New Stuff Again
So as I type this, I’m on some downtime due to some financial woes(ain’t it always the case), so I locked up the ordering for a short while. I’m also desperately late on answering emails as I’ve been so ungodly busy the last few weeks, but such is life and all! I bought a few new kits over the last couple of months and I’mma be doing old fashioned posts soon again, like the new Revell ’70 Cuda AAR based on the new tool and the Revell ’69 Mustang Boss 302, both of which I’ll be building considerably stock just to have some content out again other than the same-old-same-old about decals. Hell I even got a hold of a Tamiya 1/12th scale motorbike just to change it all up. Again, it’s all a temporary gig, this whole shutting down for like the fourth time, I’ll be up and running again very soon.
But in the meantime, there’s some new stuff I’ve whipped up since the last time. I’m still looking for that fuckin’ Dodge D-100 kit but I may have a direct line to one after what, four months of searching? Either way, one set I’ve tried to give a significant amount of love was the Subaru BRAT kit. I never even knew it existed until Adam Rehorn of the Sprue Lagoon made several posts of the kit in its original 1979 glorious form; and literally two months after I found out it existed, Round 2 popped out its re-release. And two things were immediately noticed about it, one – the stripes aren’t correct for the year of BRAT and two; even if they were, they could do with some extras. So what I did was whip up the wrap-around stripes in both the early 1978 and late 1979 styles(the font got changed in ’79 and very quickly replaced with the stripe that ends at the rear quarter) as well as the ’79 type that doesn’t wrap the body. Then I fully rendered the dashboard instruments up, cause while AMT’s aren’t even all that bad, they’re also not quite correct – try compare ’em if you have the kit, you’ll see what I mean.
Then, some white letter tires, badges, center caps emblems and most importantly: that thing that defines a decade by itself; plaid interiors. Jesus Christ it’s like everything back then had to have the appearance as if someone flensed a lumberjack, but alas – it’s period appropriate and deserved an addition. Especially knowing how much people seem to love seat upholstery decals.
’78 BRAT GL 4×4, ’79 BRAT GL 4×4 and the shortened ’79 BRAT GL 4×4
Then aside from that, I got really lucky and found a cheap as chips genuine MPC 1977 Ford Pinto kit, one I wanted a hell of a lot more than the freshly re-released AMT Pinto for two reasons. One is that the MPC casting has the full glass trunk and has the proportions nailed down a heck of a lot tighter, two is that the AMT re-release while not a half bad kit, is the same stocky and squared off chunk from the 1970s that even back then just couldn’t hold a candle to the MPC version. But one day I’ll get one, just to compare the two. But for that particular model I’ve made the 1977 Ford Pinto “Accent Stripe Group” set, which was basically Ford’s marketing team going “Well folks sure seem to love those Starsky and Hutch fellows’ car, lets put it on everything“. And they did, ho boy they did. LTD II’s, Pintos, Mustangs, nothing escaped that damn package.
But it’s apparently rare as all sin on the Pinto, the triple-striped version especially. You can hit this link to see interior and exterior shots, but it’s for real and it’s gaudy. The second set I did was the “Special Value Package” stripe set, which isn’t a half bad looking Pinto but… man, ain’t that name depressingly economical. It’s like the car version of buying a value 12 pack of toilet paper. Either way, the decal sheet for the Pinto includes every single stripe for the exterior and for the Accent Stripe the triple stripe seat decals as well, and while I was at it; spent 5 hours making the whole dashboard and gauges for every damn version you can think of. And as a bonus, badges for the Pinto Pony MPG, cause why not! There will be a hell of a lot more Pinto stuffs coming soon, among which finally, at last, the Pinto Wagon with wood panels.
’77 Ford Pinto “Accent Stripe Package” and the ’77 Ford Pinto “Special Value Package”
Other than that, there’s some more new stuffsies. A little project that went kind of out of hand was the Buick Skylark sets, which started off as just me wanting to make a big sheet of all GM air cleaner and valve cover decals, which of course includes those early seventies GS decals. It kinda grew out to me making two full sets with interior, exterior, the whole damn nine yards of the ’70 GSX and ’70 GS Stage 1. I still got three other Buick sets in the works, the ’87 Regal GNX and the ’81 Regal Turbo Indy Pace Car as well as the Parnelli Jones sponsor-stickered version of the ’76 Century Free Spirit.
