Collecting Muscle Car Model Kits. Tim Boyd

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       The heyday of the 1/25th-scale annual kit was in the mid-1960s. Here you see a nearly complete set of AMT’s 1966 annual kits. (Missing is the Corvair, Impala SS convertible, Mustang hardtop/convertible, and Barracuda). Note the consistent merchandising/package design approach of the box art. While following the same graphic theme, varied colors and illustration themes allowed each kit to stand on its own while still being part of the AMT 1966 annual kit family.

       Reasons Why a Given Annual Kit Was Never Reissued

      With many original annual kit tools, the configuration of the tooling was modified to replicate the changes in the next year’s offering from the car makers. Thus, during the summer of 1964, AMT’s 1964 GTO kit tool was permanently altered to replicate the upcoming 1965 GTO. Likewise, AMT’s 1967 Mustang GT annual kit tool was updated to produce the 1968 Mustang GT, and still later, the 1968 Shelby GT500. What does this mean? The chances of seeing reissues of the AMT 1964 GTO or the AMT 1967 and 1968 Mustang GT annual kits are just about zero. This is particularly the case when Round 2 is still able to successfully sell reissues of its existing 1965 GTO and 1968 Shelby GT500 kits, which remain the last and still current evolutions of the original tooling for these kits.

      Another frequent reason that your favorite original annual kit has never been reissued is that the tooling was irretrievably modified into some other subject. As an example, AMT’s 1966 Mustang GT 2+2 fastback annual kit has never been reissued. The reason is that the body tooling was heavily modified to produce an altered-wheelbase, A/FX-style kit. The interior and chassis tooling migrated to yet another kit, a replica of the Mach 1 Mustang show car/concept from the 1966–1968 Auto Show circuit.

      In fact, many annual kit toolings were subsequently changed to bring competition/race-themed kits to the market. In most cases, the new kits were either oval track or drag racing topics. To produce accurate replicas, the annual kit bodies were heavily modified (particularly around the wheel openings), and most of the original body trims and badging were removed. As an example, AMT recycled a number of its old annual kit tools for a series of oval track–style Modified kits in 1970–1972. In most cases, given the amount and degree of changes to the body tooling, it was either impossible or unaffordable to return the tooling to showroom stock condition. In those few cases where this was attempted (such as the AMT 1965 GTO and MPC 1970 GTO kits), the resulting product was noticeably compromised versus the original annual kits.

      Finally, in some cases, the original annual kit tooling was scrapped (destroyed) when doing so would provide an advantageous tax write-off benefit to the owner of the tooling. Thus, your chances of seeing the AMT 1963 Meteor kit reissued went out the door when this tooling was scrapped, most probably during the late 1960s and very early 1970s when AMT was facing financial difficulties.

       Reasons Why a Given Annual Kit Has Seen Multiple Reissues

      Why then wasn’t AMT’s 1965 GTO tool changed for the 1966 GTO? That would be the case because the promotionals contract for the 1966 GTO transferred from kitmaker AMT to crosstown rival MPC. This means that AMT didn’t get to see blueprints of Pontiac’s updates for the 1966 GTO. In addition, MPC planned an assembly kit derived from its new GTO promotionals tooling. Thus, it would be unlikely that both AMT and MPC would have offered kits of the same 1966 topic, especially when an AMT kit would have hit the market months after the MPC kit. Therefore, AMT (again looking to maximize its tooling investment) simply re-boxed its existing 1965 GTO tool as a Trophy Series kit, and then continued to reissue that kit for the rest of the decade.

      As a corollary to the above, an annual kit tooling of the final evolution of a real car generation just prior to a major new platform change makes it much more likely to remain available as a reissue. Thus, when Chevrolet introduced its Impala for 1965 with its all-new body and chassis, AMT had to produce all-new tooling for its 1965 Chevy kits. This allowed the company to retain and reissue its previous 1964 Impala kit tooling for decades to come.

      Many individual cases exist that are more involved than the basics discussed above, but if you are wondering why your favorite muscle car kit has never been reissued, it’s probably at least partially because of these considerations.