s kits from this period was not widely known then, and is even more obscure today. In 1969 Aurora announced a 1/25 scale replica of the woody station wagon that was part of the new Mod Squad TV show that debuted 50 years ago this fall. Mod Squad was a crime drama featuring three young counterculture characters working as an undercover police detective team. The show…

I remember getting my very first allowance. I darted straight to the variety store and bought the Orange Crate model. It was so difficult that I never finished it. 25 years ago, a few of us got together and created the City Style Model Car Club. It started as a lowrider only model club, but quickly evolved into one where we have builders with a variety of vehicle interests. We’ve put together model contests at the Grand National Roadster Show, Sacramento Autorama and NSRA Street Machine Nationals. The key focus for each show was to get more youngsters interested into the hobby. I love customs, and my two main inspirations are masterminds Ed Roth and George Barris, both of whom I’ve actually met at car shows. I fancy how they…

EDSEL WAS A MARQUE PLANNED, developed, and manufactured by Ford from 1958–1960. With the Edsel, Ford expected to make significant inroads into the market of GM and Chrysler to close the gap in the domestic American automotive market. But the public percieved the Edsel as unattractive, overpriced, and overhyped. It never gained popularity with contemporary American car buyers and sold poorly. AMT’s kit includes a full and cool-looking continental kit with an extended bumper and rear tire carrier surrounded by a chrome ring. I removed the chrome from the ring (after addressing visible mold lines) and painted it white. Similar to the 1:1, when using the rear side skirts, note the rear knock-off spinners won’t attach to the wheels. A few exceptional details caught my eye during the build, like…

WHEN I WAS A KID, THE MAKO SHARK was the coolest concept car out there. I knew it was the inspiration for the Corvette, and the earlier third-generation (C3) Vettes more clearly showed the ancestry. The LT-1 was the high-performance small-block V8 model, fitted with a Holley four-barrel carb on an aluminum manifold. A four-speed M-22 Muncie “rock-crusher” transmission sent power to the rear wheels. If the LT-1 wasn’t enough, you could order the stripped-down ZR-1, in essence a racer for the street. AMT’s cool reissued kit has parts to build either car, but the differences are subtle. Slotted steel wheels were bare on the ZR-1 -no beauty rings or center caps-and since there wasn’t a radio, shielding around the distributor and coil was omitted. Tires are so-so, but offer…

SUBARU’S 360 WAS AND STILL IS ONE of the smallest cars ever to hit the American shores. This microcar competing successfully in GP Rally racing is a feat I’d call amazing. I was struck by how tiny the body of the Subaru 360 really is in comparison to another Subaru Rally car I am also reviewing. A rather spartan decal sheet has rally markings, number bubbles, and decals for the gauges and license plates. Steps 1 through 3 involve the building of the overly simplistic chassis assembly. All parts went together with no difficulty and showed minimal flash and mold lines. Parts with mold lines were in areas that would be hidden. Painting and detailing of the underside was simple and required some masking, as the body color is located…

WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN YOU WANT TO BUILD a specific vehicle but it’s never been kitted? This is a common problem we all encounter down the road in our hobby. However, if you’re willing to look a little further afield than common injected-styrene kits and even past aftermarket resin bodies, a whole new world awaits you in die-cast collectibles. For this Bench Racer column, I’ll modify a coupe of 1/24 scale die-cast dragsters from 1320 Inc. These die-casts are out of production yes, but can still be easily found often at a fraction of their original selling price. Finely made with excellent paint, decals, and detail, 1320’s dragsters did suffer from out-of-scale wire wheels and an abundance of chrome-plated plastic that made them appear almost too “toy like.” What…

Nothing provides more fun to me, and many modelers, than reviving an old and forgotten kit, like this Monogram Super Bee A lot of us have several of these abandoned models stored somewhere deep in our stash. If you’re like me, those “I know I have that kit somewhere” doubts creep into the back of your head when you see something you’d like to model. That’s exactly what happened to me after seeing an immaculate, factory-stock 1969 Dodge Super Bee waiting in line to be auctioned at the famous Barrett-Jackson Auto Auction on TV. I admit that I never found the kit in my stash, but I’m grateful that a good friend sent me one after my plea on social media. Nothing like having great connections, right? Now let’s take…

Motivation for my 1967 Marion 127 build was twofold. International Loadstars of that era were popular not only for fire apparatus use, but also for all sorts of medium-duty commercial and municipal uses. But, oddly, they were never kitted by any manufacturers. The truck I replicated is still in service in Marion, Mass., and I wanted to capture this look from a historical perspective before it was gone. Although retaining much of its initial look when first built in 1967 by the Maxim Motor Company, the rig was upgraded in 2013 with a new water tank, pump, bar work, and paint scheme by the Marion Fire Department. That motivated me to transform AMT’s 1953 Ford Pickup cab into a similar International Loadstar 1700. The donor kit’s fenders were first cut…

OLDSMOBILE BROUGHT BACK the famous 442 nameplate in 1985 with a 180-horsepower 307 cid V8. Additional steps were taken to boost the performance on the special FE3-X Show Car featured at all the major auto shows and seen in many publications. While I built the FE3-X Show Car version, Revell also provides the option for a 442 model in this two-in-one kit. Its detailed 24-piece engine pieces together well. The heads, intake manifold, and transmission pan must be mounted separately. Install the air cleaner after the engine is in the bay to make it easier to square off the air intake hose into the cleaner. Next is the chassis, and its nine components. The rear sway bar is separate while the rear axle assembly and drive shaft are a one-piece…

HASEGAWA’S KIT OF AN ICONIC Japanese sports coupe, the 1972 Toyota Celica 1600G, was first released in 2002 with a red car appearing on the box. It was reissued a year later with the 1972 Nippon Grand Prix livery seen on the finished model here. Then, in 2014, Hasegawa popped the Celica 1600GT once again in two different boxes, this time with parts to make a stock version. Opening this particular box for the version that buzzed around in the 1972 Japan Grand Prix Touring Car championships, some of those parts are included. But there aren’t enough to replicate a factory stock car. Inside there are 94 pieces molded in white, clear, and soft rubber. Since there weren’t any chrome parts, I used a Molotow Liquid Chrome pen on a…

HASEGAWA’S JAGUAR XJ-S V12 is the latest offering of a kit first released in 1983. It features a full engine, complete suspension, and detailed interior. There are 121 parts and you will use them all. The big V12 engine consists of 32 pieces plus four decals. Careful detail painting will make it pop. Accessories driven by the serpentine belt have open ends that require filling, and a washer reservoir and brake booster are supplied to mount to the inner fenders. Sadly, the firewall lacks detail, and the radiator/core support assembly is separate. The Jag’s chassis base plate has the transmission and driveshaft molded in but both suspensions are multipiece units, with the front consisting of eight pieces. It can be made posable by not gluing the upper control arms (part…

Replicarz expands its exclusive lineup of cast-resin Scarabs with this beautiful bright metallic blue racer. It replicates the car Chuck Daigh drove to victory at the Riverside International Grand Prix in California in 1958. The Scarab feels substantial and is magnificently shaped with sexy bulging fenders and a long hood. This lustrous 1/18 scale model offers great shelf or display case presence. Scarabs grew out of the imagination of Lance Reventlow in the late 1950s. Reventlow’s father was a count, and his mother the heiress to the Woolworth retail store fortune. Lance, a talented racer, hired designers Tom Barnes and Dick Troutman to create the Scarab. This beauty rode on a space-frame that weighed just 127 pounds, keeping it light and racy. Power came from a special-built Chevy engine, a…