1977-1992 SCALE DREAMS MODEL CARS

By late 1977, I had folded “miniWOODIE” as a business, and was offered the position at Playskool. At this point, both my disposable time and income took a bump, and I found myself collecting promotional model cars.

Promotional model cars—"promos” in the jargon of the collecting hobby, were manufactured by two companies in the USA (AMT and Jo-Han), in 1/25th scale, using factory blueprints, to provide promotional material for the car dealers of the day. These models would be given to children to keep their parents sweet on the dealers’ products in hope of the parents returning to the dealerships to purchase the real vehicle. Usually the dealers’ parts departments would also sell these models to collectors. The tooling for these models would be somewhat modified and used to produce large numbers of annual model car kits. This business originated in the post-WWII years, and grew and developed in popularity until reaching its peak in the early 1960s, which is when I got heavily involved in building model car kits as a hobby.

By the late 1970s, having little time to pursue thew building of model cars, I began to collect the promotional models. This was at a time when the hobby of collecting promos began to get “red hot” among adult collectors with nostalgia for their teen years and a good deal of disposable income.

As is usual with most collectible hobbies, a whole cult developed, based on rarity, availability, and condition. In these pre-Internet days, the hobby was grown via monthly corner-stapled newsletter sent out by hobby-businesses to collectors. Model Car Journal (MCJ) was the foremost of these kitchen-table publications. The publisher/dealer is still an active hobbyist today, some fifty years after hobby’s peak.

I had a good friend, Mitch R., with whom I attended design college with, who advertised in MCJ and dealt in, and collected, promotional model cars. After we re-connected five years after our college days, and discovered that we shared the promo collecting hobby, I began purchasing models from Mitch and his brother, Rick.

In my pre-miniWOODIE job as a precision model maker, I worked for a job shop that was developing a technique to replicate precision cast or molded multiples using a new liquid polyurethane resin that consisted of two parts—“A” and “B”, that when mixed in equal parts and poured into a mold and allowed to cure hard, produced replica hard parts that had virtually the same physical characteristics and appearance of molded polystyrene or ABS parts.

Parallel with the development of this process was a technique of producing flexible molds using liquid room temperature vulcanizing (RTV) silicone. The flexibility of these molds allowed details and undercuts of a very, very precise level. Imaging pouring a two-part liquid mixture over one handbuilt prototype pattern, leaving it overnight to cure, and then flexing it to remove it from the handbuilt pattern. Shrinkage is minimal, and disrtortion is nil, provided larger molds are encased in rigid boxes.

I used this technology to produce large cases for computers, and tiny push-buttons. Parts made with this tech would fit to each other with zero issues. The cost of producing these multiples was a tiny fraction of the cost to hand build a number of precision replicas, and it revolutionized modelmaking in the 1970s and 1980s.

In 1977, I teamed up with my two dealer brother friends and suggested that I try this tech out by producing promotional car replicas of models to fill holes in collectors’ collections. We called the company “Promo Repro”, and our only issue was the ’64 GTO convertible, which h was tooled from a modified AMT ’64 GTO hardtop kit. This was a thin-shell, EXACT replica of the kit, made from a two-part silicone mold which allowed undercuts and fantastic detail. It could literally reproduce a fingerprint left on a smooth surface, so duplicating a model car was a snap. Once painted, one of our bodies could now be told from an original body, except that the ’64 GTO convertible was never issued in promotional model form.

The thin-shell, high-precision method for molding model car bodies has since become the standard of a new mini-industry in Europe, Japan, and the USA. It created a whole new sub-industry which is called “resin cast” to this day, though that label is not mine.

I can unequivocally state that I was the originator of this process in 1977 with the Promo Repro 1964 GTO convertible, and was the first to bring it to market. I have never received any recognition for this, and if anyone can prove definitively that their own models predat my 1977 date, I will be glad to defer to them!

My memory is vague as to how many we sold at $150.00 per unit; it wasn’t a lot because we were new to the hobby and collectors were suspicious of the high (for that time) price. But it did cause a lot of stir and gossip before it disappeared for a half-dozen years while I moved to Los Angeles and got Scale Dreams up and running.

