Milwaukee NNL

Topics:  Milwaukee NNL

John Walczak
The Parts Tree
June 1, 2006

Milwaukee NNL appeared in the June 2006 issue of The Parts Tree

On April 22^nd, a group of our C.A.R.S. members attended the Milwaukee NNL 14 en masse!  While typing this I can't find my notes as to all who went so I guess I'll just continue without the list of attendees so as not to forget anyone!  As usual, AMG of Milwaukee put on the NNL and they did as great of a job as ever.  This year's theme was "That 70's NNL" with a sub-theme of "Dazed and Confused".

Ron Koeller did a wonderful job on getting our group to make a 70's theme diorama (I'm not quite sure of all who participated!) and although we didn't win the category it looked great and was very interesting!  A number of pictures of our diorama made it into GTR's newsletter in May (thanks guys!).  If you haven't seen the diorama, talk to Ron and get a chance to see it!  Burt Weinman Ford was next to the "Boogie Nights" disco and across the street was a Clark gas station with the old 70's look and cars waiting in line for gas.  Next to the Clark station was an Earl Schieb's.  It all looked great and a big round of applause to all who were involved with our effort, especially to Ron for pulling it together with hardly any time at all!

The Excellence Center's room was packed with models of all types and it was a joy to look around and see what other modelers have built.  The winning diorama was just too much to believe!  It had a complete street intersection and some very novel signs in building windows if you took the time to look at them.  The street was in total gridlock, filled to capacity with all types of vehicles and a number of fire trucks were sitting out front of the firehouse!  Now, I'll admit that their diorama was a little larger and had more vehicles on it and maybe the execution was a little better but I feel that they didn't outclass ours!  If it weren't there, we'd have won by a landslide!

Looking around the room I noticed a Corvette collection that was complete from 1953 all the way through 2005, nice job but I lost the builder's name.  A few were quite rare but with all of the 'Vette kits out there as re-issues and updates out there, it's really not impossible to duplicate his work, but then again, who would want to spend all that time just on Corvettes!?! &bnspAnother item that got me to laugh was Mike Dowd's 70's Chevy Van.  You had to look close and get past the hotties swimming in the pool on the roof, but when you did, you saw the driver of the van toking on a "cigarette" with the van filled with smoke before if drifted out the windows!  On another table I saw a great replication of Rex White's 1961 Chevrolet NASCAR Grand National, I never got the builder's name on that one but it impressed me!

Later on I noticed some of Art Anderson's resin cars, namely a 1970 Chrysler 300 and a 1971 Oldsmobile Delta 88 Royale.  Behind those beautiful cars I saw something that stopped me dead in my tracks.  There in all it's glory was a stock 1979 Dodge Magnum, it was the first time I ever saw a stock model of this car!  The builder was a guy from Wausau's Glue Crew, named Jeff Duranso.  I asked him where he found the model and he told me it was made from a Dodge Magnum NASCAR body by JNJ Decals.  It kind of shocked me because I did that body for Jack Higgins in 1980 and it was a fair replica of the cars driven in NASCAR in 1979!  It was far from stock but Jeff whittled down the non-stock body and formed rear wheel wells to complete the model!  I'm going to have to try and find the mold when I unpack my mess and see if I can re-cast it.

Then there were the "Matadorks" on display in their full glory.  It really was a great display of the "horrible to build" AMC Matadors.  You too can become a Matadork if you're the first to complete an AMC Matador stocker car!

That's basically all I can remember of NNL 14 right now but if anyone would like to contribute any other information about it, I'll print it in an upcoming newsletter.

John Walczak is the 2006 Newsletter Editor for IPMS/C.A.R.S. in Miniature of Northern Illinois

©2006 John Walczak