'62 Pontiac Catalina Mild Custom

[Bernard Kron]

’62 Pontiac Catalina Mild Custom

Even though I’ve long been an admirer of what I consider to be the height of American automotive design, the period immediately following WWII through to the late 60’s, and especially the work of GM’s Bill Mitchell as it was revealed in the early 60’s, I’ve never actually built models from the early 60’s This AMT ’62 Pontiac Custom kit has been in my stash for many years, untouched. Lately I’ve felt that it was time I tried my hand at these, and that it was the perfect sort of project to begin to hone my skills in candy paint jobs and epic BMF battles. So this is virtually OOB standard with the exception of the lowered stance (brought down about 3 scale inches all the way around), the Pegasus Sovereign wheels and pin-wall tires, and the Duplicolor MetalCast transparent orange over Duplicolor Metalcast Silver ground. As essentially stock as it is there’s not much to say except that this was a very different experience from my usual diet of Old School Rods and Kustoms and classic drag cars. And the BMF and paint presented real challenges to assure a crisp and clean presentation. But it was a pleasure to build it from what is a well-engineered and detailed kit. It had the desired effect of opening up a new subject area for my modeling.

Thanx for lookin’,
B.

[harron68]

I've looked at this a few times since the pix were posted, and if you'll indulge me, I have a few thoughts. Wheels/tires look great as is the stunning orange paint. I'm not so thrilled with the contrasting roof. Sometimes it can look elegant, but sometimes a "one-piece" look fits better. I like the mild custom tube grille as well. Back then, things like easy and price affordable bolt-on custom grilles and tail lights were the norm. A shame you couldn't do something with rear lights or rear panel. Even just flat lights, maybe bigger or a filler piece with a few Caddy bullet tail lights would've looked great. The silver rear trunk insert would be great as body color and maybe a long single or pair of tubes would echo the front look. Even in the modeling of custom kits, many are radical and over-the-top. Subtle much more common cars many devotees actually drove back then are rarely built as models these days. Thanx for going the extra mile in all your models. We all applaud your work!

[dimaxion2]

Except for the DONKS , this is old School to the "T" . Being it is all about personalizing a Car , it is subjective to taste . I am glad you do not like what you do and I applaud your build .. Thanx ..

[Bernard Kron]

Broken Photobucket links repaired. For now I'm only updating completed model pics. Updating w.i.p. links is just too huge a task! I'll update them on request...

[bob29579]

Came out great.