Plastic Model Cars
 
 

Plastic model car kit hobby, we don’t know of any kid that at one time in their lives has not had the pleasure of gluing, painting and maybe even customizing a plastic model kit be it a race, muscle, super or even a TV series based plastic model car

 
 
The plastic model car kit hobby began in the era after World War II, when Revell pioneered the first plastic model car with there famous Maxwell kit which was derived from a toy. But the first real plastic model car kit came about when Derek Brand from England designed the 1932 Ford Roadster kit for Revell. He was also made famous for his development of 1/32 scale plastic model car kits for the Gowland Brothers. There were later introduced into the U.S. by Revell.
 
In the 1950’s to 1960’s interest in the plastic model car hobby peaked and AMT introduced their first plastic model car kit in 1958. Jo-han, Revell and Monogram all started producing plastic model car kits about the same time.
 
In addition to being able to build these kits stock, most of these plastic model car kits were called 3 in 1 which allowed the hobbyist to assemble the kit as either stock, custom or racing. These plastic model car kits are intricately detailed with trim, emblems, detailed dash, opening hood, separate engine and suspension in fact exact duplicates of the real thing.
 
Interest in the plastic model car began to wane in the mid 70’s due to the increasing popularity of video games. A resurgence was experienced in the 80’s with AMT helping the revival with a series of Nascar replicas. Also model specific magazines started to spring up such as Scale Auto, Plastic Fantastic and Car Modeler which helped spread the word .
 
Today many of the classic plastic model cars of the golden age of modeling have been revised and reissued and with modern design and manufacturing methods are better than ever. These include classic from AMT such as the 1966 Fairlane and 1967 Impala SS, and Monograms 1967 Chevelle and 1965 Impala SS plastic model car kits.