Remember Your First Model Car?

'59 Bonneville, built it in '59 too.
Funny, since I did my first brake job on a real car in '58.

 

Strange thing about model cars is that I was tearing apart and rebuilding real ones long before I started building them! I'd even been tearing down and fixing bicycles before then! Whole different set of skills, and the old man instructed me how to build them up and left me alone to learn, just as I'd learned with the big stuff! Gotta hand it to that guy!!!! He must've spent a some time fixing fullscale stuff, as early as he started me in the shop! But he never complained, just instructed how to do better by 'feeling' the art, with more than one sense of perception...

Can't recall the first model car but I'm sure that doesn't matter, it was the 70's.

I seem to remember that I built 4 glue bombs while progressively learning from "the man's" critique's of what I'd done. I recall one was a Drag Monza, but don't know which. He didn't let me paint them. Only work on my build quality. The Fifth car was satisfactory, and strangely, I don't remember what that was either, only that I'd met the expectations of quality in building it. I know that we then went to the Hobby Shop and bought a full set of paints and my own sable brushes down to 0000, and the "Old Pro" Nova kit.

That Nova turned out decent, I suppose. I still have the decals that I didn't like and never used. That Gold and Black, sky high, jacked up Nova (I'd modified the suspension later on) was a disapointment to me as my skills grew more, and one day it met 3 M-80's wired together on a split fuse. The 396 sits among many other motors in my parts-engine shoebox today. I saw it about a year ago when I was digging thru there looking for a 1/25 Mopar 383 to give a friend.

Someday, I'll build again... till then, my youthful joys, triumph's, and the remains of explosion's are packed way in large boxes waiting for me along with the many models dad gave me both built and unbuilt in boxes from the 50's and early 60's....

I was actually more proud to be able to present him with a series of his own excellent box stock kits of Galaxie/Fairlane's from 60-65 to display in his recently completed garage, than I probably will be of eventually displaying my own kits similarly. Seeing his face as he unwrapped those 45+yr old paper towels to uncover jewels of his own childhood accomplishments and gently position them on the table aside each other when he surely assumed they'd been lost to time, was a real treat for me! I was more surprised and happy to see that they never made it to the garage. He cleared off the top of the bookcase in his living room for them! It seems more gratifying to have been able to give back just some of what I have gotten over the years, than it could ever be to simply recall what I've done as a result.

 

I don't remember what my first car model was. I had been building model airplanes for quite a while before I discovered model cars... One early car model I remember was a '56 Chrysler, 1/32 scale, molded in maroon plastic and had scallop decals with it. I built several Monogram kits early on; the Black Widow, the Slingshot Dragster, Kurtis Indy car, etc. Everything changed when AMT intro'd the "Customizing Kits" in 1958 (I was 10 years old). I think my first one of those was the '58 Buick convertible. After that I was obsessed with 1/25 scale model cars and built hundreds of them up into my early 30's. Some of my all-time favorite kits were AMT's '32 Ford Roadster, '32 Ford Coupe, '40 Ford Coupe, '39 - '40 Ford Sedan, Double T kit, and Revell's '55 Chevy. I built several of all of them. Unfortunately, only a very few of my later ones have survived. I recently retired, though, and I still have a couple of unbuilt kits in the hall closet. Maybe...

 

It's never to late to jump back in there and start building again..

 

http://kustomcarz.proboards.com/index.cgi?

try this place ..............

scrubba

 

Had an uncle with boxes lining his walls. He'd collect them, but couldn't assemble them. He said his hands weren't steady enough, and couldn't see well enough. He'd let me pick out which ones I wanted to assemble for him, and I would. He'd pay me off with a model for me to keep. He moved into a small apartment since those days and never looked me up when he had to get rid of his collection. I don't know who he gave or sold them to, but I would have loved to have first dibs to buy his whole collection. Most of them were from the mid-to-late 70's. Oh well, I thought we had something. Lol.

 

This may seem like a silly question, but did you ask him?

 

No, we lost contact for a few years. I was hitting my 20's and moving from home, he was having my aunt divorce him. He probably gave them to someone in his neighborhood just to unload them quick.

 

That's too bad, that sort of thing is always a hard situation.