I also refined this tech to a point where it became virtually fool-proof, and introduced it to the Los Angeles Industrial Design community, where is was a great success due to its time-and-money-saving qualities. In was, in one word, revolutionary.

Busy with my relocation to Los Angeles and the typical tasks of relocating to a new area halfway across the country, I had to put Scale Dreams on ice for a few months, as our one-bedroom place had no space for a workshop. Eventually I rented space on Venice Boulevard a couple of miles from my apartment, built workbenches and a small spray booth, and set up a small production workshop. I soon realised who my studio space co-tenant was—none less than George Bartell, the legendary artist and graphic designer who created dozens of the most well-known of the posters and other graphic materials for Carroll Shelby in the mid-1960s. When the Cobra work ended around 1970, George kept busy with magazine work, eventually moving in painting large originals for the Unlimited Ocean Powerboat community. Below are two photos—one of George in his studio space, working on a powerboat “ego” painting for Betty Cook or Rocky Aoki, oo another “bright star” of that group, and the other of one of his most well-known Cobra commissions.

George and I became good friends, and it’s him I can thank for referring me to the accounting firm and financial advisor who I used for many years.

ABOVE—One of George Bartell’s best-known Cobra posters.

ABOVE—George at work in his studio space on a Formula One commission. He seldom stood still long enough for photos!

Sadly, George passed away in 2013 at age 80.

After a few months of rented space, we began construction of a purpose-built workshop on our 1902 California bungalow’s corner lot in Highland Park, Los Angeles. Though work in toy design and my Scale Dreams organization, I had still managed to acquire a large promo collection and remain active in that hobby. Scale Dreams soon acquired a reputation among Corvette collectors for producing a quality product at a fair price, and business grew. Below is a rough time frame of our production of various models.

SCALE DREAMS 1963 CORVETTE CONVERTIBLE MODEL

SCALE DREAMS’ first release was the 1963 Corvette convertible promotional model—a major absence in the collections of Corvette “promo” model collectors.

The body pattern for the ’63 Corvette convertible was made from an AMT kit, with the hood glued into place as a filler (just like a promotional model) and a filler piece for the chassis bottom for the engine area. I molded both the body and chassis, and used kit parts for the interior, windshield glass, tires, and chrome bits.

The ’63 Corvette was a pretty big success. After running a half-page ad in Hemmings Motor News, I visited my post office box in Beverly Hills to find it stuffed with cash and checks. I had—on faith--hired a modelmaker friend to work for me part time, rented shop space, installed a spray booth to paint the models, and produced and boxed a couple of dozen handbuilt models. The next couple of weeks were spent filling orders.

(ABOVE)—The SCALE DREAMS 1/25 scale 1954 Motorama Corvette “Corvair” model, in a special-order color—Neptune Green. Only five were made in this color. The old guy is supposed to be Bill Mitchell, but he looks more like Henny Youngman!

SCALE DREAMS 1954 MOTORAMA “CORVAIR” MODEL

Once we were more or less caught up, I turned my skills to a new issue of one of my favorites from a “kit-bashed” AMT ’53 Corvette model—the 1954 Motorama fastback Corvette concept car, dubbed the “Corvair”.

I made a pattern for the Corvair’s fastback roof, from tooling urethane, and vacuum-formed a roof piece over this pattern. This pattern also had a recess for the rear windscreen. I made artwork for the “Corvair” script on the back of the roof, and had a zinc plate made, which I buried flush with the surface of the top, with the script standing proud so it looked like a script that was applied to the surface, like the 1:1 actual car.

To make the window insert, I then reduced the pattern about 1/16” in all dimensions, and made a mold of the resulting shrunken pattern block. I cast ten of these pattern blocks and made a single multiple-part mold of ten pattern blocks, which were then attached to a single mold bottom (termed “ten-up” in modelmakers’ parlance. I could then vacuum-form ten window inserts at one time; the entire 150-model run of window inserts could be produced in about an hour (10 X 15 = 150).

