’62 Valiant.
One memory that’s always stuck with me from my teenage years was getting a ride home one day with a friend who’d borrowed his dad’s car while he was interstate on business. It was a 1969 Valiant VIP, a top-of-the-range stretched Valiant with the 318 and automatic. It was just so effortless, sitting on those fancy brocade seats and cruising along to the muted burble of the 318 as it effortlessly slurred between gears. Such a contrast to the sticky vinyl seats and the roar of the 200 six in Dad’s manual Falcon, with the clank as the linkage clashed on the 1-2 shift – if it didn’t stick.
So in tribute to the Redlich family Valiant, we’ll look at small Mopars today.
The first of these was that rare find (opening image), an annual Revell model that had remained unsold on the shelf of an inner-city department store for ten years! I was always keen on these wild-looking Valiants, so of course I bought the kit – and built it with the hot engine setup. It’s not the Hyper Pak, as it has triple carbs and a finned valve cover. Built in 1973. In Australia these only came with the 225, so muscular small Mopars got off to a roaring start. Now, on to the gallery.
We’ll start with this ’69 Cuda. It’s an update of a tool from the 1960s, and I think still in the AMT catalog. This one’s from about 1980, “streetified” from a drag kit;
’69 Cuda.
Here’s a later version of the same kit, updated with the proper wheels, engine and stripes;
’69 Cuda
I’ve built way too many of Revell’s 1968 and 1969 Dart kits. Something about that shape…
’68 Dart.
’68 Dart.
’69 Dart.
Then of course there’s the Duster. I built the original back when it was a new car. AMT tooled up a state-of-the-art kit in the nineties, still good today;
’71 Duster.
’71 Duster.
And a modern street machine version;
’71 Duster.
Here’s a 1976 Dart Sport;
’76 Dart.
This was an updated version based on the old 1971 annual and still reappears from time to time. What’s the difference between this and the Dusters I showed earlier? Detail;
’71 Duster detail.
Much better suspension and engine detail on the new one and generally finer engraving everywhere. Times move on and people want better, in models too.
I’ll finish off with a 1979 Volare annual model. Not a popular kit, to my knowledge it has never been reissued. Cutting the roof like that would be a disaster of course, but it looked cool at the time!
’79 Volare.
Next time, we might look at some fifties Fords. And an Edsel or three…
Very cool Mopar model collection.. Saw your mini Stig hanging out also. I’m partial to the darts also, had a 69 slant gt vert I bought in the junkyard for $100 and drove it for 5 years. One of the best cars I ever owned.. The 64 barracudas were cool also still having badging as valiants…
Thanks Tom. The Stig is in many of my pics, sometimes intentionally, sometimes not!
Valiants had a great reputation down here (we didn’t get Darts*) then seemed to get identified with a particular nationality which pretty much killed their youth appeal – apart from the mighty Charger. Which is a shame, because those who ran them found they had a lot to offer.
(*Daniel will want me to insert mention of the VF-VG Valiant Hardtop, which was a Dart body with a local Valiant front clip and trim)
Nice bunch! All these look great, though the design choices you made on the Volare are questionable 😉
By “small Mopars” I’m assuming you mean A body Mopars, not scale model Mopars since I’m sure you must have lots of B body models built.
Though new tool kits are greatt, do you ever find that you prefer the older kits? To my eyes, that 76 Duster looks really good. The stance and relationship between the wheels and fenders looks better than on the green 71. The orange 71 looks better maybe, but the photo angle is harder to see. I’ve never built that kit, but have found sometimes the wheel positioning on new kits is whacky and the more complex suspension makes it harder to correct than on the simpler old kits. Looks like the 71 also has the “toe in” I’ve seen on other 90s AMT kits with steerable wheels
Has the 62 Valiant kit ever been reissued? That would be a great one to get but I’ve never seen it. Great build for 1973!
Thanks Jon. Yes, I have plenty of B bodies and the odd C body, but as always I had to draw the line somewhere. I could have shown another four Darts; in fact I was almost going to make this story just Darts but then I though we needed a bit of variety. Never fear, you’ll see the others!
The older kits are great to slam together for a ‘quick’ build. Quick in inverted commas because by the time I do my detail-painting and such, it’s still a few days. Not like when I’d buy one as a kid and have it painted and assembled in a day or two! The newer ones need a lot more detail painting, and more care in assembly with plenty of finer more-breakable parts, but they give a degree of satisfaction I just don’t feel with the older, simpler kits.
I’m glad you mentioned stance. AMT was criticized in that regard particularly for their ’71 Charger. If you assemble the kit as tooled, this sort of thing (below) happens. The rear wheels in particular are about 2-3mm too far back. But in fairness the nineties AMT kits were some of the most complex they’d done.
