The first and great how-to article was Smitty’s construction of a highly-modified, highly-detailed AMT 1940 Ford Sedan which was built, according to the magazine, to push back the frontiers of the hobby – to show what could be done in scale, to be on a “Crusade” for an enhanced level of building no doubt influenced by Car Model magazine’s Technical Consultant, Dave Shuklis, and by the ready inherent talent of Mr. Smith.
The Crusader was a cover model and the subject of a fully feature article. Elements of the model were excerpted and run as short “how-to” articles in Car Model magazine.
When Car Model collapsed in the market place and ended up in the ownership of Tonto Publishing in Arizona, the model by then had been badly damaged with the body suffering the most damage (the interior and chassis/drive trained only required a thorough cleaning) – for reasons never to be known, the bones of the badly damaged Crusade was one of the tangible assets transferred to the new Southwest owners.
One day, Dennis Doty called Mark S. Gustavson and asked if the Museum would want the Crusader, knowing that a great deal of work would have to be done to return the model to its 1963 glary.
Mark readily accepted the offer and received the model from a source in Arizona. Upon receipt, Mark learned that the body had been broken into at least three major parts, with household wall board spackle applied to cover the badly joined parts.
In the future, we will present in-detail photos of this hobby-influencing model, and tell more about how the model was restored – a clone could have been built in a fraction of the time required for the restoration.
See more about the Crusader here.