My first attempts at gravity-casting the model parts left something to be desired—the main issue was tiny air bubbles that would occasionally show up on the model surfaces, leading to reject parts. One late night, I had a 4 AM brainstorm—what if I cast under pressure? I sent a blueprint for a largish pressure vessel to a boiler manufacturer, with instructions that it would have a hinged opening on one end, and would be water-tested to 100 PSI—twice the operating pressure that I planned to use. The completed vessel arrived by truck from Chicago in about a month. It was 20” in diameter and 30” long, with a hinged railroad tank car lid on one end. It worked flawlessly from Day One, and produced a couple of thousand molded parts before I retired it in 2002.

I have never been fond of completely “water clear” window inserts in closed car models, believing that a slight green tint both emphasised the windows, and gave a model a bit of subliminal elegance. (NOTE: This came from my “Arrowhead” scratchbuilt car model of 1964, which used a pale blue transparent Plexiglas canopy, which called attention to the Pearl White interior in a way that a water-clear canopy would not!)

At this early stage, I was still feeling my way through the issues of how to replicate tires and wheels, since although I did have the capability of molding these parts, too, the task of producing eight extra parts per model would have paralyzed production, not to mention increasing costs. Then there was the dilemma of molding and “chroming” parts like hubcaps, bumpers, interior and other exterior chrome, and so on. Some of these parts. Like the shift lever, were very tiny, and while certainly not a problem to produce and plate, the sheer labor involved would be prohibitive to my methods of mass production at the time. So, selecting the “Corvair” as my subject matter meant that I could use the shift lever, headlight buckets, hubcaps and other small chrome parts from the kit, which was then available in quantities from wholesalers for a few dollars each.

I ordered several cases of the ’53 Corvette models from a local source, and put my assistant to work stripping and sorting the parts that I required. These were two rear view mirrors, steering wheel, column and horn ring, front and rear bumperettes, shift lever, hubcaps, seats, and dashboard. I did not use the kit tires or wheels, choosing instead to procure 1,000 vinyl tires from Monogram, along with their styrene whitewall inserts. Since these tires were slightly larger than the kit scale, being 1/24 as opposed to the kit’s 1/25 size, adapter wheels needed to be made. I lathe-turned one set of these with their outside diameter to fit the Monogram tires, and their inside diameter to fit the 1/25 kit hubcaps. This left a thin ring around the hub cap that replicated the wheel rim on the actual car. I then made up several “eight-up” open-faced molds, which would produce enough wheels for two models with each pour. 75 pours X 2 = 150 sets of four wheels.

There were also three additional parts which I had to mold and two to of these to plate. The first were the chrome ribbed hood vents, two in number but molded as a single piece to be installed from the back or bottom side, with a connecting tab joining the pieces. The second was the grille filler for the rear Kamm tail, which also carried the taillights, all molded as one piece.

These parts were designed by me to be made in a single-piece, open-faced mold, as one side of each was simply a flat surface and did not show once installed on the model.

The third part that I had to make was the rear package shelf, which was to be painted the same color as the dash top and carpeting, and incorporated the “waterfall” feature between the seats.

The last prototype part to be made was a complete chassis with motor blocking plate and axle locating tabs. This pattern was made from kit parts and checked for fit with the molded body.

I made ten molds each of body and chassis. After announcing the release of this model to the customer base and mailing list that I’d established with the ’63 convertible, and through the hobby grapevine, the “Corvair” sold rapidly. It was available initially in three color combinations—Polo White/Red, Crystal Green/Neptune Green, and Bright Red/Red—I had also made up a number of test cars in different period colors, which I put aside and promptly forgot about until I uncovered photos of these a couple of years later. I recall these to be Onyx Black, Coral, Neptune Green, Harvest Gold, and Silver. I don’t have any record of how many of each color were made, but five of each seems to stick in my addled brain. I sold these to my only dealer at my standard dealer price, and apparently he marked the sale prices way up due to rarity and kept the profits for himself!

