1/16 Hudson Miniatures 1904 Stevens-Duryea - Old Timers
Wood and Plastic Model Kit, Box Condition: Good
Very well detailed, large 1/16 kit from 1954. Features excellent plastic wheels, driving lanterns and leaf springs for all four wheels, pipe cleaners for the radiator elements, metal and wood accessories and wooden die-cut and stock material main parts. Although all of Hudson's 1/16 kits have excellent detail, 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 in the internally sealed factory bag and the other parts have been been inventoried complete with all parts, plans and instructions. 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. The 1911 Mercer Raceabout is one of the rarest American cars. The Mercer was built in Trenton, NJ and powered by a 30 hp T head 4 cylinder engine. Displacement was 300.7 cubic inches and the car had a wet clutch four speed transmission. The car weighed 2,500 lbs and cost $2600 and could do 112 mph. The Mercer was perhaps the most famous sports car of the time. It was rugged, handled very well and had excellent performance.
This item has been sold.
Click here to return to the main page.