In the 1960s, model kit building was a huge hobby. Kids built plastic kits of planes, tanks, race cars, space ships, creatures from scary movies, you name it. Before baseball card collecting, Pokémon, and video games, model kit building was one of the most popular hobby activities. Car and airplane kits were the most popular, and among the car kits, muscle cars, as we know them today, were one of the most popular categories. Many owners of real muscle cars today were not old enough to buy them when the cars were new, of course. Yet kids of the 1960s and 1970s worshiped these cars to an extent completely foreign to kids today. If you couldn’t afford or were too young to buy a muscle car back then, what could you do? For many, the next best thing was to buy, collect, and build muscle car kits from a variety of kit companies. Hundreds were made. Many of these kits have become collectible today, especially in original, unassembled form. Although people still build kits today, there is a broad market for collectors of nostalgic model kits. People love the kits for the great box art, to rekindle fond memories of building them 40 years ago, or even as a companion to the full-scale cars they own today. Here, world-leading authority Tim Boyd takes you through the entire era of muscle car kits, covering the options, collectability, variety availability, and value of these wonderful kits today. Boyd also takes you through the differences between the original kits, the older reproduction kits, and the new reproduction kits that many people find at swap meets today. If you are looking to build a collection of muscle car kits, interested in getting the kits of your favorite manufacturer or even just of the cars you have owned, this book will be a valuable resource in your model kit search.

This generously illustrated guide to assembling, detailing and customizing model cars presents ten chapters covering plastic model kits ranging from muscle cars and lowriders to race cars, hot rods and pickups. Each project addresses a different set of techniques representing skill levels that grow more advanced as the book progresses. From assembling and painting a muscle car right out of the box to building a hot rod complete with fuel lines and plug wires, as the reader finishes each project he or she develops an understanding of the skills necessary to utilize laser-etched parts, assemble hinged doors and hoods, apply metal foil for chrome finishes and execute custom paint and decal finishes. Step-by-step photos -- including 100 in color -- illustrate all of the skills and techniques described.

Like any multibillion-dollar entertainment venture, NASCAR provides plenty of licensed ephemera with which fans can express their loyalty to favorite drivers and teams. This must-have volume for NASCAR fans and collectors features all the diecast models, plastic-model kits, Hot Wheels, Matchbox cars, transporters and other NASCAR models that have been available to fans over the course of the last 20 years. All examples are arranged by driver and most are illustrated with a color photograph and accompanied by brief descriptions providing dates of manufacture. Appendices include a value guide to the items featured, as well as team and driver information.

This generously illustrated guide to assembling, detailing and customizing model cars presents ten chapters covering plastic model kits ranging from muscle cars and lowriders to race cars, hot rods and pickups. Each project addresses a different set of techniques representing skill levels that grow more advanced as the book progresses. From assembling and painting a muscle car right out of the box to building a hot rod complete with fuel lines and plug wires, as the reader finishes each project he or she develops an understanding of the skills necessary to utilize laser-etched parts, assemble hinged doors and hoods, apply metal foil for chrome finishes and execute custom paint and decal finishes. Step-by-step photos -- including 100 in color -- illustrate all of the skills and techniques described.

New from the Nostalgic Treasures series: a comprehensive guide for modelers or would-be modelers. Discover histories and descriptions of some of the more significant collectible groups of kits including AMT's Trophy Series double kits, 1953-62 Corvette kits, Mopar B-body kits, Classic kits, and more. Find out how to get started collecting model cars, what to look for, and the pros and cons of collecting versus building vintage kits. A superb addition to your modeling library.

The market demands for skills, knowledge and personalities have positioned robotics as an important field in both engineering and science. To meet these challenging - mands, robotics has already seen its success in automating many industrial tasks in factories. And, a new era will come for us to see a greater success of robotics in n- industrial environments. In anticipating a wider deployment of intelligent and auto- mous robots for tasks such as manufacturing, eldercare, homecare, edutainment, search and rescue, de-mining, surveillance, exploration, and security missions, it is necessary for us to push the frontier of robotics into a new dimension, in which motion and intelligence play equally important roles. After the success of the inaugural conference, the purpose of the Second Inter- tional Conference on Intelligent Robotics and Applications was to provide a venue where researchers, scientists, engineers and practitioners throughout the world could come together to present and discuss the latest achievement, future challenges and exciting applications of intelligent and autonomous robots. In particular, the emphasis of this year’s conference was on “robot intelligence for achieving digital manufact- ing and intelligent automations. ” This volume of Springer’s Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Computer Science contains accepted papers presented at ICIRA 2009, held in Singapore, December 16–18, 2009. On the basis of the reviews and recommendations by the international Program Committee members, we decided to accept 128 papers having technical novelty, out of 173 submissions received from different parts of the world.