Last night I stopped by my local Hobby Lobby which btw is the closest thing I have to a local Hobby Store bah! O.K. Anyways, I went there for 2 reasons - to see if their 1/35th scale armor situation had further deteriorated and to see if I could find some kind of aftermarket wheels for a project that has been thrust upon me.
That task is to build a 1/25th scale 1957 Ford Fairlane. The manufacturer is AMT/ ERTL - let me just say that it has to be the biggest piece of crap I have ever seen with the exception of a Hobby Craft M2A2 Bradley I bought...from Hobby Lobby.
The instructions consist of 7 poorly drawn steps and if I didn't know a thing or 2 about cars I would be screwed. No painting instructions - nothing - not even a little blurb about the car's history. The kit has flash on everything, the wheels don't fit the rubber tires (they aren't wide enough and the hub cap just falls right through the rubber tire) Parts don't line up - some are warped. I could go on for hours about this. If this is the standard for AMT / ERTL then model car lovers are in a WORLD OF HURT compared to armor modellers.
Now, I know that there are other manf. such as Monogram, Tamiya to name a few, but from what I can see on a local level, AMT/ ERTL dominates the shelf space. So the next time you want to whine about a new Tamiya or DML kit being off by .0001 of an inch on the front glacis blah blah blah, go buy a car kit from AMT/ ERTL - that will put things into perspective in a hurry.
BTW I still stand by my accusations about Tamiya being crooks for still putting out their older kits in abundance for the unsuspecting buyer - I am only trying to compare today's car kit vs. today's armor model.

I wouldn't be too surprised if the original moulds for the Fairlane were actually older than the Tamiya dinosaurs. The popularity of car modelling means that there is a huge backlog of old and scary models waiting to lure you in.

Any copyright dates on the sprues or packaging?

don't know - luckily I did not pay for this kit :-) I will check when I get home. The good news out of all this for me anyways is that I am building - it has been awhile for me. I do build models.

http://www.ww2modelmaker.com/modelpages/AHpantgearly.htm

http://www.ww2modelmaker.com/modelpages/AH234-2.htm

David,

Both the box & the kit's instructions have a date of 2002. I didn't see any kind of date on the sprues.

Not all AMT/Ertl car kits are bad.....just like any company, they all have bad kits....even Tamiya!!!!

I have a bunch of AMT/ERTL kits here, and they are pretty good kits and fit ok.

However, that Fairlane kit has probably been around since my dad built models as a kid.....so its probably 40-50 years old, and has never been updated.

Scott,

That is comforting to hear, because this one is very, very bad. I will finish it though, because I have to. :-)

Ain't AMT wonderful. A lot of AMT kits are very old kits and they are not up to todays standard. At the moment I am trying to build an AMT '66 Buick Wildcat. There's flash all over, parts don't line up, some parts are warped (Hmmm haven't I read this somewere before?) there are ejectormarks all over the body. I am not sure if I will finish this model. I might do a junkyard dio with this one and the other AMT model I have in my stash.
I haven't tried some of the newer models from AMT, they might be ok, but I think I will stick to Monogram. Never had any problems with Momogram kits.

I did an AMT car model a few years ago, and it was a real stinker, too The only reason I bought it was to practice with my airbrush. It was almost impossible to get a good fit. The wheels wouldn't even fit into the wheel wells!!!!!
I ended up using it as a paper weight that looks as if it has been sitting around in the dust for years and years and years.
Never more would I ever buy one of those pieces of junk.