After the Corvair, I released a number of other “missing link” promotional models. I led off with a ’68 “Big Block” Corvette coupe, again with tires purchased in quantities from Monogram Models. The wheels on this model I molded myself in open-faced molds, as well as the bumpers, shift lever, the entire interior, the chassis, taillights, and other small parts. Chrome parts I molded from aluminum-filled urethane, as it would tolerate the heat of vacuum-metallizing without drooping or otherwise distorting. I also tooled and released the ’57 Corvette, ’58 Corvette, ’64 GTO convertible (exactly the4 same model as the original Promo Repro model of 1977), the Cruver ’49 Oldsmobile 4-door sedan, and the ’49 Oldsmobile Indy Pace Car with decals from Fred Cady.

(ABOVE)—In the foreground is a SCALE DREAMS CERV III “open door” promotional model in Metallic Blue. In the background is a Riverside Red SCALE DREAMS “open door” Corvette “Indy”

SCALE DREAMS 1983 CORVETTE “INDY” CONCEPT CAR MODEL

By now, I was ready to issue a model made from an entirely original prototype, constructed in a new way. It was 1983, and the Corvette “Indy” concept car weas the talk of the industry. What better a subject for a completely unique promotional model? I decided to make this model in a different way, by making the prototype from a machined and sculpted solid block of urethane.

I had no drawings of this car, but I did have a set of basic dimensions, and a number of photos of top, side, front, and rear views, as well as some ¾ views, all taken from magazine articles on the real car. I made a set of large-scale, dimensioned mechanical drawings, and used my Bridgeport milling machine with its three-axis digital readout to machine a “stepped” rough prototype, with station lines every 5mm. The result was a 3D 1/25 model that had steps cut into it. The inside corner of each step was the outside surface of the car’s body. I then coated the model with deep blue Dykem tooling dye (which has no thickness) and carefully sanded and filed the surfaces down until the steps were gone, and the microscopically-thin blue lines remaining were carefully sanded down and blended. Outer radii, like fender crests and wheel opening edges, were hand-sculpted and blended into the horizontal and vertical surfaces.

I designed the Indy interior as an oval block that slipped into the body from the bottom. The seats and console were part of the interior piece, and the dashboard, steering wheel and column, and shift quadrant were all separate parts, broken out so that their colors were painted solid and no masking was necessary. The interior plug was painted light flat gray, as was the steering column, shift quadrant, and steering wheel. The steering wheel rim and TV screens on the door panels were hand-painted in various shades of gray and gray-green. The deeper gray used for the dash panel and integrated door panels were sprayed in a special 3M paint called “Nextel”, which was a special suede paint that Shure used for their stereo cartridges. A gallon of this—the smallest quantity available—cost $180.00, and once all of the Indys were built, I still had 90% of it left!

I made a vacuum-form pattern for the window glass, and besides vacuum-forming the glass, I also vacuum-formed a piece of .090” styrene, which was cut up and glued to the body for the rear hoop and windshield frame pieces. The rear spoiler was fabricated, glued to the body pattern, and blended into the sides of the body. The front chin spoiler was made in the same manner.

I generated the art for the Indy emblem on the hood, and the CORVETTE INDY lettering on the sills behind the front wheels, and had silk screens made for these. I mixed the ink for these and screened the decals myself on special decal paper that I made so the decals would be microscopically thin.

(ABOVE)—Close-up detail of the SCALE DREAMS Corvette “Indy” engine compartment, with its nylon monofilament spark plug wires. To give an idea of the scale of this Scale Dreams model, the DOHC engine shown was less than 1” long, and the seat cushions were about an inch wide.

I machined a block of urethane into the shape of the engine, and added spark plug wires from monofilament fishing line . I next made an open-faced, one part silicone mold for the complete engine, which had some severe undercuts that were needed in order to accommodate the ducting for the intercoolers and the intercoolers themselves. Before the engine part was poured from thin urethane, I would insert monofilament into the mold using tweezers, and pour the urethane over these monofilament “spark plug wires”. Then, when the engine was pulled from its mold, the ignition “wires” were locked into place, ready to paint a contrasting bright red. I also molded the wheels from patterns that I made on my lathe and vertical mill. The chassis was merely a machined flat plate .200” thick with “CORVETTE INDY” debossed on the bottom, along with a recessed area to fit a stamped serial number plate so it mounted flush and would be nearly impossible to remove. The top of this plate had reliefs machined into it which became the floor pan of the interior.

