1/16 Hudson Miniatures Old 16 Locomobile Racer 1906 Old Timers
Wood and Plastic Model Kit, Box Condition: Good
Dated December 1950 inside. Large scale and very well detailed for that time. Features numerous die-cut and machined/cut to shape plywood and balsa wood parts, beautiful plastic wheels, steering wheel and other accessories, small brass parts, metal stock and wood as required. Although all of Hudson's 1/16 kits are excellent, this one has even more detail than usual thanks to Hudson's engineers having access to the actual car. This kit has never been started. The small parts are still factory bag sealed while the parts that were never sealed have been inventoried complete including two big full-sized sheets of excellent plans and instructions. There is also an fold-out brochure with an extensive history of Old 16, the most famous race car in American history and the first to defeat the European models, winning the Vanderbilt Cup. Please note that one wheel is a different color, but identical to the others. This is not the first time I have seen this happen with Hudson kits. Hudson Miniatures created a very popular line of automobile kits in a constant 1/16 scale shortly after WWII. The kits sold very well...so well that you could argue that Gowland & Gowland borrowed Hudson's subject matter for their ground-breaking 'Highway Pioneers.' The Hudson Miniatures 'Old Timers' even spawned a line of imitators, with Fador's 'Smallster' being one of the better in quality. Sales did drop on the appearance and popularity of the much smaller (and less accurate) Gowland/Revell 'Highway Pioneers' in 1951. When the all-injection molded Gowland kits proved not to be a passing fad, Hudson quickly planned and released his own all-plastic, small-scale competition called 'Lil' Old Timers Quickie Kits.' The kits were of excellent quality, but it was too little too late. Additionally, sales of the excellent wooden kits faltered further in the next few years with the introduction of accurate, 1/24 and 1/32 all-plastic cars in the mid 1950s. This forced Hudson to discontinue the wood kits and the plastic line was sold to Revell and subsequently re-released. Today, these excellent, big 1/16 kits are often the only model available of these early automobiles. In the mid 1960s Aurora thought so highly of Hudson Miniatures that they purchased the wood kit assets and released a very small number of these in all-plastic models.
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