’70 Buick Skylark GSX and the ’70 Buick Skylark GS Stage 1
Now, there’s more to see when it comes to Mustangs, as two more sets in that line-up are finished. The ’85 SVO with the bumper trim and engine bay goodies and the ’85 Predator GT302-H and R(both stripes in the same set!) which leaves just five sets to do for now for the Fox bodies, which are the ’79 Pace Car, ’83 GT, ’89 LX CFD-25, ’92 Shelby AAC Mk1 and last but not least, the ’93 SVT Cobra R. Also I recently did the 1978 Road Runner set for which I’m still doing the interior tri-colors but as it stands, the set is available as is for now, and while I was at it I also re-did the ’77 Road Runner to include the updated goodies like the engine bay decals, dashboard cluster and the likes.
’85 Ford Mustang Predator GT302-H/GT302-R, ’85 Ford Mustang SVO, ’78 Plymouth Roadrunner and the ’77 Plymouth Roadrunner
I’ve also gotten my hands on a vintage Jo-Han ’72 Ford Gran Torino and a ’77 International Harvester Scout SS II, so expect every damn thing regarding those models like the Gran Torino Sport, SS II decal set, Rallye set, so forth. I also finally got around to making a dedicated page for the white letter tire decals as it was kind of getting out hand, there’s over a hundred unique choices now and as we speak I’m trying to get every single possible variant of the Polyglas GT tire since I’ve managed to do every type of BF Goodrich Radial T/A. So hit up this particular page if you wanna see all of ’em.
But to nail down the exact sets which are coming up in the following weeks, among y’know, the ability to once again order:
International Harvester:
1977 International Scout II Rallye(1/25), 1977 International Scout SS II(1/25), 1978 International Scout II Rallye(1/25), 1978 International Scout II Traveler(1/25), 1977 International Scout II Traveler/Rallye(1/25), 1979 International Scout Midas SS II(1/25), 1980 International Scout “Shawnee Scout” Hurst SS II(1/25) and 1976 International Scout II “Spirit of ’76”(1/25).
Ford:
1996 Ford Crown Victoria LX(1/25), 1972 Ford Ranchero GT(1/25), 1972 Ford Gran Torino Sport and 1970 Ford Torino King Cobra(1/25), 1971 Ford Torino Cobra(1/25), 1984 Ford Mustang GT(1/25), 1989 Ford Mustang LX CFD-25(1/24), 1992 Ford Mustang Shelby AAC Mk.I(1/24), 1993 Ford Mustang SVT Cobra R(1/24) and 1977 Ford Thunderbird.
Meyers:
1968 Meyers Manx(1/25).
In the meantime, as I said, it’ll just go on. I’ll update this post when the ordering gets back online, and that in itself shouldn’t be too long from now. I should apologize for shutting it down again, but financially speaking I just couldn’t risk it.
The El Camino is downright one of my favorite cars to ever touch the planet, it’s such a wicked car all around. Or coupe utility vehicle, if you’re one of those people. I’d rather go with car, or ute. You see, I’ll defend the merits of a ‘Cuda until the sun goes down, or the value of Ford stumbling through the seventies keeping the Mustang alive, or how something like the El Camino should and needs to exist. Today, there’s no worldwide version of what is the quintessential muscle car with a pick-up for an ass.
As for the rest of the world, we gotta make due with effectively the last of the El Caminos that date back to the 1980s, 1987 to exact or the equally extinct Ford Ranchero, which got ol’ Yeller’d in 1979. Since then, for the Americans and Europeans it was to either import a sweet chunk of Mad Max-ian deliciousness or take in a… well shit, might as well get it out of the way; through-out the decades it would’ve come down to a Ford Courier, Dodge Rampage, Plymouth Scamp, VW Rabbit/Caddy Pick Up, Fiat Strada, Subaru BRAT or something to that extend. And all of those are small, compact little pickups with the front end of one of their more popular cars, small engine and sustainable(unless it’s the Dodge or Plymouth, those rusted away in a few months time), but not anything that would make you wanna go “Fuck yeah, I’d take that over a Camaro!“.