Not much chance of the Valiant coming back. I’m kind of amazed they tooled up the four door sedan in the first place! I’ve heard many of those old Revell ’62 Mopar models are missing some of the tooling (tyres? glass?), and probably would have limited mass-market appeal if reissued.
Thanks Jon. Yes, I wouldn’t do that to the Volare these days either!
Oh yes, there are enough B’s and C’s for quite a few features, and you’ll see them all some time. 🙂 Like I didn’t show all my Darts or Dusters either, and there’s a red Cuda somewhere…
The older kits can be great for a quick build. Quick is a relative term here. By the time I do my paint and detail work I’d still take four or five days. When I was a teenager I’d buy a kit Saturday morning and have it finished Sunday night. The new ones are much more accurate – but at the same time much more fiddly for fumbling fingers, with little parts liable to go snap, or get lost on the floor.
As regards the stance, AMT took a lot of flak on enthusiast forums over the wheel placement relative to the wheel arch openings. For example, if you build the ’71 Charger as indicated, you wind up with something like this (pic). The rear axle is about 2mm too far back on the springs – which requires reworking the springs, axle and driveshaft to correct. Sometimes I didn’t bother. Sometimes it’s the front end which needs adjustment. Sometimes it’s both.
They had a problem with some of their kits sitting too high as well – I’d guess they worked from factory blueprints and didn’t take into account the weight of the body compressing the springs. But it can’t be easy engineering a kit, with a multiplicity of pieces to design and to manipulate in three dimensions for this piece to fit right there.
I’m amazed they tooled up the four door Valiant at all, but it was part of a range of 1962 Mopars they did. I heard decades ago that parts of the tooling were missing so the series couldn’t be reissued – IIRC it was something to do with the wheels and maybe glass. But I have to wonder how much interest there would be in a ’62 Valiant sedan if they could reissue it – you, me, and how many others? Meanwhile, an Aussie company has a ’61 Valiant in resin – no engine detail though.
Funny how Gear Heads always seem to manage to find good if not great cars in junkyards then return them to daily drivers .
I like all of these, I’d like to try a ‘Bundy Mobile’ Duster .
-Nate
I also liked the Bundymobile Duster! I wonder why the writers in the show changed it’s name to “Dodge” where it was clearly a Duster? Maybe they thought “Dodge” had more of a comedic ring. Like how Al was always dodging Peg.
Yeah, I suspect the Dodge Duster error on the show was intentional. For one thing, Plymouth is a two-syllable name, and ‘Dodge’ rolls off the tongue easier. It also would fit with the idea that Al Bundy wouldn’t have the intellect to know the correct make of his car.
Plus, back in the day, those Dusters were everywhere and, although they were good cars, by the time that show was on the air, they’d have been out of production for quite some time and could easily have been seen as a ‘losermobile’. It fit in pefectly with the Bundy household.
“….Ran over my wife, with a Dodge…” .
-8-) .
-Nate
I’m not familiar with that show, but I do have a spare kit…..
Peter ;
‘Married with Children’ was an odd TV show that detailed the life of a looser in Chicago who’s been a high school football star then everything went down hill .
The main character “Al Bundy” never seemed to be able to do or get anything right .
A running joke was his several old dilapidated Dusters .
-Nate
Thanks Nate. I’d heard of the show, but it’s not something we’ve ever watched. I googled it, and it shouldn’t be too hard.
Prepare to be underwhelmed .
It’s very warped humor, why I liked it so much .
-Nate
All of these are just the coolest. Right when I thought I had licked a favorite, I’d scroll through to something I like at least as much. I also like the context of the year in which you built each kit.
That “new old” stock Valiant model must have seemed like such an incredible find at the time. That’s the kind of thing I would post immediately on social media.
The Barracuda fastbacks have such a great shape. And of course, I loved the Duster and Volaré models, as I grew up with those actual cars.
This was a treat.
Thanks Joseph. That Valiant – yes! Possibly my most exciting find in those pre-internet years. Guess that particular store wasn’t too fussed about stocktaking. Of course these days with webstores and ebay old kits are much easier to find, but nothing beats actually finding a physical box others have overlooked.
Good point about social media. That does happen. My Japanese friends at Creativity especially post old rarities they’ve recently bought. About five years ago I innocently posted some kits I’d recently bought including a Toyota Carina ED Autopista from 1987, and I was contacted by one of the moderators of the group, just wanting to check that he’d understood my English correctly; apparently that’s very rare and highly sought after in Japan, and I’d just found this dust-covered box on a shelf. Of course outside of Japan almost nobody knows the car….
Also people will sometimes ask what’s the oldest/rarest/most expensive kit you’ve got. I steer away from those posts – it’d be all too easy for those so inclined to track you down, break in and rob you. As always on social media, caution is needed.
