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The model car hobby began in the United States in the late forties. It began with kids collecting toy cars that looked like the real thing. Dealer promotional cars influenced the trend but were quickly followed with imported Dinkys and Corgis and Matchbox cars as well as others. In the mid fifties detailed unassembled kits began to appear on the market and became quite popular.

During that era the collecting of trains had respectability, but model cars did not have that acceptance. When kids reached driving age, they either gave their models away or their parents politely suggested that the time had come to put the toys away.

The sixties saw a very high point in the availability of great models and lots of adolescent collectors and builders. This waned a bit in the seventies.

By the late seventies, a strange thing happened. Many adults, the kids of the previous decades, began to become interested once again in collecting and building model cars. They started clubs and conducted swap meets. The prices of their "worthless" toys started going up.

Money talks. As the prices went up for model cars, so did the respectability of the hobby. In the eighties model car collecting and building by adults came out of the closet. It was finally okay for adults to mess around with model cars.

Both Robert Woolley and I were around to participate in most all of this. Bob is an institution in my mind. His publication Model Car Journal was the only publication that ever really did much with my favorite, promotional model cars. When that publication was transferred to Krause Publications and renamed Toy Cars and Vehicles and ceased to exist as originally conceived, I recall that Sam Miller took it almost as a personal human loss. I think I did too.

Sam Miller was also around for all of this era until his untimely death in September, 2002. Many of us old-timers in the model car community commiserated when Sam died. Robert Woolley emailed me some thoughts and one thing led to another. An idea was sparked to revive the Model Car Journal online.

We are going to give it a shot as a quarterly e-zine provided by Clarence Young Autohobby and written mostly by Robert Woolley. .

Robert and I both would like to dedicate the resurrection of Model Car Journal to Sam Miller. Tributes to Sam Miller

Welcome to Model Car Journal Online, an electronic continuation of Model Car Journal Magazine published between 1974 and 1997. In coming months I will dust off my literary skills and pen a few words on my favorite subject, model cars!

I grew up in the 50's when new cars were exciting, and arrived on covered trucks. Then came announcement time and it was a big deal to go see the new cars. Searchlights filled the sky, and the whole town turned out to preview the new offerings from Detroit. I was only eight years old when the real 54 Buick Skylark was introduced. However, that Christmas, my brother gave me a cream colored Buick Skylark convertible, an AMT 1/25th scale remote control car. I was hooked, and now I could have models of most all the exciting new cars I would see each year in the new car showrooms.

My collection grew and grew, and just never stopped growing. Along the way I discovered real cars, and built a small collection of those too. In 1967, while working for the Sports Car Club of America during the Can Am and Trans Am races, I met my then future wife, a real car gal. Johanna and I became Mr. and Mrs. in 1968, and as true car people left the church in a 1913 Model T Ford, which drove us to my waiting 1963 Corvette roadster. Johanna and the Vette are still very much part of my life, now with garage mates for all. We have two grown children, and one grandson who LOVES to play with "Paw's" (as he calls me) cars. The Corvette now shares its garage with a '29 Ford Roaster Pickup, 1978 Fly Yellow Ferrari GTS, and my favorite, a mint original 1961 Pontiac Bonneville two-door hardtop.

Model car wise, in 1974, following the demise of a publication called Collectors Journal, several former readers and I banded together to publish the first issue of Model Car Journal, all of 4 sheets of 8 1/2 x 11 paper, stapled together and produced on a borrowed mimeograph machine. Model Car Journal grew and grew, and covered the hobby like no other publication before or after. However, after 23 years and 123 issues, my long time friend and business partner Dennis Doty and I published our last issue, and turned over the reins to Krause Publications who renamed it Toy Cars and Vehicles, and later renamed Toy Cars and Models.

A number of years back I had my AMT 56 Continental and Revell Cadillac El Dorado Brougham models featured in Special Interest Autos. I had built the Cad stock, but hated the wheels, and used the wheels and tires from a Johan friction Cad.

I was working at an collectible car auction, and was behind a fence with a car I was about to drive into the auction ring, when a friend noticed me and we started talking. He commented that he saw my Cad and Mark II in SIA, but did not recognize the wheels on the Cad. I explained that I did not like the Cad wheels and tires and replaced them with a set from a 60 Cad I had. He then asked what was I going to do with the Cad, and I told him I did not know, but it was mint, but I'd probably just use it for parts. Only after that did we both notice a guy had overheard our conversation, not at all knowing we were talking about model cars. He looked like he was to have a heart attack at the thought of a mint Cad being parted out, and my friend and I just looked at each other and

A friend of mine was in need of some cash, so decided to sell some promos and frictions he had obtained from a retired motor sports writer. My friends wife really watched him like a hawk, and this deal had to be done on the ultra QT. He gave me a list, and one of the cars was a 56 Rambler wagon. Well, Johan did not make a wagon until 1959, so I just changed the date and calculated my offer for the 150 or so cars.

I had to come by when his wife was gone, and was only able to see about 15 of the cars, all very nice. I made my offer, and paid him for all of the models, mostly sight unseen, quickly packed up my Pinto station wagon (brand new at the time!) and got out of there fast before his wife came home.

Well, my wife was not too happy with me and model car money either, so I had to quickly unpack the Pinto and hide my new find before my wife got home! She knows cars, so when I did unpack them, it was over a period of time, and only a few at a time or she would notice.

When I got to the "56" Rambler wagon.... WOW!!!! It was a 56 Rambler wagon, first I had ever seen or heard about! Never knew it existed. I am still amazed to this day how little I know about the hobby I've been involved with for nearly 50 years.

Another true find in the lot (above) was a 1952 Studebaker Pace Car, a sedan hot stamped on the roof, announcing Studebaker would pace Indy that year. Amazing! Two jewels in the same collection.

Other models were rare colors, and as I had well underpaid for the lot. I contacted my friend and told him I needed to pay him more for the collection he had sold me based on what I had thought was a good faith estimate. He refused any additional payment!