Why? Well in the United States especially at least, it just was timed incredibly poorly. The El Camino and Ranchero were briefly very popular in the mid to late 50s, but then it just kind of collapsed in on itself. They had three massive hurdles to overcome, one was that it was meant to do work all the while looking like a gorgeous car and it had trouble doing so. Two was a simple problem that other cars had to deal with too, take the Camaro – it had to co-exist with a more convenient, more powerful and in some ways more attractive Corvette, the El Camino and Ranchero had to exist alongside the very cars they were based off from 1960 onwards. The third? Well, they were appalling for the exact task they were designed, they were meant to be half pick-up, half car and in most cases it wasn’t even close to being a fifth as useful. Why spend 3800$ of your fresh 1970 dollars on a El Camino if you could get a fully equipped C/K 2500 for the same money that did everything the El Camino could, but better. Well, that’s kind of where these type of cars grew into their own; they gained a following for what they were. A utility built Chevelle with the same insurance quote destroying 454SS in the front? Hell to the yes, man!
You got the very much pretty Chevelle based stripes on the El Camino throughout the sixties, the Torino GT stripes on the Ranchero, the twin-stripe SS get-up on the seventies El Caminos, the Scamp GT and Rampage both having just overblown either totally black or super colorful stripe packages, the VW Caddy/Rabbit “Sportstruck”, whatever the hell that might’ve been and so forth on the US side of the story. And that right there was eight paragraphs of me rambling on about a car with a pick up for a booty and how it’s no longer part of our world as we know it and ho-boy does it suck.
Fortunately, there’s resin casters: 
Then for twenty years, not a Goddamn thing. The first and as of writing last re-release of this kit was in 2000 which was this kit I’m talking about right now, the re-release with newly crafted lowrider parts and decals. Back then, apparently Revell was on a roll bringing back long-dead kits and pumping them full, full of life and doing a stellar and sometimes awkward job of it. The 
So it’s not all rainbows and sunshine, but it’s also miles ahead of the curve for this particular era of El Camino kits. The MPC kits weren’t terrible, by now means – they were just incredibly basic. While it has more interior detail, it lacks severely on the body and engine bay, and while the all around model has more variety with the tool(like the ’82 quad-light grille and the Choo-Choo Customs Monte Carlo SS nosed edition), it still very much on the outside comes across like a toy car with tiny wheels and a sunken stance. That being said, I personally would’ve preferred a middle-ground where Monogram did the body and chassis and MPC handled everything else, we’d have one excellent kit to work with – but alas, the best El Camino offering we have and likely will have for the foreseeable future will likely be a shared number one spot with this kit and the 
For me, this whole car or pick-up if you will is one of the strangest amalgamations of the strengths and weaknesses of both the United States and Europe car industries packed into one, small and in some senses even adorable little pick up. The Volkswagen Golf has been and still is one of the world’s most popular cars, it’s the hatchback version of the utterly unstoppable Toyota Hi-Lux – it’s dominated popular culture, it’s dominated the world and in some ways it’s even dominated history. And it’s because of that, that’s why I’m sitting here thinking “oh boy this Euro-toy is one of the defining cars of the people” and then it struck me; while the Golf Mk.1 is definitely European, hell, extremely German even – the Caddy isn’t.
In May 1974, the Golf was available to be sold around most of western Europe and it may have literally saved an ailing Volkswagen Group from dying out. Volkswagen was barely clinging to life and had been since the early sixties, building over 1.5 million vehicles and only selling a few hundred thousand a year across the decade, competitors like Opel and Ford were killing VW quite effectively by simply playing their own game; building affordable small vehicles. VW held national market shares of nearly half in Germany in 1962, to only 26% in 1972 – hell, the company sat in debt up to the wazoo that would make GM of today piss its pants; in ’74 VW had a 850 million DM loss alone, 
The Golf very quickly became a top seller across most of Europe in just about every Western European country for every year across multiple decades, and the United States got its first chomp of the Golf cake in 1975 when Volkswagen effectively said; export these, do it. It was essentially the same car, just with mandated side marker lights, higher ride height and those ever so delightful beauty ruiners known as the “5 MPH Bumper”, it also got a MPH dash and of course the most important thing, a proper export name. In the US, for some reason or another, it got the name “Rabbit”. Why? Well, nobody seems to really know – there’s plenty of theories among marketers, one being Rabbit just having a nicer ring to it and summons images of cute little fuzzy roadkills and the other being that you really couldn’t fit a bag of golf clubs in the back, so there’s that. In ’78 Volkswagen allowed the Americans to effectively produce their own Rabbit Golfs and “Americanize” them, which was famously dubbed by then VW CEO Werner Schmidt as “Malibu-ing”, softening the springs, cheapening the plastic and those square headlights cause that was a trend in those days.