And those Barracudas have always been some of my favourites. Here’s another.
Ooh, that is nice, the famous recall wheels as well.
Yep. A lot of folk were very excited when AMT put those in the kit.
When I built AMT models, I rarely painted the underside except for the exhaust system. However the last Charger I did, included paint for the underside.
I did a ’66 Barracuda, a ’75 Dart sport, a ’70 Charger, and many more. I’d like to build an ’84 Caravan if there was a kit to do so. That sliding door would be a challenge.
Nice work!
Thanks Lee. Interesting thing about vans. IMC did the early Dodge van, later reissued by Lindberg. MPC did annual Dodge van kits in the seventies, AMT and Revell did Chevys and AMT did the later Econolines, but once the great van craze ended (’80?) nobody bothered with them. AMT has reissued their Chevy numerous times in emergency guise, along with MPC’s Dodge.
Years later Lindberg did a kit of a ’96 Caravan but that’s a totally different body of course. I did see a feature once in a magazine about how to do a sliding side door, but it looked clumsy and out of scale. On the other hand there were some seventies Japanese van kits from Gunze Sangyo which included a sliding side door. Really neat engineering. A look at one of them (long out of production) would give you an idea how to proceed. But first you’d need that ’84 Caravan. And there isn’t one. Oh well…..
I saw one more mini-Mopar Muscle from Down Under in Australia, a Valiant Charger.
http://capitaldiecastgarage.blogspot.com/2010/05/tr11b-trax-police-valiant-charger.html
Diecast models are a separate field with their own experts. I’m not one of them! 🙂 Actually it was modifying diecasts that got me into building kits in the first place.
But there’s a better Charger in 1/32 from Signature Ozlegends of China. I’m not sure how many different varieties there are, but mine is a VH R/T E38 TrackPak. Everything opens, and working steering.
There are 1/25 resin kits of the Charger, but I feel the roofline is off on the ones I’ve seen.
Love that picture of the 62 valiant I had one. It was my backup car. that car I had it painted orange with a black top and called her the great pumpkin 🤣
Yep, they’re very popular down here.
Somehow, I never built a regular Dart or Valiant kit. The only A body kit I can remember doing was a 1973 Duster when both the car and the kit were newly issued. I remember that I painted it with Dupli-Color to get an authentic color. I chose Silver Frost, an unusual (for the time) medium metallic gray.
I don’t know why I never built one of those fastback Barracudas – I always found those cool, and surely those kits were available.
These are all quite nice!
For the Dart I built, I tried to get paint as close as possible to Sienna Metallic, the colour mine was. I came close, but not exactly. Testor’s was my go to paint.
Thanks JP.
The first car I spray painted was a 73 Cougar in the same colour as my real car at the time, an Aussie Ford colour called Copper Bronze. Duplicolor can be good but some plastics can react with it and give you a nasty wrinkle finish. Generally the American kits are okay, but I’ve had some Japanese plastics react. Nowadays I usually use either special hobby paints (without such a hot solvent, and with a spray head designed to mist the paint onto a smaller surface) or make sure I have the plastic thoroughly primed first.
The Barracudas – well, for a while there in the seventies you could only get a Pro Stock drag version, then a street machine one which looked a bit odd ( mine was even odder!), then it was off the market for ages before AMT brought it back with all the right parts. And it’s just come out again.
I absolutely love these posts. As always, my thanks, Mr. W.
Thank you. It really makes my day to read all these comments. 🙂
Your model building skills are excellent Peter. I really enjoy these posts!
A Plymouth Volaré Targa… the perfect car to be driving around Aspen, Colorado… Oh wait… 😉
Thanks! 🙂
The MPC Volare kit was updated to add a removable T-top (targa) building option like the real car. The real car had a center brace from the windshield frame to the solid roof, which was included in the kit.
Beautiful models!!
Thanks. Have to find my ’76 Accord for you…..
Beautiful models and workmanship Peter. Thank you! Have always been especially impressed at how consistently clean your chrome wheel well trim turns out.
I like that you also have a Volare. It looks lowered from their usual ride height. Also like that you are not afraid to go with some powerful colours! Loving this series!
Thank you Daniel. Your encouragement means a lot.
The wheel well trim – well, thereby hangs a tale. Apparently I do it differently to other folks. I’ve had keyboard warriors tell me my method can’t possibly work. But there you go. I just shrug, and keep doing my thing. The blue Cuda was an old build using a Tamiya Chrome Silver paint pen. That was dead easy but not quite realistic enough. Nowadays I use Bare Metal foil, as shown on the Darts. It’s a thin adhesive film like mylar but more flexible.
