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1964 Ford Falcon Sprint Hardtop


jjsipes

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Saw it too. Looks better than their previous auto offerings, but I'm glad to say I still have my AMT annual rebuilder. :lol::blink::blink:

Hmmm..I just realized I have (or had) a '64 Falcon Sprint annual rebuilder...I think. If I didn't sell it :o due to boredom. Next time I'm digging in the basement, I'll see if I can scare it up. Typical builtup w/everything unpainted, except a poorly spray painted (yellow enamel) body. The best kind of rebuilder...and it was cheap.

I have a nicely built '65, builder unknown, all it needs is BMF applied over the silver-painted chrome. It's a nice off-white w/red trim. I'm sure the Testors white was a lot brighter when new :blink:

I'm a lot more interested in '64 Sprints now that I've seen photos of them racing on road courses.

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I think they were fairly common in early Trans Am racing. This style really suits the Falcon, much like the A/FX look.

Also used in a British road racing series..I've seen B&W pics of them on tracks like Brands Hatch w/ '63 Galaxies and Lotus Cortinas, etc...

I have restorable builtup AMT '64 and '65 Falcons I got years ago, but they are both convertibles..the only HTs I have are the Model King AF/X ones.

Edited by Rob Hall
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Out of my price range. But honestly I barely hang on in the hobby anyway with kits at 25 bucks a pop. Trumpeter has always produced great armor and military kits but they always seemed to drop the ball with automotive kits. Hopefully this one will be nice and I can pick it up somewhere for about half what they want for retail.

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If you compare the photos from the Spotlight board with the photos you have here of the annual kit, you can see that the windshield on the Trumpeter kit is too flat, with not enough wrap around to it. I pretty much gave my opinion of it there. It looks a tad slab sided to me as well. Of course, a 64 Falcon Sprint was my first car, and I owned it for over 20 years, plus had a few other Falcons as well, so I know them pretty intimately. Hopfully Trumpeter will follow Moebuis's lead, and fix the issues, or they will just be doing another run of shelf orphans. Regardless, I'll probably buy at least one.

P7120164rt_1-vi.jpg

1960-65 Falcons & Comets

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I saw the photos on Spotlight and it's really hard to judge the curve of the windshield by the few photos there are of the body. At least it doesn't have glaring inaccuracies like some of the releases we've seen from other kit companies as well as Trumpeter.

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If you compare the photos from the Spotlight board with the photos you have here of the annual kit, you can see that the windshield on the Trumpeter kit is too flat, with not enough wrap around to it. I pretty much gave my opinion of it there. It looks a tad slab sided to me as well. Of course, a 64 Falcon Sprint was my first car, and I owned it for over 20 years, plus had a few other Falcons as well, so I know them pretty intimately. Hopfully Trumpeter will follow Moebuis's lead, and fix the issues, or they will just be doing another run of shelf orphans. Regardless, I'll probably buy at least one.

P7120164rt_1-vi.jpg

1960-65 Falcons & Comets

Oh man - that is soooooooooooooooooooooo sweet!!!!!!!!!!! I have a red 6 cylinder hardtop that I bought a few years ago in Oregon. One of my very first cars was the sweetest little ( with a sprayed on imitation vinyl roof ) silver six cylinder automatic hardtop with a red bucket seat/console interior that I sold back in 1972. *BOOT, BOOT, BOOT!!!!* I looked for a long time for an affordable, rust free one to replace my original one until I found the one I now have through a friend. This one will never leave my posession and will go to my eldest son who loves that little car. It's just an old car and I am going to leave it that way for now - faded red paint and all. It drives car guys nuts when they see something like that driving around - especially with a six cylinder automatic. They get all glassy eyed and incoherant when they start having wet dreams of stuffing a V8 and a four speed into it.. it's funny to watch their faces. Yeah, I know - I'm a jerk. *grins* But it's my car and it came with a six cylinder and it's gonna go out with a six cylinder 'cause that's the way I Like it. I just wish that I could find an affordable pair of factory red bucket seats and a console for it or a front bench seat to replace the Mustang buckets that are in it now. The man who I bought the car from learned to drive in that car and it had been in his family since it was a year old.