So that’s precisely what I did with this VW Caddy model I bought from 
I opted for the GTI Pirelli cause I kind of prefer the whole get up, not to mention it was the most recently released kit and was cheapest score. Yay me. When I unpacked the Golf kit, I was absolutely flabbergasted by the detail on this puppy, holy shit. I don’t think I have ever seen this much eye to detail in a kit without resorting to P.E. parts, hell even better, I have never ever seen this much detail in a kit that also still goes together damn near flawlessly. It’s just staggering, the whole thing goes together like a LEGO build, I shit you not. The tiniest little details like engine hoses, the seatbelt and hand-holders in the interior, the perfect little puzzle around the slanted 1.8L inline four engine, it’s such a delightful kit. There’s a ton, and I do mean a ton of little decals to accentuate on every little detail they couldn’t do via casting. I imagine it can’t have been easy to construct the resin kit around this much of a well designed kit, cause any step being taken out in the middle can lead to the absolute ruination of this kit as a whole and they damn well pulled it off.
I am so most definitely buying the GTI Pirelli kit again to build that one proper cause my Lord is it a fantastic kit that I had to butcher for the most part to build this Caddy with, had I known that this kit was this good, I’d have bought two. It’s rare to see two separate entities doing such great work at the same time, I always wanted to buy a C1 Models kit but unfortunately missed out on the ’10 Camaro ALMS transkit they had, but then when I spotted that Caddy I knew I had to have it, even though I knew literally nothing of their quality other than seeing one of their Ferrari transkits being built, once. Now, I honestly can say as far as transkits go, these guys are pretty much the peak of it all, first and best experience all at once go figure. And the same I can say of Revell of Germany with the Golf Mk.1 kit, holy shit, it’s something special. It’s dramatically detailed yet such a simple, stress free experience to slap together and it’s… one hell of a good looking build by the end of it.
So this will be a short one, I reckon – SnapTite kits are a blast. That’s roughly the gist of it! Revell has done a lot of these types of little kits and generally they’ve been rather decent, especially if folks put in a lot of extra work on some of the lesser regions like the headlights/taillights, the interior, so forth. To name a few examples of Revell SnapTite kits that are beautifully done and are actually really, really solid kits even while they pack… only a handful of parts or so at best – the ’77 Monte Carlo, the ’70 Chevelle and what matters to this kit in general; the 2010 Ford F-150 SVT Raptor kit. It’s essentially the forerunner to this one, it was really neatly detailed, contained nice, clear parts, was actually kind of fun to put together and all in all made for one neatly detailed model by the end of it.
But then again, we got a goddamn pickup truck kit in 2017. We got one. That’s basically all that matters. Back in the nineties, pick-up truck kits were everywhere, the Ford F-150s and Rangers, the Chevrolet S-10 and C-1500s, GMC Sierras, Syclones and Jimmys and so forth. They were everywhere and AMT as well as Revell were on their game back then, and prior to that MPC and AMT did just about every Ford, Dodge, GMC and Chevy truck for every year. Since the early 2000s, we’ve slowed down to a crawl and across the 2010s we’ve gotten literally around three modern ones, all in all. The wonderful 2010 Ford F-150 SVT Raptor, the 
In contrast to the unfortunately not clear-cast rear lights and not-silver backed headlights, the pre-painted body is absolutely wonderful. It’s reminding me of those AMT ProShop kits where it’s stamped on the body, which shows a slight of a faded edge but it still makes for a very clean painted body. The rest is all single color cast plastic, all in a matte black besides the wheels, which are semi-gloss. The tires are also another giant, giant plus to this kit, nice and thick proper off-road tires that sit on the axles flawlessly. The only thing this kit could’ve used, y’know, other than some more loose parts to make the painting process easier, is decals. The “RAPTOR” decal is stamped onto the side of the body, for the rest there’s no decals at all – no little metal transfers for the mirrors, no dashboard, nothing. Again, it’s made for younger modelers and for those seeking a neat low effort kit.
