Build It, THEN Build It!

Corvettes, scale model cars, AMT, MPC, Revell, Monogram

Posted April 18 2008 12:15 PM by scott_ross
Filed under: Editorials

I've got a question for you. How many Corvettes did you build before you built your first
“real” one?

If you’re of an age where the first number in yours is fifty, then you remember the “annual”
scale-model kits of American cars that included the Corvette.

Actually, they didn’t include the Vette from the start. The first “3-in-1” kits hit the shelves
of America’s hobby shops in 1958, but the Corvette didn’t appear until the following year.
Then, it was the crown jewel in the Scale Model Products (SMP) line-up.

Back then, the way to making money by making annual kits was to get the “promo deal” with one
or more 1:1-scale automakers, who would pay the model-makers to tool up and run a batch of
“promos”—promotional models which were painted in factory colors and came fully assembled.
New-car dealers would give these away to customers who came in for a test-drive, and they were
also available for a buck or two at the parts counter. With all that tooling paid for by the
car-makers, the model-makers could then use it to make pre-assembled “friction engined”
versions for sale at toy and hobby stores, as well as kits, for very little additional cost—and
plenty of additional profit.

SMP was one of the three companies that got into annuals in the late ‘50s, along with AMT and
Jo-Han Models. The former Aluminum Model Toys shortened its name to AMT when it switched to injection-molding plastics instead of aluminum, and their line of kits prompted both Jo-Han and SMP to get into the kit business for ’59. From then through the ‘90s, there was a Corvette from
each year on the hobby-store shelves.

AMT bought SMP in 1961, and that year it moved both companies’ design works, tooling and
injection-molding hardware into a state-of-the-art building that I lived just four miles away from. For ’62, Corvette joined AMT’s lineup (along with the full-size Chevy and Chrysler’s Imperial and Valiant, which SMP previously had the promo deals for).

A new model-maker emerged in 1964, when AMT founder George Toteff started Model Products
Corporation (MPC), and their first issue was a highly-detailed ’64 Corvette Sting Ray coupe
that had working front suspension, plus a speed shop’s worth of extra speed and customizing
parts in the box. Both AMT and MPC made annual Corvette kits from then through 1978, when AMT got out of the annual-kit business, mainly due to its promotional-model contracts dwindling.
The MPC brand carried on until 1988, when Ertl bought it and merged it with AMT, which Ertl
had bought in the early ‘80s. (The licensing deal that AMT had for the Star Trek starships was a
big reason why AMT didn’t go under when car-kit-builders’ numbers dropped way off starting in
the mid-‘70s, as those kits were huge sellers from the first day they went on sale in ’66.)

Meanwhile, Revell and Monogram started making Corvette kits, especially of the years that AMT
and MPC either didn’t offer or hadn’t made in a long time. Recently, AMT and MPC have been
revived under a licensing deal that’s set to bring not only some of the “classic” kits back,
but may also include some newly-tooled ones sometime in the future.

(There was another kit-maker—Palmer Plastics—that offered scale-model car kits starting in the
late ‘50s. But, as they didn’t have deals with the 1:1 car-makers, they didn’t have access to
the blueprints and other data needed to tool up to build highly detailed and accurate models.
As a result, Palmer’s models were usually way out-of-proportion and had the reputation of being a
“glue bomb” in the making, worthy of destruction by firecracker(s) on the 4th of July.)

I’ve likely stirred up a memory or two—hopefully good ones, of the Corvette(s) that you built
that were going to be like the one(s) you would own later on. And, more than a few of you have
done just that.

As for the Vettes that I built, mine were more of the later-kits-of-old-Vettes variety rather than the annuals, starting with the MPC ’57 Vette kit that had been out for several years when I got it in the
early ’70s, and painted in a non-original bright red with gold coves. By the way, when the new
annuals hit the shelves each fall, around the same time that new full-scale cars went on sale
at the dealers’, Corvette kits were the first ones to fly off the shelves into the Sold Out
realm, followed by the full-size Chevys, Pontiacs and Fords.

But, have any of you built a scale-model Vette with a custom paint job that you wanted a
full-scale painter to replicate on your 1:1 Corvette? Maybe not in Testor’s “PLA” enamel or Pactra
“Soft Spray ‘Namel”, or in AMT’s line of lacquers which included “One-Step Metalflakes,” but in
the colors offered by DuPont, House of Kolor or any other full-scale automotive paint
suppliers? Did the custom painter you wanted to do the job have an easier time understanding
what you wanted when you unveiled your hand-crafted model and said, “Can you paint it this
way?”

And, did your Vette come out as a full-scale match to your 1/25-scale creation?