Uptown Automotive Hobby Shop
The Biggest Little New and Used Car Showroom in Central New York
The Biggest Little New and Used Car Showroom in Central New York
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Uptown Automotive Hobby Shop The Biggest Little New and Used Car Showroom in Central New York |
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In this instance, I refer to the defunct model manufacturer, Pyro Plastics Corporation, from Union, NJ. From the mid fifties, they offered a few car kits labeled as 1/24 scale, and in the sixties, a prolific range of 1/32 scale vehicles. Herewith is presented a fact or two, and a "guesstimation", that may or may not be totally accurate, but if a detective can gather facts, and from them form a potential conclusion, I too can attempt to establish a correlation and form a hypothesis. In the latter '50s, Pyro offered a Volkswagen sun roof sedan as a 1/24 scale plastic model kit. It had a multi piece body, plastic tires, and no chrome parts, but it was one of, if not the only plastic scale model assembly kit of the Volkswagen at the time. Later, a modified "beach buggy" version of the Volkswagen kit was offered. When I saw the model, I wondered if the beach buggy model replicated an actual vehicle, or if a designer at Pyro had just altered the VW "beetle" kit so the company could offer a variation which had become popular with younger people, of the of the basic VW.
My question was answered in 1966 when, in a classified ad in the back of a car magazine (the specific name of which I have forgotten), the very same Volkswagen beach buggy was offered for sale, in a black and white ad that included a photograph of the vehicle. Thus I learned that there was an actual Volkswagen beach buggy, and that apparently Pyro had it built or modified for promotional purposes.
Now the story takes a different turn. In that ad, the name of the person to contact at Pyro regarding the "Beach Buggy" was "G. Schaible". I confess that I wouldn't know G. Schaible from Santa Claus, but eventually...later...that name would have significance. By the mid sixties, Pyro was offering multiple series of 1/32 scale models of antique and vintage vehicles. One interesting vehicle was a 1915 Ford Model T Panel truck, a "pie wagon". The name on the side of the truck was "Scheible's Bakery". Okay! Made sense. "G. Schaible", contact person in the VW beach buggy ad, was obviously a Pyro employee, so using his or her name on the Ford panel truck may have been a tribute to a valued employee, or simply a way to add realism to the model, rather than using a generic or fictitious business name.
Schaible's bakery? Perhaps a long running family business from which the Pyro employee was descended? So I turned to the internet, typed in "Scheible's Bakery, New Jersey" (since Pyro was in New Jersey), and sure enough there was information on the historic family owned New Jersey bakery.
Admittedly, none of this means anything, but I found it all interesting, and somewhat interrelated...and it proved that my curiosity wasn't just a half baked idea.
Jim Amado During WW II, having graduated from college, my aunt Mary left her home in Utica, NY, and traveled to Washington, DC where she began a job working for a judge. At some point while there, she met a handsome sailor named Willis Kennedy. They eventually married and subsequently produced nine children. As time went on and the children grew, it became a challenge to transport eleven people in one vehicle. Fortunately Uncle "Ken" was always able to find a good used station wagon of one make or another. In the early sixties he purchased a grand old vehicle: a 1946 Cadillac Limousine. It was dark blue, with black leather in the driver's compartment, and tan mohair behind the division window, in the passenger compartment. In addition to the spacious rear seat, the two folding jump seats were full width, and together helped to accommodate all of my cousins. It was a delightful old vehicle, in pristine condition, and served the family well. When they came back here to visit, it made the 500 mile trip from their home to ours flawlessly. An additional benefit, if we had traveled to visit them, was when I returned to school in the fall here in Utica, and classmates would invariably ask each other "what did you do during the summer?", I would honestly say: " I went down to Washington, DC and rode around in Kennedy's Limousine". They may not have believed me, but I told the truth.
Jim Amado From Tiny Fascinations to Big Passions: When I began attending school, the walk to the school building required passing by a Wonder Bread Bakery, and a Ford Automobile Dealership. The bakery provided a feast for the nostrils, and the dealership a feast for the eyes. My father and my uncle each had a car in our home driveway, and neighbors had cars, but passing the Ford store, going to and coming from school every day, likely had a greater influence on what eventually became a lifelong affinity to cars. To add to the fascination, the discovery soon thereafter that a little miniature '55 Ford could be had "free" inside boxes of certain Post Cereals! Actually, though unknown to this young child at that time, the F&F Mold and Die Works had produced miniature Ford replicas since 1949. As time went on, I learned that various Ford and Mercury replicas were produced into 1969. The magic for me however, was seeing the various 1955 Ford body styles and colors through the showroom windows, while knowing that one or another might be found in a cereal box, duplicating the real ones in the showroom. Enter reality. "Free" does not mean the same thing to a child, as it means to a parent who pays for the "free' item. Thus it was many years later that I was able to acquire my '55 Fords: Tudor, Crown Victoria, Country Sedan, Sunliner, and Thunderbird. They were molded in various colors, though I ended up with not much variety as the ones I found were similar in color. By today's standards they are most certainly not the most accurate representations of the actual vehicles, but in the eyes of a child in 1955, they were more than good enough...and, we could get one in a cereal box! At that time in my life I had no awareness nor knowledge of promotional scale models or plastic model kits. My only knowledge - ignorant bliss - was that one Ford agency, and was gained vicariously by looking through the windows. I never aspired to collect others of the F&F series throughout the years, once I became aware of their existence, because that earliest memory of a neighborhood car dealership, and the same toy cars being available in a cereal box, combined for an indelible nostalgic memory sufficient to last a lifetime. It was later, at approximately age eleven that I discovered plastic model cars, and at that point it seems that I was driven to begin a lifelong hobby of building and collecting scale model vehicles; yet those F&F '55 Fords, in spite of being comparatively crude, still hold a special place in my heart and in my collection.
page updated 8/5/2025
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