God how I’ve tried to find one of those damn MPC kits for years, literally so much that my eBay search auto-fill now forever has “75 roadrunner” engraved in until I decide to delete cookies. And actually, I still haven’t found a proper MPC ’75 or ’76 Road Runner kit – go figure(the ’76 was incorrect as by 1976 the Fury Road Runner had been killed off for the Volare Road Runner). Instead, I came across a may-as-well-be new 1975 promo model that had been kept in damn near new condition by a man who had a significant love for the 1975-1977 Fury and Monacos.
That being said, it did get a bunch of unique touches over the regular Fury. The Road Runner package which came back for this year alone on the Fury platform, it had the unique blacked out grille, the Roadrunners on the doors, a different dashboard gauge set with a optional clock or tach and of course the unique stripe and decal set; one I tried to replicate the best I could for a decal sheet. For the rest? I mean, that was kinda it… It really showed that the 1970s were a dying age for sport/muscle cars, either they were completely past the common public or they were completely neutered to comply exactly to them. The fact that the ads back then basically called out that people were mistaken for thinking muscle cars weren’t fun to own anymore pretty much sums up how this car ended up failing.
It’s a shame but many excellent potential died in that era, MPC as well as AMT did keep up with the promotional demand, just about every new addition to the GM, Chrysler and Ford line-up would get either a full detail glue kit or a simple dealership promo, and many of those kits have been built up or collected by now, yet promos still litter any online marketplace like some unkillable scourge. They’ve become a bit of a lucky find for me as of late, as literally any glue kit is just… gone, or like 150$, these promos at least allow some creativity in place of a kit, y’know, the whole idea of “second best option”. With the ’75 Road Runner, it’s a double whammy of rarity – the original two kits, one for 1975 and one albeit incorrectly for 1976, they’re damn near impossible to find. I spotted three over the last year myself and all ran 75$ plus for a opened, sometimes even started kit. I accidentally stumbled over some guy selling off his collection of Fury models(as I mentioned at the beginning, this dude collected Fury and Monaco models and actually had a ’75 Fury for realsies and absolutely adored everything about it) – and I leaped on it like a fucking cougar, for 30$ or so a totally unscathed promo model that was new in all ways other than missing the box(which I later re-discovered on his other eBay listing supporting a series of ’76 Monaco models, so “misplaced” I suppose).
Though, the interior is a hassle. The seats and dashboard are properly stuck to each-other, nothing short of breaking, snapping or melting them loose would help. When I drafted up the decal sheet, I figured I’d try compensate for the lack of a engine by going all in on the interior. The Furys of the day had the quite lovely yet distressingly seventies striped pattern fabric all over the interior, the front seats, the rear bench, the doors, even the floor mats would have the patterns. So I basically just made shapes like the seats, re-created the fabric pattern and slapped it on the decal sheet – and it… actually worked out, really, really nicely.
In the article for the 
By 1975 the Mustang II was slowly growing back into its old self(despite its most successful sales coming from the bare bones Mustangs), getting the 302 V8 back, albeit at an absolutely anemic horsepower output. And in 1976, the first of the so called “Decal GT” cars began appearing. Being largely unchanged from the normal Mustang bar for some appearance stuff, the Cobra II was literally the least sporty “sports” car out there. It was basically the car equivalent of a overweight fellow in a velour jumpsuit. Don’t get me wrong though, I’d argue its the prettiest of that generation Mustangs, cause holy shit they went all in with the 1978 Mustang II King Cobra and it became a hideous amalgamation of body kit, stripes and stencils, shopping cart wheels and the amount of cobra bite equal of what you’d find in a plush toy. That being said though, I find it amazing nonetheless and am doing a decal sheet for it as we speak, but I digress!