And colours – well, Mopar had some great colours then. And some that took a bit of getting used to (pic). Interestingly, we seemed to get a bright colour palette for longer here in Australia than other countries did. Ford and Holden had bright reds, yellows, and oranges in the late seventies.
Work to be very proud of Peter. Thank you for your willingness to share so much of your portfolio. A genuine pleasure for the rest of us. And a lot of fun to enjoy here! The variety of cars is really something.
Totally appreciate you taking your own route to achieving the design outcome you desire, with your evolution towards the metal foil. I’ve experimented quite a bit as well, before establishing an illustration style, I am comfortable with. Your confidence in your colour selections comes across strongly. Colour choices that always work, and consistently look great, in fact!
Thank you. I’m just amazed at the response.
Art seems to run in the family, Daniel. My mum drew a lot as a kid, then got into photo retouching and colouring when that was a thing. Apparently she was really good at it, but most of that was before my time. Me – well, there’s these, and I used to draw cars a lot as a kid. My son scratchbuilds HO scale locos and rolling stock. My daughter’s a fantastic illustrator (animals, fairies and people, realistic and caricatures), she always carries a sketchbook. The grandkids – well, it remains to be seen.
I never knew anybody else who built car models, and just did my own thing, referring to the odd small-run print magazine in the pre-internet era. Even now the way I do some things is different, apparently. I didn’t realize how much I’d developed a distinct style until people in internet groups commented, and even now it surprises me.
Colour is my friend. 🙂
These are some of my favorite cars from the 1960s and 70s. That blue ‘71 Duster is identical in color to my mother’s 1971 Dodge Coronet wagon, though that car had a black vinyl interior. It’s also interesting to see how much more detailed the later castings are – thanks for the chassis shot.
Of all these, I like the 1962 Valiant best. It still is a startling design to see 60 years later and certain elements, such as the six-window profile and the lack of pronounced shoulders at the juncture of the C-pillar and rear fenders, make the car seem far more modern than the boxy 1967-76 generation of A-bodies.
Thanks William. That bright blue seemed to be quite popular in the early seventies. Down here Holden had one, Cyan Blue (original!) that was especially nice.
That Valiant was just so far out of the mainstream that it’s almost timeless, in the sense that there’s no era it ‘belongs’ to. Like the ‘big’ ’62s, it’s out of step with everything else. I agree the later boxy ones aged fast, though I’m not sure our Aussie ‘fuselage’ Valiant bodies were quite what was needed.
Some of my favourite cars featured here, those Barracudas are especially nice.
Your description of riding in your friends Valiant is spot on, I had a Hardtop as my first car, a 318 Valiant with a Torqueflite is a joy to drive.
I was looking forward to this one, hard to pick one favourite out of these, I remember the bright orange Dart in the background I think from one of your comments, I built one of those, but it hasn’t survived.
Thanks. I love the shape of those Barracudas. A bright orange Dart, let’s see…..
That’s the one !!!
More art. Never fails to fascinate, Mr W.
I have to ask, especially given where you lived when young, the Redlich family with the VIP Val, are they connected to the one just recently retired as a (very frustrated) anti-corruption Commissioner in this State? First name Robert?
We lost contact after high school, but his family were in law. I think Robert was his cousin.
To paraphrase Zoolander …..”Are these cars for ants??”
Not QUITE than small….. 🙂
Very nice, please keep these coming on a regular basis.
Re paint it can be hard to find good nozzles that give that fine output, so when I do get one I keep it. I find the Tamiya ones are pretty good, while the Testors are bad. Also a local body shop will do custom colours in a large spray can and their nozzles are good.
Thanks, Trainman. Next one’s written, and I’m gathering thoughts for the one after that…
Totally agree with you on spray nozzles. Gunze’s Mr. Hobby are also good, then there are the various ‘military’ brands like AK Interactive. Testors paints are hard to find here, and as well as the nozzle problems the cans leak sticky clear goo when stored. I’ve been slammed on FB for saying they’re a poor quality product, but Tamiya raised the bar thirty-odd years ago, and Testors haven’t caught up. As well as the nozzle spray pattern, there’s also the spray pressure. Tamiya sprays out in a softer mist compared to Testors; I’m not sure whether this is just the nozzle or reflects something else (can pressure?) as well.
Never seen Gunze’s Mr. Hobby paint around here, it tends to be Tamiya or Testors. Testors used to be good, those two models I posted in a Part 5 comment were both done with Testors, but in the 70’s. I also did a bunch of construction related vehicles in yellow and that covered very well. I find now their paint is not very fine and like you say does not have the quality of Tamiya. Interesting about the pressure aspect, had not thought of that. But I don’t see the sticky goo issue you do.
Looking forward to Part 7!