CarTech® - Collecting Muscle Car Model Kits

Immerse yourself in all aspects of muscle car model kits with this detailed volume by author Tim Boyd, a world-leading authority on the subject.

Boyd walks you through the entire era of muscle car model kits, covering the options, collectability, variety, availability, and value of these wonderful kits today. He also shows the differences between original kits, older reproduction kits, and new reproduction kits that many enthusiasts find at swap meets today.

In the 1960s, model kit building was a huge hobby. Kids built plastic kits of planes, tanks, race cars, spaceships, creatures from scary movies, you name it. Before baseball card collecting, Pok mon, and video games, model kit building was one of the most popular hobby activities. Car and airplane kits were the most popular, and among the car kits, muscle cars, as CarTech know them today, were one of the most popular categories.

Many owners of real muscle cars today were not old enough to buy them when the cars were new, of course. Yet kids of the 1960s and 1970s worshiped these cars to an extent completely foreign to kids today. If you couldn't afford or were too young to buy a muscle car back then, what could you do? For many, the next best thing was to buy, collect, and build muscle car kits from a variety of kit companies. Hundreds of different kits were made. Many of these kits have become collectible today, especially in original, unassembled form.

Although people still build kits today, there is a broad market for collectors of nostalgic model kits. People love the kits for the great box art, to rekindle fond memories of building them 40 years ago, or even as a companion to the full-scale cars they own today. If you are looking to build a collection of muscle car kits, interested in getting the kits of your favorite manufacturer or even just of the cars you have owned, this book will be a valuable resource in your model kit search.

Table of contents

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1:

• In the Beginning: The Origins of the Model Car Kit Hobby

Chapter 2:

• The Four Waves of Model Car Kit Evolution and the Envy Factor

Chapter 3:

• Laying the Groundwork for Muscle Cars: The Pre-Supercar Era

Chapter 4:

• The Supercar Is Born, Part 1: Pontiac, Oldsmobile, and Buick

Chapter 5:

• The Supercar Is Born, Part 2: Chevelle and El Camino

Chapter 6:

• Dearborn Responds: Ford and Mercury Performance Intermediates

Chapter 7:

• It's All about the Packaging: Chrysler and AMC Supercar Intermediates

Chapter 8:

• The Pony Car Brigade, Part 1: Mustang and Camaro

Chapter 9:

• The Pony Car Brigade, Part 2: Everything Else

Chapter 10:

• Smaller in Stature, but. the Story of Junior Supercars

Chapter 11:

• Flash, Space, and Grace: The Family Supercar

Chapter 12:

• The Domestic Sports Car

Chapter 13:

• Today CarTech Call Them Tuners

Chapter 14:

• The Model Car Kit Collector

Chapter 15:

• Afterword

Tim Boyd
Tim Boyd is recognized as one of the world's leading authorities on model cars and model car kits. After achieving regional and national model car contest wins, he became a model car journalist, eventually authoring more than 500 published works during the next 40 years. His monthly Modeler's Corner column was a highly popular feature in Street Rodder magazine for 17 years, and he is by far the longest running and most prolific contributor to Scale Auto, the world's most popular model car magazine. Boyd authored the book Collecting Model Car and Truck Kits in 2001, and was elected to the International Model Car Museum's Hall of Fame, also in 2001. He retired from a 35-year marketing and design career in the auto industry and lives in Southern Michigan.