But enough lamenting on the Mustang II’s existence. Back to the comparison, the AMT and MPC bodies are different. Very different. First of all, the AMT one is definitely the one pulling the short stick, it has deep sinks on several parts of the body, the assembly is nowhere near MPC’s and in the end, the whole interior was a silly afterthought to them, being flat and un-detailed to say the least. The shape is also… worse? I dunno, it’s in the eye of the beholder but I’d argue at least on the tail end and the grille especially the AMT one is far less accurate than MPC’s offering. The biggest sinner remains to be the wheel size on the AMT kit, which is hilarious to say the least. Engine-wise again it goes to AMT for having the worse of the two, though but no means a lot – the V6 engines offered in either kit are actually really neat, and it’s the V6 offerings that usually go completely unloved so its nice to see two nicer castings out there.
So, the biggest issue I had with this kit was the tires. They, much like everything back then, were just tossed in the box. Even though they were sort of rubberized and really, really nice for the time, they also had a horrible habit of melting into the plastic over the many years they’d lie untouched. Mine decided to mate with the windshield, rear glass and part of one of the seats and took some digging to get loose from those parts, so unfortunately I had no tires for this model. I did however have access to a nice little Ford Pinto kit with the mag wheels that were actually on a proper ’76 Cobra II! So I stole those tires and wheels and slapped ’em on there no problemo and of course, they were one-size-fits-all so they went on with hardly a bit of hassle. Put on the set of Firestone Firehawk SS decals I had prepared for ’em and done!
Third time’s the charm, right? I’ve done the 
And y’know what, despite the fact that Don Johnson and the Nash Bridges show as well are now just a blip on TV history(lets be fair here, despite the sweet-ass car and decent cast, Johnson will forever be Sonny Crockett in every role) – the ’71 Cuda itself remains a star and then some. As I said earlier, the ’71 HEMI convertibles catch literal millions and they increase in value literally every single day, and the still ungodly quick and gorgeous ’71 Cudas with 340s, 383s and 440s convertible or hard top are well over 100K more expensive than the average house price in the United States(189K) – so you could have a ‘Cuda 440, or you could have a whole house and a hundred grand left over. They were and still are American muscle in absolute perfection; it’s ungodly pretty, it’s ungodly fast, it’s ungodly thirsty and it’s ungodly unwieldy. It nailed every point of being a peak muscle car era vehicle, besides the at the time sale price – one of the reasons why the ‘Cuda was always a more rare sight out there regardless of the shape it came in was because at the time is was one of the most expensive of the bunch. It’s sister car of the same year with the same engine was 400$ cheaper(the ‘Cuda HEMI was 3433$ + 1228$ HEMI upgrade, the Challenger R/T was 3273$ + 892$ for the HEMI), the 1969 Camaro Z/28 grand totaled a person 3185$(2726$ + 458$ for the Z/28 package) and for reference, a 1970 Mustang Boss 302 ran a person 3720$(all the previous prices were 1969-1971 dollar value) – so in reality, the ‘Cuda was of course the premium quality car but it also cost a person a premium to get a hold of.
To be fair, it has been re-released nine times since… 1982 it came out, in 1985 it was put out again as a street machine(pretty much the same but with the twin snorkel intake hood), then again in 1991 and another time in 1998 both as the stock versions again, then in 2000 it saw the return of the street machine, then in 2002 it got re-released again, in 2003 they changed the tool up again for the first time in 18 years by releasing this particular Nash Bridges edition, which saw another re-release in 2007, then another one in 2009 and one last one in 2012. But still, it’s the best 1971 kit out there, even with its flaws. Granted, Revell’s 2013’s new tool of the 1970 ‘Cuda is now the best ‘Cuda kit in general, but for ’71 – ain’t no better than the Monogram release from thirty six Goddamn years ago.
For the rest, I used pretty plain slightly off-white satin and matte enamel paints for the interior which is the true star of this kit, for a somewhat one-off release, they really did an excellent job with the interior. The detailing, the thickness and the look of it all is absolutely spot on and I will say, no convertible kit had the door panels meet the interior door panels so supremely on the dot as it does here. The kit does pack a lot more decals than any of the other releases, like side marker lights, full dash and arm rest decals, so forth, which weren’t included on any of the other ’71 Cuda releases. Hell, one of the Nash Bridges Cuda releases has Goodyear GT Radial white letter tire decals as a bonus too, go figure, a utter rarity to find in kit decal sheets due to licensing. I didn’t need any though given I used my own created decals but it’s actually really, really nice to see the extra effort put into basically a little distraction kit that was apparently only gonna get released twice.