Now, imagine making tiny part prototypes (the shift quadrant was .150” wide by .600” long and .300” deep), using cutters .030” in diameter spinning at 5,000 RPM, clamped in a vise in a vertical mill standing 8 feet high and weighing 3,200 pounds! This is how the entire prototype Indy’s many patterns were manufactured. Some prototype parts, although they would be duplicated as a single piece (and was the engine mentioned above), would have several component pieces that would have been machined and then joined together. The engine shown above had 13 parts that were combined before making a mold that replicated it in one casting!

The level of detail in the SCALE DREAMS Corvette “Indy” concept car model was incredible, because from the very first steps—the drafting of the car in four views—it was planned to be produced with that detail. There were no afterthoughts. Prior to making any molds, the handbuilt prototype parts were assembled “dry” and fine-tuned to assure that they would fit together.

I also built a small (5) number of Indy models with open doors, as shown above in the photos. These sold rapidly for $1500.00 each.

The standard-issue “Indy” model was available in three colors: Riverside Red, Inca Silver, and Blue Metallic. However, all of the open-door versions were red. The model was featured in a number of magazines in the EU, Japan, and the USA. Needless to say, the standard Indy model was a huge success and sold out in a few weeks at $300.00 per copy.

(SIDE NOTES: I will be adding photos of the Indy process as soon as I unearth them. They were pre-digital 4X5” prints.

Chuck Jordan of GM Styling saw my ads for the Indy and ordered four. I understand from his assistant Floyd that Chuck presented one to Enzo Ferrari, and another to the Pope. Ferrari’s is still in his private collection, though I have never seen it in either of his offices in Modena or Maranello. Chuck became a friend, who gifted me complimentary VIP tickets to the Monterey Weekend and Pebble Beach Concours. Chuck’s son, Mark, became a good friend and I worked alongside him at Mazda R&D under Tom Matano.

Later, Tom Matano hired me to join the management at the Transportation Design school at which he was the Dean. I established their prototype hard and clay model shops there, managed them and also taught full-time. I also designed, wrote, produced, and filmed the very first online industrial design modelmaking classes, totalling eleven in number.)

(ABOVE)—A Riverside Red “open door” Corvette “Indy” model, with an “open door” ‘59 Corvette “StingRay” model in the rear

1959 CORVETTE STINGRAY PROMOTIONAL MODEL

I followed the “Indy” model with a (again) scratchbuilt model of the ’59 Corvette StingRay, done from 1/8 sized factory drawings of the original car, acquired for me by Mr. Jordan. I was also fortunate enough to fly to Detroit to photograph the actual StingRay and spend a day in the private GM archives, researching the history of this fabulous car.

(ABOVE)—Three close ups of a special limited-run “open door” SCALE DREAMS 1959 Corvette StingRay model

The StingRay model was tooled as a thick-walled model like the Indy, in two versions—the silver show car, and its predecessor, the red SCCA race car campaigned by Dr. Dick Thompson. I interviewed Larry Shinoda, who worked on this project and had some fascinating stories to tell about the “skunk work” development and fabrication of the StingRay, which was Bill Mitchell’s pet project, hidden from view offsite in a barn/workshop building to keep it deniable by GM management. (GM had a ban on racing activities back then, following the fatal Mercedes disaster at the 1955 LeMans race, where 84 people including the Mercedes driver lost their lives, and over 120 people were injured.)

(ABOVE)—The “Tomato Soup Red” racing version of the SCALE DREAMS ‘59 Corvette StingRay model. This one was one of the first three built, all of which went to GM designer Larry Shinoda.

(The term “Tomato Soup Red” was coined by Larry Shinoda to describe the color that the real car was painted. This occurred when, in an effort to make the StingRay’s debut race, the painter discovered at midnight that he didn’t have enough Riverside Red to cover the entire car. He solved this dilemma by mixing the Red with a quart of Inca Silver. According to Mr. Shinoda, this color looked like Campbell’s Tomato Soup when it was applied and allowed to dry. The SCALE DREAMS model is painted with a color that was mixed in the same way.) Larry purchased three of the red racing version of this model.