 

The year was 1961 and it was the new mercury comet!!

 

That merc was my first also, when they reissued them as a cop car recently I bought about 20 of them, my wife thinks I am nuts but I dont care, I have a bunch of them and I have built one so far! Jim

 

an AMT 1966 Buick Wildcat 2dht.

 

these are the garages ive been working on for yrs.
i have 6 large storage toats at dads full of built cars. kitbashing was the koolest thing ever
my first real custom was a weird sitiation
i was like 12 or so 14 yrs ago, dad and grandpa was siding a house. my other grandpa had bought me a rail dragster, and i had a 69 camaro kit. so i wanted it prostreeted, so i took the tinsnips and cut the back 1/2 out of the camaro and started fabing
as soon as i turned 16, thats all i worked for, another model. i never missed a show in this area, have tons of world of wheels awards, 8 or 10 goodguys awards, 6 best of shows w a 57 nomad thats awesome. i miss it alot. when the baby gets here, ill probably get back after it

 

Mine was "Digger", a Hawk's Models "Wierdo" character that I put together when I was about 9-10 yrs. old. (1963-64) And, I still have it! Original paint, too. Here's Digger doing a burnout on my sidewalk.

 

Yep, that was no easy kit! My first was a Toyota 2000, and I picked out a Humbrol Midnight Blue gloss to paint it with. I envisioned a sparkling beauty- reality delivered a gluey, smeared mess. But I was hooked..

 

Those can still be found on ebay.....

 

Mine was that 1959 chevy sedan delivery thing wit the glass roof. I think it was called Bad News.

 

I've got some that have been unfinished since the late 1960's. Sort of model "Barn Finds" I think about finishing them, but then again that is a part of my hobby that is in the past.

 

55 Chevy I built it with my dad when I was about 9.

 

I built one of those, at my gramma's trailer in Downey Ca.
My mom and dad used to leave me over there and my gramma would take me
to Woolworths or Tg&y and get me a model and that would keep me busy
for a whole weekend. Miss those days.

 

some of the posts on this thread have signs of OCD...in a good way tho!!

 

How about posting some pics of the box art when you get a chance... Thanks!!

 

OCD???

 

yup ..once they in your blood as a kid...its hard to combat the old car addiction!!

 

I ran across some ofthe work (well art in fact) of one Michael Paul Smith.His modeling and dioramas are un-freakin-believable.

 

My first was a Model A roadster called the Bumblebee. It was molded in yellow with yellow rims and it had bumblebee decals. This was in the early 60s. I just did a web search and I couldn't find any information on this kit.

Later I had a 36 Ford model. You could build it several different ways and it came with a variety of body parts. I was having a hard time deciding just what to build it as and I would assemble it different ways without gluing it. One day it just disappeared! To this day I do not know what happened to it and it still bugs me. That could be why I have a 36 Ford fixation.

 

my first car model was the Horn Toad (sparked my interest in the dodge slant 6) followed by Romells Rod (loved the truck front wheels) followed my hundreds more

 

my first model car was a jag.

 

I had the AMT '36 Ford 5W kit as a kid in the '90s; and I always thought it was weird that the roof was a seperate piece from the rest of the body. I wonder if that was why. I remember thinking they could have provided a cabriolet top and windshield or a chopped top or something.

If I could have back some of the kits I ruined as a kid, I'd want that one, the AMT '49 Ford, '40 Ford, and '57 Chevrolet. Oh, and the Testors '46 Ford convertible I could never find.

-Dave

 

obsessive compulsive disorder
is an anxiety disorder characterized by intrusive thoughts that produce model cars, traditional thots about hot rods, fear, or worry that all the models will be built, by repetitive behaviors aimed at reducing the associated anxiety of not building models, or by a combination of such obsessions and compulsions that result in model building. Symptoms of the disorder include excessive building of model cars, repeated buying of said models, extreme hoarding of unbuilt model car parts and kits; preoccupation with building model car kits, aversion to building model cars, nervous rituals such as opening and closing a model car kit box just to rummage thru it to get that feeling of traditionalness, having to hold model cars a certain number of times before entering or leaving a room....
stuff like that