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  • 1 month later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Something inside me wants Trumpeter to succeed. I want to see some variety on the shelves at Rider's or Dean's, and I'm hoping they can pull off a home run with the Falcon. The two issues I had with the Monte were that the wheel openings are too big, and the 'small block' Chevy looks to be the size of a Cummins diesel. At least their stuff is more workable than say, the old Palmer (no relation, thankfully) monstrosities. Hopefully, all the engineers were working in the same scale this time....

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Oh man, is that out of whack! First thing I noticed the chassis pan is lacking detail and crispness. I have seen $10. diecast with more chassis detail.

As stated above, the windshield is missing the wraparound at each end.

And that is where I quit looking; because something tells me... there is probably more. :lol:

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Oh boy. That's... uh... unfortunate.

I'll get one just to see what might be dragged kicking and screaming out of it, but man - it's a little eye-watering.

3-D scanning. They really need to cut the ###### and just get to it.

(y'know, that censor mark suggests a whole lot worse than I actually wrote...)

Edited by Chuck Kourouklis
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I'm good for one of them at least; the built model, warts and all, is pretty attractive as anyone can see from his incredibly sanitary build. It looks like there's no good reason in the world why it should cost a nickel more than a Revell kit, and as usual they don't seem to sweat the details much past the initial drawings. That's where the corner-cutting begins :lol:

Now for all you guys savaging this kit like they made it look like a Rambler Lada :o:D , I've been comparing this to an original built '65 Falcon and if you guys think the chassis is whacked on the new kit, the vintage kit is really whacked. Wire axles, screws, nothing close to prototypical underhood detail...yes, the Trumpeter kit does look like it needs to be sealed up and injected with about 10 psi of air to get the body shape just right...I still think it will be a fun build. I have no idea in the world why they whiff on things like the exhaust and transmission...it's not like Trumpeter has ever gotten that stuff right, ever, have they?

I'm kind of amazed these actually got to market. I'm interested in seeing the custom parts that come w/the convertible. It will be an interesting summer w/these new Falcons, Moebius Lonestars, Hudson Hornets and Chrysler 300's, Mustang GT's, and Fujimi doing a curbside :blink: AMG Mercedes SLS.

Could be a fun little quasi-Trans Am vintage racer in this thing...

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Looked at the photos in that link, compared them to photos of the 1/1 Falcons, Trunpeter falls far, far short yet again. I think I'll not waste any more money on their inaccurate junk.

Let's get the biggest gaffes out of the way first:

1-I've never seen a single exhaust for a V8 have this kind of crossover pipe before!!! :D

TF12.jpg

Also, where is the transmission pan to the automatic tranny in that shot or this one?

TF8.jpg

To top that off, if the transmission is an automatic, why is the shifer for a manual, (likely a 4 speed)? :o

TF5.jpg

The front seats in that photo seem kind stiff & flat to me, compared to a 1/1 car:

Falcon8.jpg

The generator is seriously out of scale here:

TF7.jpg

Also, by 1964 the American manufacturers had pretty much switched over to alternators.

More to come.......

:lol:

You are absolutely correct about the exhaust. It would be sorta correct for a Fairlane or Mustang, but the Falcon had a center dump exhaust manifold on the driver's side that went directly across the engine, just behind the sump of the oil pan. From there the pipe went straigh back, without that crossing over the driveshaft business on the model. Not to mention, the muffler should be on the passenger side, and much larger. The rear bumper is way too tall, and the rear in general is way too flat. The front seats look terrible, and the vee trim on the front sides is a bit too wide. The generator is in scale tho, and they are correct through 1964 for most Fords. (Ford switched to alternators across the board in 1965) Whoever did the build did really nice job, at least, but again, a lot of glaring inaccuracies in the kit.

Edited by Dave Darby
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Knee how!

Does that shot of the front end look like a Ford Courier? Looks like the trim is out of whack too - space is too wide? Why, in this day and age (space age!) would they do this to such a discerning audience? This kit seems to marketed at a niche sector that would notice such mistakes, so why not make it accurate? Oh well, somebody buy and build one and post it please.

One more observation - does the center console look like a big serving tray?

Edited by Coyotehybrids
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Well, at least they spelled "Falcon" correctly.

:lol:

Hey! Where did the little ninja emoticon go? This kit really earned one! But it's ... MIA. Censors again? Did the little ninja face offend someone? Sheeeesh!

[CENSORED]

:lol:

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