This SCALE DREAMS model pushed the limits again, It was the first of the SCALE DREAMS models to incorporate a number of spin-cast metal alloy parts including Halibrand magnesium wheels borrowed from the Strombecker Scarab kit of the mid-1950s, rear view mirrors, dash panel, steering wheel, external exhaust pipes, and door pulls. These spin-cast parts were made for me by Gene Parrill of Precision Miniatures. Additionally, the hood grilles, front grille and rear fender grilles were photo-etched in stainless steel from actual-sized artwork that I produced. Rub-on transfers for the racing version were also from my custom artwork. The tires are genuine rubber, purchased in quantity from Strombecker.

(ABOVE)—Once the StingRay completed its racing and show career, Bill Mitchell (world’s oldest teenager!) had the car returned to the GM Fabrication shops and modified to his over-the-top taste, and he drove it as his personal car on sunny days. This renovated version had a Big Block 427 cubic inch engine, topped with four Weber 48 IDA carburettors with a transparent Plexiglas hood scoop, a black leather interior and a Kandy Apple Red paint scheme. The SCALE DREAMS one-off model of this car displayed all of these features along with plated, photo-etched grilles, badges, trim, steering wheel spokes, and Dzus fasteners, and a 9/16” diameter scale steering wheel rim that was lathe-turned from six pieces of walnut hardwood. The velocity stacks that cap the Weber carburettors were made from flared aluminium tubing. The exhaust heat shields can be seen through the hood grilles in the lower photo. The guy who commissioned this model back n 1988, William S. of Philadelphia, PA, passed away in 2023, and his collection of model Corvettes was sold piecemeal. I have not been able to locate this model since Bill’s passing.

 The Sting Ray model was a success as well, and I moved on from that to a real scale replica of the original 1954 Motorama “Waldorf” Corvette Nomad. Once again, I had large body drawings courtesy of GM.

The SCALE DREAMS “Waldorf Nomad” concept car model in 1/25 scale

THE SCALE DREAMS 1954 MOTORAMA “WALDORF NOMAD” CONCEPT CAR

The “Waldorf” Nomad was an exceedingly difficult and complex model, and due to my time constraints and this difficulty, I only produced about ten. But for the first time, it was an accurate representation of the actual vehicle, which was destroyed after its show life, sometime in the mid-1950s.

Before SCALE DREAMS’ release, every other attempt at replicating this car in scale was inaccurate, as in reality, it shares no common body panels with the ’54 Corvette, having been developed from a clay model using only the Corvette trim and hardware, like the grille, bumnperettes, headlights, and taillights. As a result, it simply cannot be built in model form using a kit as a basis.

My scratch built prototype model had scale-thin window trim and molded detail, and a correct six-place interior. Once again, it had a thin flat chassis plate with a logo and recess for a stamped aluminum serial number plate. Monogram tires and whitewall inserts were used, and some AMT chromed parts as well. The models were painted in the correct shade of light Metallic Blue. (Most models and actual-sized replicas I’ve seen are too bright a shade of blue. I took my color from an original, unfaded 1957 8 X 10 that I unearthed from the GM library’s archives when I was going through the files researching my StingRay model. It would have been a success had I forged ahead in producing many, but the problems of applying the chrome trim using BareMetal foil made things difficult. I regretfully stopped making them after the first week’s orders were filled.

(ABOVE)—a detail photo of an “open door” Corvette CERV III model in Metallic Blue from SCALE DREAMS. For scale reference, this door opening is about 1 1/4” wide.

THE FINAL RELEASE—THE 1/25 SCALE CERV III

Scale Dreams’ last issue was the Corvette CERV III. This was similar to the Indy model, but the engine compartment had much more detail. Unfortunately, the interior detail was lost to the eye, due to its matte black single color. This model, however, had spin-cast metal parts like windshield wipers, outside mirrors, and wheels. The engine compartment had far more detail that the Indy model, as more of the engine was on display,

I built several “door open” CERVs, and also a version with doors shut but open engine compartment. All CERVs except four were painted Metallic Blue. The exceptions were two in Fly Yellow and two in Riverside Red.